Anasazi

The modern experience is that more technologically developed societies tend to be kinder and gentler. When we think about countries with generous welfare programs, with rehabilitory criminal justice systms, with animal rights legislation, etc., we tend to think of countries that are also technologically developed. If an evil djinn tells you that you have to spend a night in prison in some country, but you can choose whichever country you want, you’ll probably choose one with high total factor productivity. Similarly if the djinn tells you that you have to subsist on welfare for a year. Technological development seems to create non-violent states.

But: It’s not a universal phenomenon. In different times and places, there have been situations in which the more technologically developed society is far more violent than its neighbors. I’ll give one interesting example from Turner’s: Man Corn: Cannibalism and Violence in the Prehistoric American Southwest.

Turner is interested in the Anasazi. Around 1000 AD, a highly developed culture arose around Chaco Canyon, in the northern part of modern-day New Mexico. The Anasazi had impressive architecture, pottery, astronomical knowledge, etc. They were also violent cannibals. Turner speculates that the Anasazi were “vanquished warrior-cultists” escaping the collapse of the Teotihuacan and Toltec societies in Mesoamerica. They migrated to the American Southwest between AD 700 and AD 1000, taking with them Mesoamerican technology and culture – including exocannibalism (raiding nearby tribes, eating the defeated) and human sacrifice. Anasazi is a Navajo word meaning “ancient enemy.”

Anyway, imagine how terrifying it would have been to be some other people-group living in the Four-Corners region at this time. For hundreds of years, you’ve been farming corn and beans, developing some ceramics, etc. One day, a new culture shows up – one that’s more technologically advanced than yours and far more aggressive. They use their superior technology to become a regional hegemon, and to perpetuate all sorts of unimaginable horrors against you. It’s the plot of Predator, but worse because the aliens set up permanent residence.