company of gypsies and strong evidence of malice with a child aged between seven in 14 not just a theoretical possibility but carried out with relish and when seven year-old was hanged for stealing a petticoat. by 1861 the list of crimes was four. high treason in murder and the variations. in the united states there was an enormous list of capital crimes of the colonial and early independent period. . .

a bit of a fiction. if you look at the number of american executions as a proportion of the population it has been plunging and the son of a graph hugs the floor. nowadays about 50 people are executed every year in a country that has close to 17,000 homicides, so even here in a -- in the backwater of death penalty abolitions the death penalty and is seven of its former self. other abolitions during the humanitarian revolution include which hunts caught the religious

persecution such as burning her to check the state, doing, but sports, debtors prisons, and, of course, is live everywhere they end up seeing the beginning of a tidal wave of abolition airs. the united states again behind the curve not doing it until the 1860's. but today for the first time in history that slavery is not legal anywhere in the world. used to be that slavery was legal everywhere in the world. and, indeed, endorsed as part of the natural order of things when the ancient greeks called the bible, and everyone else? one of the immediate causes, i looked at an air of candid, and the most possible in terms of something that happened before humanitarian revolution was advancing in printing and literacy. printing was the only industry did showed an increase in

productivity hire to the industrial revolution and the 19th century. the cost of printing a book plunged and the sixteens -- 16th and 17th centuries. the result was an exponential increase in the number of books that were published in european countries, and there were more people who could read them in the 18th centuries for the first time a majority of englishmen were littered. well, why shoulder similar? the causes are those that we abbreviate with the term enlightenment. for one thing knowledge replace superstition and insurance. as walter said, those who can make you believe absurdities can commit to -- to make you commit atrocities. s. society becomes smart enough to debunk various forms of hogwash such as jews kudo, which is caused crop failures,

africans are british, it is balanced undermined many rationales for violence . literacy to be part of a general current toward cosmopolitanism, also encouraged by technologies such as chips that allow the easy movement of in mixing of peoples, and it is possible that as people spend more of their waking life reading fiction and history and journalism they start to inhabit other people's minds, see the world from their point of view, their for developing more empathy and less cruelty. if you reflexively try to imagine what it is like to be some other person, maybe you are little less likely to enjoy. the fourth historical transition had to wait another hundred 50 years ago, and it is a

development that borrowing from the political scientist, called a long piece, and it speaks to the common conception that the 20th century was the most violent in history. people who repeat that plan never back it up with any numbers for many centuries other than the 20th century. and it is highly likely that that claim is fallacious. now, it certainly is true that the second world war was the deadliest of and in human history in terms of the absolute number of people killed. on the other hand who there will have a lot more people than it did in past centuries and record and care about not -- more deaths. if you try to estimate retrospectively the death toll from atrocities in the past centuries and these kill them by

the size of the population at the time is now so clear that the 20th century was the worst have taken figures from several across apologists as they call themselves. mackey white from the upcoming book, the great big book of horrible things where he lists the 100 worst things that people love ever done to each other that we know of. i divided them by estimates of the world's population at the time at what happened is world war ii comes in ninth place and world war one doesn't even make the top ten. other atrocities such as the mongol invasions, the african slave trade, the annihilation of the americans. sickly every child a dynasty fell in china there could be several tens of millions of people killed. if you look at the worst atrocity threat human history pot of overtime they pretty much par an even club for 200500

years. if cozumel last 500 years for we could do a little better unsaid applauding the atrocities began at about for the centuries, the political scientist has done that particular category of mass violence common in the great power wars. wars that embroiled the 800-pound gorillas of the day, the largest states, and the ones that, in fact, the far more damage than : combined. if you plot the wars between 1500 in 2000 unless the great powers of the date on each other eupepsia curve which for the early centuries the great powers reprieve much always a war. there were many points that it was under percent of the years in a quarter-century. now the great powers are

virtually never at war. the last great power or was the korean war that ended in 1953. if you bought the duration of wars involving a great power and at least one side the duration goes down. in the twenties as true we have the six-day war. if you pop the frequency of wars involving a great power, that is how many new wars i shuddered every year, again, you have a curve that works its way down word. however, there is one phfft the cousin the opposite direction. if you look at the deadliness of workers involved, that is, not how many are started, but how many people are killed once aboard does begin that goes in the of the direction, upward. that is conditions have better and better at killing a larger

and larger numbers of soldiers until 1945. it was that curve that has an abrupt u-turn, and since 1945 worse for the first time in history have become both less numerous and less threat to of this deadly. if you combine these figures you will supply the number of wars spired the deadliness of reach for. you did a zigzagging curve. the crucial point is the last point on that curve representing the last 25 years are hitting all-time lows over the last 500 years. this is a phenomenon called the long piece, namely that the last two-thirds of centuries since 1945 there has been a starkly unprecedented decline in interstate more, wars between countries. to be a check, and here are some

statistics that are very easy that don't need to grab because they all consist of the number zero. there were no wars between the soviet union and the united states, which may sound unexceptionable today, but every expert predicted the world war three was inevitable. many people grew up with the experts assuring us that it was only a matter of time before the u.s. and u.s.s.r. directed out. no nuclear weapons have been used since nagasaki in wartime. as i mentioned, there have been no wars between great powers since 1953 comptroller of the longest span of time without a great power war since the roman empire. there have been no wars between western european countries. again, your first reaction might be to say, well, oh, mom. of course that happened. no one expects france and

germany to go to war. what a concept. or sweden and russia. but, of course, any student in european history knows that this was the rule, not the exception until the precipitous decline after 1945. there have been no wars between developed countries, the 45 or so countries with the highest gdp per capita now what about the rest of the world. there was a decline of violence that i call the new peace that refers to the masses of the world. what has happened is we set aside the great powers of the western european countries, the rich countries. what would the rest of the world to? well, there was a worldwide decline in the number of interstate wars where one country declares war against another. however, that has been a huge increase in civil wars.

mainly exploding starting the 1960's. challahs by insurgent movements in both sides are arms and -- armed and financed an egg on by the cold war superpowers. however, since 1991 even the number of civil wars as declined with the end of the cold war. and one never has there asked if the number of interstate worse went down the number of civil wars went up, which ones kill more people. the answer is very clear, interstate were still far more people, or at least they have since the late 1940's. there is nothing like a pair of great powers checking artillery shells at each other, bombing each other's cities and sending massive numbers of tanks to do battle to rack up high body counts and a hurry. in comparison some teenagers armed with ak-47s made life

miserable and the local areas of the state, but they simply don't do the same amount of nationwide damage. again, i have a graph showing the deadliness of interstate and civil wars over the last two to five years. the number of deaths from interstate more per year war has plummeted. for civil wars there is a slight increase followed by a decrease. if you then add of the debt from all sorts of war, interstate and civil war, what you find is a bumpy decline with peaks for the korean war, the vietnam war, the runner-up for. in the last ten years the figures hug the floor. basically a narrow little strike can't see the picture. describing the numbers. during a the worst years of world war ii the death rate for

more was about 300 per hundred thousand per year. during the late 1940's and early 1950's it had fallen to about 22. in the last -- in this past decade it has been one third of a death per one of the -- 100,000 people per year using a costa yardstick a battle. this is the phenomenon i have been calling the new piece, so it would be a bit of an exaggeration, but not too much of an exaggeration to say if the dream of the 1960's folk singers is almost coming true. that is, the world is almost putting an end to war. what are the immediate causes? one influential ipod this is in 1795 in his perpetual peace essay which he proposed that democracy, interstate trade, and

an international community would drive down the likelihood of war . recently apparent political scientists have tested there but this is by measuring these factors and showing that they're all increased and our statistical predictors of peace. the number of democracies exceeded the number of autocracies around 1990, and i showed an increase. the amount of a national trade skyrocketed after the end of the second world war. the in intergovernmental organizations has steadily increased throughout the 20th-century, and especially since 1990 there has been a huge increase in the number of international peacekeepers, that is to muscle to the blue helmets from -- and other neutral parties to get in the way between opposing forces. they don't always prevented it

reigniting of hostilities in to work, but they do far more often than when there are no peacekeepers. finally, the six historical decline of violence i called the buts revolutions would revert to the target of violence at the smaller scales against the normal minorities. during the postwar time from the civil war -- the civil rights movement to put an end to lynchings was used to take place at a rate of about 150 per year. that went down by the 1950's to zero. hate crime murders, blacks have been in the single digits says there were first recorded and have since then plunged to about one per year. nonlethal hate crimes against blacks such as intimidation and assault has declined since first leisure. the kinds of racist attitudes

that in the past would license that outbursts of violence such as genocide and the grounds have been in steady decline. for example, with the united states of u.s. white people, would you move if a black family moved in next door, do you believe the black and white students should go to separate schools, think that the income gap between blacks and whites is due to lower ability will or motivation? all of those racist attitudes have been in steady decline, many have fallen so low that they are in the realm of opinion and the pollsters have dropped them from their surveys. the women's rights movement has seen and 80% decline in rape since the early 70's when the statistics were first kept. also a precipitous decline in domestic violence. a strong decline in the most extreme forms of domestic violence, namely a resource side and for the side, the killing of

wives and husbands, although here i must add that the decline has been far more steep for wives killing has been dead husband's killing wives. the woman's movement has been very good for men. the children's rights movement has seen a steady decline in the number of american states that have corporal punishment and/or paddling. a decline in every western country in the degree of approval spanking, a decline in physical abuse and sexual abuse of children since statistics were first kept, and a decline in school violence such as fighting in non-fatal crimes. the gay-rights movement has seen an increase in the number of states that have decriminalized to maserati, both states worldwide and americas states, a decline in anti-gay attitudes such as whether it's should be made illegal or whether gay people should be denied equal opportunity, and a decline in at

least one category of anti-gay hate crimes. the animal rights movement has seen a decline in hunting, rise in vegetarianism, and a decline in the percentage of motion pictures in which animals were harmed. welcome all of this raises a question. why have all of these in the downward? why have there been so many different kinds of violence at different scales of magnitude and time? well, one possibility is that human nature has changed and somehow people have lost their inclination toward violence. i consider this an unlikely explanation. for one thing to others continued to hit, kicked, and bite. boys continued to play fight. grown-up boys and many girls enjoy various forms of vicarious violence such as murder mysteries, greek tragedies video

games to my psyche, and movies starring a certain next governor of california. and the number of social psychologists have affected the prevalence of homicidal fantasies. have you ever fantasized about killing someone you don't like? will, it turns out of 15 percent of women have a third of men frequently fantasize about killing people they don't like. more than 60 percent of women and three-quarters of men at least occasionally fantasize about killing people they don't like. the rest of the lying. a more likely possibility is that human nature is extraordinarily complex and comprises both inclinations toward violence and inclinations that counteract them. what abraham, the better age of our nature from which i took the title of my book. historical circumstances have

been increasingly favoring our peaceable inclinations, are better angels. well, what are these forces in conflict? fighting it out? i think that violence is not a single sick a logical category. we have a number of psychologically and even a narrow biologically very distinct motives that can result in violence. there is sheer exploitation, the use of violence as a means to an end when some living thing is an obstacle in the path of something that you want, which we see played out in violence such as rape, plunder, conquest, and the combination of rivals. very different from that is the quest for dominance, the drive for individuals to climb the pecking order and be out -- of the male. analogous among groups were ethnic and racial, national, or religious premises. the very large category of revenge and moralistic violence

which results in vendettas, rough justice, and cruel punishment. perhaps the beast category consists of violent pursuit of quest of an ideology, such as militant religions, nationalism, fascism, not season, and communism which can lices vast outlays of violence because of the utopian cost-benefit analysis. if your ideology holds up the prospect of a world that is infinitely give forever, well, what are you entitled to do in order to retain that? will, you can commit pretty much as much violence as you want to commend you will still be making all the better place by this cost-benefit analysis. imagine that you have been not saved with the one true face according to which there is a utopia, according to which you

can strive, and there are some people who hear about this utopia but just stubbornly rejected. well, how they? you do the math. arbitrarily evil, and that is why details of the distribution of massive violence tend to be pushed outward by utopian ideologies. well, what do we have on the other side to counteract these mothers for violence? what are our better angels? there is self control, the ability to anticipate the consequences of our behavior and to inhibit violent impulses, and the, the ability to feel of his pain, the moral sense, which is a family of intuitions, some of which, like tribalism, approach arianism, and puritanism can actually increase violence. at least one flavor of the moral sense, the drive for fairness

can counteract violence. then there is reason, the cut did faculties that allow us to gauge and objective and the test analysis. well, if we have then these inclinations toward violence on one hand and innovations against violence on the other what has tipped the balance of the course of history? what has brought out are better angels? the first possibility was proposed by the book called the leviathan. referring to a state in judicial system with a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence that eliminate the incentive is for baseball with tax, and thereby reduce the need for deterrence and a vengeance, circumvent the self-serving violence by which both sides to a dispute always believe that they are on the side of the angels and that the other side is wicked or stupid or stubborn or all three.

people we know from social mycology, research exaggerate their adversaries malevolence and their own innocents which can stoke cycles of revenge unless you have a disinterested third party in deciding who is to blame and meeting of the penalties. historical evidence consists of the first to transitions that i discussed this evening, the pacifying and civilizing effects and the fact that we can watch these movies in reverse in zones of anarchy where, indeed, violence can be rough. the cliche of cowboy movies. in failed states, collapsed empires, and in mafias and street gangs who deal in contraband and therefore cannot settle their disputes by filing a lawsuit, telling 911 because the nature of the work that they do, and so they have to enforce

their interest with their own growth justice car resulting in the bellinis, sopranos, and those types of vendettas. other evidence include the edge a national scale which includes the effectiveness of international keepers. the second historical force that draws out are better angels, i suggest, is gentle commerce, the idea that plunder is a zero sum gain. trade is a positive sum game. over the course of history as technology improves and allows the trade of goods and ideas over longer distances, among larger groups of people, and that lower-cost more and more of the rest of humanity becomes more valuable alive than dead. a concrete example might be that there is not a whole lot of affection between the united states and china these days, but it is not terribly likely that there will go to war.

among other things they make too much of our stuff, and real been too much money. so historical evidence for the theory of gentle commerce consists of historical -- on zurich, statistical analysis showing that countries with open economies and greater amounts of international trade get embroiled in a cure worse, oppose fewer civil wars and three -- your genocides. the third historical force has been called the expanding circle. this is a concept that was banned by peter singer, the first endorsed by charles darwin more than a century for. the idea is that evolution because leaves us with a sense of empathy. unfortunately my default we apply it only to a narrow circle of things and families. over the course of history you can see these circles of empathy's expanding to embrace not just to the families, the village, the cop land, the tribe, the nation, other races,

both sexes, the children, and eventually to other scented beings and species. this just begs the question of what expanded the circle, and as i hinted earlier, technologies that increase cosmopolitan may have that effect, the growing appreciation of hitter -- history, literature, journalism, growing opportunities for trouble. and we know from the social psychology laboratory that if you get a person to adopt the perspective of some other real or fictitious person they are more sympathetic for that person and are more sympathetic to the category of people that that individual represents. historical evidence includes the fact that in the 17th and 18th century there was an expansion of literacy and travel, the so-called republic of letters which preceded the humanitarian revolution. it may not be a coincidence that the second half of the 20th

century witch at the long peas and rice revolutions was also the era of the electronic mobile village and is often speculated that the rise in internet and social media has assisted the color revolutions and the air spring. the final historical force are called the escalator of reason. the possibility that the growth of literacy, education, and public discourse has encouraged people to think more abstractly and more universally. they get into the habit of rising above their parochial a vantage point, which makes it harder to privilege your own interests over the interests of others. it discourages you to replace in morality based on tribalism, authority, and pearson is and with the morality based on fairness and universal rules. encourages people to recognize the utility of cycles for violence and increasingly to see violence as a problem to be solved rather than as a contest

to be one. what is the evidence? well, one in treating piece of evidence is that abstract reasoning abilities as measured by iq tests, believe it or not, increase of the course of the 20th-century. so throughout the 20th-century and all over the world iq increase by about three points a decade in so-called flood of fact. how could this have affected the violence? well, other studies have shown that people and societies with higher levels of education and of measured intelligence holding all else equal commit fewer violent crimes on average, cooperate more in experimenter games, have more classically liberal attitudes such as opposition to racism and sexism and are more receptive to democracy. why have i ended up with this list of four seemingly different

forces get why are they all pushing in the same direction? the closest i think we can come to the over keep feeling is that violence is what game theorists call a social dilemma which is, it is always tempting to an aggressor to engage in predatory or exploiting violence, but on the other hand, quite ruinous to the victim. and the long run all parties are better off if violence is avoided, and our dilemma as humans, our pickle is how to get the other guy to resist the urge for violence of the same time you do. if you're a the only one in you're a sitting duck for invasion by the bad guys. everyone has to decide to do this at the same time. one can see these forces as cases in which human experience and human ingenuity gradually solve this problem, just like other the skirmishes like pestilence and hundred of we have dealt with, and that all of

these forces increase the material, emotional torment conative defense all parties to avoid violence simultaneously. well, regardless of the correct explanation for this decline in violence i think a there are indications for understanding the human condition that are profound. for one thing they call for reorientation of efforts toward violent reduction from the moralistic mind set to an empirical one set. instead of as the weather is warming might be better off asking why there is peace. instead of water we doing wrong, we might as "we have been doing right. because we have been doing something right, and it sure would be good to find out exactly what it is. thank you very much. [applause] [applause] how. >> thank you very much. this was a fantastic presentation.

people are lining up for the questions. and going to ask again. i know i'll never successful, but i am still going to keep trying. i would like you to keep your questions really brief. that way everyone will get a chance. steven, i would like to keep your answers brief. it works both ways. and if you're comfortable will please say your name. >> my question is germany. it was the most cosmopolitan, highly educated society arguably in europe. they did the most horrible crimes. >> a little misleading to say it because there are sectors a workable and educated perry also

sectors that were more trouble in their mind said, deeply anti-semitic. even among the german lead there was a widespread rejection which we dismissed as the french business. and there is rather than an acceptance of universal rice on the flourishing of individuals there is a primitive and embrace a blood and soil, trouble isn't. granted, you're right there is a flourishing cosmopolitan of some sectors of the german population. problem is there were all murdered. so the general answer is that it was -- when it comes to an entire society it is important to see how dynamic competition among the various sectors, and it's only the other robust economy, that people are not

murdered. it affects society as a whole. >> first a comment and then the question. the spanish filmmaker. as he was dying, only if engineers we get up out of the grave in get and keep in touch with what is going on. your presentation in terms of overt violence is extraordinarily impressive. on the other hand there is a containment in one sense and a proliferation of filing games starting with kids as young as two and three and a tremendous compulsive preoccupation with violence in the media and football and so forth.

i would call it a kind of a externalization, not a sublimation. but contained. and part of it, i think, is freud spoke of the perversity of violence in his aggressive drive. you can turn never identify with people who were suffering and say, paint autism me. and then new and more important murder mysteries. somebody, i can fantasize that i have done this. somebody else will be discovered . >> yes. >> i agree. i agree that is a pleasure taken in entertainment as a great constant. i don't believe that violence in entertainment causes violence. it is a huge the suspension of

via video games as been accompanied by great american plot -- crime declined. i am also not convinced by a kind of heroic model that you get violent urges out through violence. i think that it is a guilty pleasure of the people of all areas have had to look at. if you look at the penny dreadful, the old testament, the lives of the saints, there is a lot of really gruesome stuff in there. people enjoy it for a trustee reasons. at the ones that you mentioned, but its tenuous connection to real-life violence. >> encouraging people in terms of the total population, and now it is a large part of the population. >> well, people came out and brought the full family to watch really stomach turning public executions, burnings and breakings and strangulation is in the some moments.

so it was possible for an entire population to be overcome by eclecticism. >> one last comment. i noticed there was laughter. talk to the disinvolvement. -- disinvolvement. >> we have a long line. i would like everyone to get their chance. >> yes. >> good evening. if anyone to give names, we could. the question is this. very much impressed by your presentation. i have always wanted. i'm not involved. believe me. very passive. the question is this. do you think some people are actually biologically tending to

really be inherently evil and sometimes will to what the fear of clowns gemaras evil, little children coal leases by the back. the rosa want to play. it to close and watch out. no matter how you raise them, even if they're adopted by the most messes, kindest people : there is something about them that they like. >> there is. the answer is that there is a substantial component half too anti-social tendencies and the peace gym in violence and the social tendencies. not obviously completely a terrible call but the troublemakers, the more callous

and temples of people get that way in part for genetic reasons because banks to real life research that carries comparing adoptive children to biological parents and their adoptive parents to make shows that there is some statistical tendency. the most extreme are psychopaths . a few percentage points of the population that seem to be without the ability to develop a conscience that tells the interests of others. so much individuals, there is destined to be some and irritability. quickset think we need to move on. it's only fair that everyone get a chance. >> side. my name is no. my question is about the backroom boys. referred to the chemical engineers a dupont the developed

than the palm that was used to great effect in the vietnam war. so in reviewing the records of the backroom boys, in remarks that there of the to the and this is from the effects of their actions. very technological occupation. and he treated it to the 30 years' war and it says that the institutionalized violence to as the technological means has its roots in those prolonged genocidal conflicts. as you mentioned and has been debated, 30 percent of what is now the czech republic just perished to the effects of the war. as you mentioned, the percentage of the gems of conflict have declined precipitously, but the institutions seem to remain with the stop particularly this is reasonable and objective counts

of extreme violence like these boys did in the 1950's. very effective killing. >> well, what i have really become concerned with this when they need to be deployed, and it is interesting that contrary to what i often hear, as we develop high-tech push button forms of warfare that circumvents the inhibitions that we have against hands-on bloody gory violence, and i don't think that is the process of history. you mentioned the 30 years' war goes terrifically. those are carried out by men with weapons and bayonets and so on. i think people can very easily overcome their resistance to hands-on violence. in fact, it is often the most high-tech forms of violence that are deployed most gingerly,

nuclear weapons being an example which is not been used since nagasaki. so the correlation is much less than people think because it is so easy to commit his of violence. >> you attack your historical record. >> yes. >> the struggling between the technology of violence in that particular, you know, a pattern of @booktv chick-fil-a in europe, northern europe, to cause the very rich in devoted culture. you have reviewed this history of violence. how clear is that connection? >> the highest technology culture is typically applied to weapons or whether. amazingly well engineered faugh composite those. that is something that people -- this seems to bring up the ingenuity. >> ample steinberg, a psychiatrist here in town.

i am wondering if you could just comment on these thoughts. you may be dismissing the changing of human nature a little too quickly in the sense that genes are always in advance with the environment. and there you site to leverage your book. and there you cite greg clark and his research is remarkable looking what happened starting the 13th century with royals is being much more fertile than the lower glasses. the bourgeoisie. the bourgeoisie created the 11th hole but it took fivers six other years for the industrial revolution to happen. so we have more people in england with the thyssen surplus disorder and fewer people with attention deficit disorder, less impulsivity, reconcentration, riders of control. when a society moves in the direction you reach political message, that may actually

change the way, it certainly fuels just a change in the culture. >> and that discussed the possibility at length in the book. end up not embracing it, though not rejecting it mainly for lack of evidence. it makes the prediction, for example, that englishmen regardless of their culture should be genetically less prone to it impulsivity and violence then people from other cultures and races. this is not the possibility of a good guitarist dave hansen, but moreover, it may be unnecessary. very early in the investigation of biological evolution, but given the some of the developments that i discuss occur far too rapidly to be attributable such as the plunging of the crime rate in 1952 because something must

happen that was not a genetic. so on grounds a parsenia figure we don't have any need for the hypothesis. there's also the genetic change. not ruling it out. >> emma terrible bullets speaker, so and a huge fan. i am curious about people's relationships with representatives democracy in civilian law enforcement, and it is interesting to hear what the declining rates of violence : at the same time things like paramilitary police was finance what teams that have gone way beyond their original intention as far as hostage situations and even last year breaking into homes over college loans. so if rates of violence are really declining why is the civilian law enforcement flexing their muscles in a way that doesn't correlate with the decline in violence? >> well, we have to look at figures over time.

given the violence for retreated against civilians. i suspect that there has not been much an of an increase to earlier decades and centuries. in bringing in the leviathan, to keep people from each other's throats the have the second problem of keeping leviathan appeals the arts. this transition was a tough bargain because of lower the rate of violence within it gave you these blood thirsty does was to do with. the democratic revolution and come indeed, the continuing battle for democracy and civil liberties is an attempt to find the sweet spot where the government is powerful enough to deter creation by one citizen over another but not so powerful for adult citizens which is something that i am always going to muddle through. >> thank you place a lot to make sure that everyone gets as the question.

that will be our limits tonight. >> hello. my name is gregory walsh. i have been very much looking forward to reading the book cover since the speech you gave three or four years ago at the conference on the same topic. i was, however, wondering if you could comment on some allegations made in a book recently redbook -- a blank on the name, the prehistoric origins of modern sexuality in which the author alleges that some of the the present above rates of violence among hunter gatherer cultures, not state people's tonight is erroneous. they allege, for example, that the data at the time was collected, people had contact with modern society for many decades, that they are not, in fact, nomadic but are settled peoples. i was just curious cercis

reading that, to hear your response to some of those allegations. >> those allegations, but the data that i present caught many are from people that had no contact with the europeans, examples of stole thence from pre-columbian. many of them are also from hunter-gatherer's court into of horticulturalist people also had no contact, so i can respond to these allegations not know what they are. certainly the sources i have consulted make it very clear when there has or has not been contacted. they span a range, there are societies that don't have homicide or death and more. on average their way up there and are from many societies of different kinds. they have in common is not living under government, and that seems to uniformly give -- should not say uniformly because

there is some distributional but on average comprising high rates of violence. from what i can tell the literature, it's a solid conclusion. i cite many service that have the numbers the back of decline. >> eighty-four years to netting presentation. everything from paddling to rape, one exception that stood out in my mind was the incarceration. a high level of incarceration. violent people have deserved, but also non violent crimes, he senses. people turn into a situation where that prison life is not getting less violence. i'm wondering how you factor into that.

>> will, in the historical sense, modern american presence, as horrible as they are, are much less violence. you could have, say, prisoners it shackled to the floor or wearing iron spiked collars. they have to pay for the caller to be taken off and there was an extremely high rate of death from disease and starvation. current american presence, but distort the it would be inaccurate to take the current american imprisonment as evidence that nothing has improved. the american imprisonment of allows whittier's properly was a way of reducing the counteracting the enormous increase in street violence, violent crimes of all types that have overtaken the united states in the 1980's. of homicide rate or the rate of rape, the rid of assault. so as a clumsy countermeasure

there was an increase incarceration. in part it was as possible for the part that the violent crime rates have plunged back to earth since the 1990's. not entirely because of the number of other causes, most justices of crime and to be at least part of the current decline to the increase in imprisonment. it is really in allied air. true for every western democracy but the united states. it's true of homicide, when the steering gears and worse. is true of imprisonment or uigur a disproportionately large were some of our population in prison

compared to other western democracies. >> i was wondering if you could share with us a bit about the methods used to arrive at these numbers the talk proselyte. they do independent testing with statistics, like this type of cause, like to this fact because next? >> depends on the numbers. the state and not state contrast came from next in trouble peoples. the historical criminology such

as the under thing corners records for every year in a particular count. in the case of word depends on the time. since 1946, but to just statistics on armed conflict by and number of organizations. there was a project which looks at death rates from the largest source from 1816 to the presence prior to 1816 if you come, as you can imagine, the farther back you go the fuzzy the statistics get, but they're is a line of quantitative historians that have tried to triangulate on estimates of the death tolls from various worse to come up with best guests estimates. for homicide more recently the fbi keeps reasonably good statistics, which they have

since the 1930's. for crimes of the homicide like rape and assault the best day is victimization surveys, which are contaminated by people's willingness to report a crime to the police. still others like domestic violence there our victimization, servers, and other social science methodologies. all depends on the kind of violence. >> analyzing the results? >> i took the datasets in their entirety from other researchers and never second-guess to secretary of. what's it is -- what is included and excluded. and did not want to do any she cherry picking to try to favre is a publicist. the datasets that i used their in their quality, but none more selective to show a decline.

some of the inclusions or dodgy for various reasons, did not give myself the freedom of sharing them. >> below. awhirl the was just wondering social capital has been declining in the united states. community. and i would have thought that that would lead to may be more violence and crime, but it seems like we have a declining crime despite the troubling figures. i wonder if you have any thoughts that are any ideas why putnam's results might be going a different direction the rate of violent crime depends on the degree of social interconnectedness and trust institutions.

of heard of the civilizing process. that was a decline of about 000,000 per year to about ten per hundred thousand per year which occurs every word that government extends its tentacles. but the for the decline that we see in europe and in parts of the united states from about ten down to the single digits, the low single digits seemed to depend on the presence of government, but some more nebulous process of accepting the legitimacy of the social order. indeed, as you suggest, the correlate, but as you also point tough, don't. the embarrassing dirty little fact is that messages to criminologist has been successful in accounting for either the increase in the crime rate of the 1960's, the 1980's or the plunging from the 1990's.

every one is doing catch up. the dump required got up and down. the cultural attitude the could filter down to law enforcement and, of course, the up or down, but we are all telling stories. >> last question. >> the camera to -- can't wait to read your book. it is a fascinating subject. i'm interested in why is the perception that we live in such a dangerous and violent era, why is that so pervasive? it is just amazing how discordant that is. >> it is, indeed an intriguing question. i think one reason is the -- with the media report and what

they're getting better and better reporting, not only is the the program policy, the media prior rumors, just as people in lot @booktv joy violent entertainment, they enjoy violent news. we are better and better at finding violence. anyone on the planet with the cell phone can be video footage of violence all over the world. and target to psychologists, the human mind estimates risk and likelihood by the ease with which we can recall examples. if you can't the with an example you think it must be dangerous or not as good at tracking and denominators. media, of course, the report denominators. if you have millions of people dying from alzheimer's and cancer and heart attacks, vladimir and lithuania kills over from a heart attack there is not a camera crew filming it. but if he gets shot by a deranged postal worker