mike miller wrote: ↑Thu Apr 22, 2021 2:12 pm
And yet, the twentieth century was the bloodiest in human history.
I always thought this was an odd statement considering the brutality of our history....so I did some digging. Yes, by pure number of deaths the 20th century was bloodiest century by quite a bit. However when you start looking at "Deaths per thousand of population"...it wasn't even close.
The second most deadly conflict, I think, the Mongul conquests, took place in the 12th century when the population was in the 300-350M people range. The low estimate of deaths in this war was 30M people...that's 10% of the global population at the time. By comparison you would have had to have 240M deaths during WWII to be equal. At the same time the Christian vs Muslim Crusades, War for Scottish Independence and the Cathar Crusades all took place over or partially in the same century. Again by deaths per hundred thousand this century was almost four times as bloody.
In fact, deaths per hundred thousand, the 20th century was second to last bloodiest for the centuries including 13th thru the 20th. Throw in an estimate 75-200M deaths from the Black plague in the 14th century and by comparison the 20th century was pretty civilized. The only centuries less bloody during this time frame was the 15th and 18th centuries.
Also if I had to guess I'd say in reality that the older centuries where even far worse. Along side the large wars where constant skirmishes and raids where people were regularly killed with impunity. By the 20th century nearly all of this kind of behavior was gone in the relatively developed countries.
