> about 30 percent of Yanomamö men and 10 percent of women died from human violence
That's around 20% of the population in total (assuming 50 / 50 chance of male and female birth)
> The Yanomamö simply killed each other efficiently enough to keep populations down.
Is 20% loss really enough to keep populations down?
If every woman has 3 children, then populations inceases by 50% in each generation. Losing 20% will not keep the population stable.
What if every woman has more children?
Missing in the pictore presented by the article is the birth rate, and other causes of death.
It is not evident the wars are keeping the Yanomamö population stable.
Also I don't believe animal populatios are stabilized by conflicts within same species.
And I heard from a hunter that the population of wild boars and other hunting animals depends mostly on food availability.
> That's around 20% of the population in total (assuming 50 / 50 chance of male and female birth)
Author mentions that primitive societies living in abundance don't have 50/50 most likely to female infanticide. If low number of working women can provide resources it's more important to have more male warriors to defend the group. Excess of women would just get stolen by another group if men numbers in the group got too low.
I think this next post contains many more interesting observations than this one.
In 1970 anthropologist William Divale compiled sex ratio data from 112 primitive societies. He found that among societies practicing war, sex ratios were on average very male-skewed among children and much less male-skewed among adults. The probable explanation Divale found was sex-biased infanticide.
Also the idea that a non-catastrophic reduction in the male population would affect the size of the next generation is probably wrong. If we assume a lack of strict monogamy, that is (probably a reasonable assumption?).
Reduction of number of males results in women getting stolen and probably even more men getting killed in the process. So the population of given group will significantly reduce.
That's around 20% of the population in total (assuming 50 / 50 chance of male and female birth)
> The Yanomamö simply killed each other efficiently enough to keep populations down.
Is 20% loss really enough to keep populations down? If every woman has 3 children, then populations inceases by 50% in each generation. Losing 20% will not keep the population stable.
What if every woman has more children?
Missing in the pictore presented by the article is the birth rate, and other causes of death.
It is not evident the wars are keeping the Yanomamö population stable.
Also I don't believe animal populatios are stabilized by conflicts within same species.
And I heard from a hunter that the population of wild boars and other hunting animals depends mostly on food availability.