I have personal experience with people who behave like this. These same behavioral patterns, this same sort of thinking / interpreting the world. The level of violence was different by degree, barely contained by law, by what is commonly accepted, and by visibility.

It so happens that in this case there was a long-time cocaine abuser and addict who I believe also might have traumatic brain injury. Cocaine and traumatic brain injury have a severe impact on the inflammatory response in the central nervous system – increasing inflammation – which is also behavior-modifying, increasing aggression. Environmental stress also has a similar effect on the brain and behavior.

It’s easy to notice multiple examples of severe head injury in the story. Social and environmental stress is severe as well. (I don’t think cocaine is involved; I mention cocaine in the context because it’s something that’s available in our modern enviroment which causes brain inflammation, cognitive impairment, and violence. These effects are provided by other things in the story.)

In the story I also recognize the violent and “dream logic”-like elements from the onset of dementia. I’m sure that hardships such as these people live in will bring about dementia-like effects and alterations. Bodies wear out, and the brain is part of the body. It is not the fundamental nature of the brain to wear out in silence and grace.

These behaviors are all in our nature. All of them. It’s just a question of latent tendencies, of impairment, and what sort of survival mode is brought about by which sort of environment.

(There is science on the claims I make here. There are papers out on this. Google Scholar suggestions: neuroinflammation + aggression + cytokine, cocaine + tbi + cytokine, cocaine + neuronflammation. Interleukin-6 (IL-6) in particular is an interesting cytokine with profound roles.

There are also parallels with malignant narcissism and the lack of object constancy. “Lack of object constancy” is specific and almost technical. Haphazard take on that: Reasons for senseless actions are not necessarily derived from the grounded reality of memory. Rather, sometimes with humans the reasons for violence are on-the-fly ad-hoc justifications fully experienced as memories by the person, generated “live” by, say, fear and anger and the hunger for power and dominance.

My apologies for not supplying actual citations. I wish I had the oomph. I appeal to your curiosity.)

Too late to edit, I meant “bog standard” and not “big standard”

I also believe that in a sense she was indirectly selecting for this type of man. The article also mentions that she refused the one man where she found the threat to be unconvincing, which kind of suggests that in contrast, her two "accepted" husbands had made even more convincing murder threats.

"I think such high-ranking men are probably not representative of the typical Yanomamo man. Rising to the top of such groups likely requires a good deal of psychopathy. "

It is not at all that clear to me. The thing with psychopathy at least. We have about 15 per cent of psychopaths up there (compared to the societal average of 1 per cent). Contrary to the general myth, even most high-ranking Nazis were paper-pushing conformists rather than psychopaths like Oskar Dirlewanger. Would the Amerindian society fare very differently?

First, the groups are relatively small. 100 to 150 persons at most, not a whole country like Weimar Germany. Given high mortality and the fact that women didn't become chiefs, your purely numeric chance of becoming a chief was reasonably high if you lived to be 35 or so, just from the fact that you lived and had a lot of valuable experience (in an illiterate society, the elders are a vital knowledge source). Also, this was a fission-fusion society: smaller groups separated under their own chiefs, went their own way, then came back and fused for some time again. Which opened some positions of "junior chiefs" to prove themselves.

Too much eagerness to engage in violence will likely get you killed at a younger age. Serious injuries amount to death in the forest, and even many lighter ones. If you really "optimize for max violence", odds are that you will be killed soon. You cannot win every battle, and some of the deaths described by Valero were basically murders from behind.

There was certainly luck involved, but also a mix of other attributes, including your ability to fight. But it is not clear to me that psychopaths would have a decisive advantage. It is fundamentally physically dangerous to be a violent psychopath in a society with zero healthcare.

I don't think we have to look that deep into this. Fusiwe was a man with a short fuse and bad decisions. His dog died, he got frustrated and he snapped at someone. Helena was the one who he happened to hit. I don't think it was likely to be the result of some complicated calculation.

Similarly the article is asking the question "Why did Helena succeed?" Undeniable all the factors they list are true. She was intelligent, perceptive, sociable, made friends, and calculated risks in her life. But the other very important factor is that she was lucky. Perhaps the most important factor. There are thousands and thousand of other alternate histories where we don't hear about her because the jaguar got her, or the poison arrow kills her, or an infection kills her, or Fusiwe hits her on the head instead on the arm and kills her instantly.

Now that's an interesting perspective, it makes me think of the (A)GPL and Free compared to Open Source software.

> I'm not sure where the layer of civilization started imposing social norms but these Amazon tribes are (were) definitely preceding that.

Clearly not. The story is full of civilisation imposed social norms. Fusiwe was deposed as a headman because he made bad strategic decisions and made enemies. Helena was marked as a dead women because she poisoned some children. Akawe was warned that it is not fair "to hit someone three times without taking a blow oneself". Rashawe held a speech about the good reasons to not kill Helena. Etc etc.

These are all social norms. Different in some sense from our ones, but they are definitely not without social norms.

So .. someone steals from your garden and instead of investigating who is the culprit you decide killing a random person, first random person that you stumble upon? Well, that should send a message but still, first random person that you meet is an old friend and ally, one that has helped you in the past, can investigate in the present who's actually behind those ransackings and will definitely be a valuable asset in the future. Yet you keep true to the "oat" and kill him. Brilliant move, genius!

>> Ancient mythologies all around the world are full of stories of heroes whose oaths have turned on them

First those are dreamed up facts and not the real world, are you aware? Secondly, the "heroes" in that ancient world are a lot closer to "much muscle little brain" typology than such as Euclid and Einstein.

And who the fuck is Fëanor? Some made up fantasy guy? Yeah, that definitely proves your point!