Those who follow the free path will often be accused of believing in a myth called the Noble Savage. The myth is that by living close to nature, primitive peoples were peaceful caring loving beings who wouldn't harm a fly and were wiped out by non-peaceful civilized people.
One argument used to attack anyone not fully endorsing civilization and its excess, is to point out that tribal cultures engaged in inter-tribal conflicts- what the accuser will usually call a war. They will point out that between 12% and 16% of all tribal peoples died in these conflicts. This is not a small number and is intended to show that tribal peoples were worse, or at least just as bad as civilized people- and thus not worthy of a so obviously positive title as Noble Savage.
I would argue that although I disagree with the original usage, that the tribal cultures do deserve the title of Noble Savage. And this is why.
Although tribal/pre-state cultures engaged in violent conflict/war, they did not commit deliberate genocide on the scale of state/civilized culture has over the centuries (The Native Americans, the Uighars, The Holocaust, The African Slave Trade, etc...). Yes, certain tribes did engage in slavery. Yes, certain tribes did kill off whole other tribes. In neither case was the practice an ongoing institutional attack upon those different from them.
Although the evolution of humans did likely cause the extinction of several notable species such as the Irish Elk, this was simply the result a new species introduced to an ecosystem. The same thing happened to every ecosystem where the great cats evolved, and happened throughout biological history whenever a new species with an edge evolved or otherwise entered an ecosystem. Modern civilized humans have engaged in deliberate extinctions for centuries (the passenger pigeon, the Tasmanian wolf, the Dodo, The European Wolf, etc...) and have also engaged in systemic extinction through deliberate and complete habitat destruction across every continent except Antarctica.
Finally, tribal humans lived and flourished for at least a hundred thousand years (more depending on what you are willing to consider human) and never overran their environments nor expanded their population like a virulent strain of cancer that simply won't give up. Whereas this description is so accurate a depiction of civilized humans that it is used in popular culture with impunity.
There is an argument, that the reason tribal humans were not as deliberately destructive is because they lacked our tools and technology. This is hardly relevant, because it is those differences, coupled with the cultural differences that make a culture tribal or civilized.
So call them Noble Savages- because they never overran the Earth like a plague, because they never considered genocide a good business strategy, because they never dropped atomic weapons on civilian populations to make a point, because they never gave small pox infected blankets to women and children, because they did not make and break two hundred peace treaties knowing at the beginning that they would break them, because they did not hunt the Great Auk and the Passenger Pigeon and the Dodo to extinction for sport, because they did not systematically torture those who did no agree with their holy book, because they did not believe that they were the rulers of this planet appointed by god and given permission to trash the place like a petulant child.
So fifteen percent of them died in war. More than this percentage of civilized people hate life.
Certain questions arise.
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