You mean
You must be registered to see the links
level stuff?
"The evidence from Nataruk shows that the attacking party was carrying
weapons that would not normally be carried while hunting and fishing."
Thanks for bringing this to my attention, because i wasn't aware of that finding yet.
But yeah, this excavation site seems to back up my thoughts regarding how violent encounters of early humans could have played out (sometimes or often).
The scenarios i outlined in my last post naturally emerged from a set of -as i like to believe- reasonable assumptions i made, like:
Akin to how the number of predators in an area is limited by their huntable amount of prey, the size of a community of humans, who aren't sedentary yet, haven't developed agriculture or tamed wild animals for the use as livestock, is limited by their accessible food and water ressources in a area they can travel by foot in roughly three to seven days.
So the 'good' size of that group oscillates around the 'ideal' number predetermined by their environment and their available technology.
I assume there would also exist a 'preferred' composition of males vs females to meet the needs of inner social stability, hunting success and outwards security. This means having much more males than females would probably enhance their hunting success and their ability for warfare, but obviously is a threat to the inner cohesion of the group. Either there will be infighting between the males over the few females inside the clan, or they will abduct females from rival tribes, with all the risks a war poses for the welfare of said community. And after the influx of alien women it's not unlikely the group grows too big and has to break up in search of new pastures, leaving both parts weaker than before and also growing into a future threat to each other.
Whereas having much less males than females renders the clan vulnerable to attacks and hampers their hunting capability.
So my guess would be like not less than 35% but not more than 45% males would be near the sweet spot to meet those needs.
Pre-pubescent children should probably account for not more than 35% of the groups total.
As i already mentioned a hunter-gatherer community seems to have little use for slaves, because one doesn't want to provide a male slave with weapons for hunting, not to mention the risk he poses for those native women, because you can't really keep him separated from the group without permanent housings. And having too much female slaves may sound good */winkwink, but ultimately leads to those problems i outlined above. The absence of slavery in e.g. aboriginal and pygmy communities may serve as an indication to that claim.
Last but not least -given the human nature and how deep xenophobia seems to be imprinted in our genetic code- there is no reason to believe, that an encounter between two different groups of early humans was always friendly, especially since one of the most pacifying factors for those encounters, namely trade, also isn't developed yet. Remember: no wheel, no livestock, barely any storage-keeping of preserved foods, of course no currency and probably often no common means of communication.
So in my book the 'reasonable' approach towards a group of strangers in those days for a balanced clan in terms of size and composition would be to avoid them, if they are perceived as stronger or equal in strength, or to ruthlessly cull them all, bar perhaps a handful of fertile women, in order to weed out the competition. Of course there is no need to spare their children.
