[xrcws]

Misinterpretation of Chagnon’s work. Read The Dawn of Everything for more on this. So-called “primitive” societies have been experimenting with things other than material technology (e.g. different ways of organizing themselves) for much of that time. There’s a reason colonists often defected to Native American tribes despite their lifestyles being less comfortable in certain material ways.

[everybodyknows]

Certainly inadequate in some respects:

> According to Chagnon’s calculations about 30 percent of Yanomamö men and 10 percent of women died from human violence.

So, given abundant food, and no obvious limit on the size of a man's "harem", what kept the female population numbers from runaway?

Also, what were the proximate causes of the female deaths by violence?

[scotty79]

Female infanticide. Warriors were more valuable than women because they were killed off faster and lack of warriors meant you'll be loosing women too. So they most likely just killed female infants so mother has free capacity for next pregnancy and feeding a boy, future warrior.

[reducesuffering]

Why would the female population runaway? It doesn't matter what they die from, only that enough died of homicide to impact the numbers of pre-reproduction people dying. If you have population X that reproduces 20% y/y, but 20% (avg. of 10% and 30%) are killed before the next generation reproduces, you have steady state population.