I have not read the book in question, but I have read Pinker's previous book The Blank Slate: the Modern Denial of Human Nature. In it, there is a section on th

I have not read the book in question, but I have read Pinker's previous book The Blank Slate: the Modern Denial of Human Nature. In it, there is a section on the same topic where he argues that our belief that indigenous peoples lived simple and naturally peaceful is just a Western romanticization. After spending several chapters elucidating the origins and extent of this incorrect belief, he provides statistics on why indigenous societies are actually much more warlike than they are today. Since the section is too long to fit in here I've linked to Google Books. Just keep reading the text until you reach highlighted stopping point. http://books.google.com/books?id=ePNi4ZqYdVQC&pg=PT95&dq=thanksgiving+editorialist#v=onepage&q=thanksgiving%20editorialist%20universals&f=false http://books.google.com/books?id=ePNi4ZqYdVQC&pg=PT95&dq=tha... From looking at the graph, it is quite clear that modern society is much less violent than many other indigenous societies. It seems quite reasonable to conclude that societies are becoming increasingly nonviolent. I wish that the author of the review addressed this in his article. [1] In the first paragraph of the section, Pinker references a Thanksgiving editorialist quote from Chapter 1. Here's the quote: "I would submit that the world native Americans knew was more stable, happier, and less barbaric than our society today.... there were no employment problems, community harmony was strong, substance abuse unknown, crime nearly nonexistent. What warfare there was between tribes was largely ritualistic and seldom resulted in indiscriminate or wholesale slaughter. While there were hard times, life was, for the most part, stable and predictable.... Because the native people respected what was around them, there was no loss of water or food resources because of pollution or extinction, no lack of materials for the daily essentials, such as baskets, canoes, shelter, or firewood."