Do you think cavemen got suicidal?

[przeciwwymiotne]

Probably, history repeats itself

 

[gottablast888]

i have read ctb never existed until slavery. can you think of any animals living in nature that ctb ?

 

[hungry_ghost]

Interesting thought.

I think they may have been too preoccupied with survival to consider it.

Their lives were already dangerous and they had a high likelihood of dying as it was.

 

[przeciwwymiotne]

Interesting thought.

I think they may have been too preoccupied with survival to consider it.

Their lives were already dangerous and they had a high likelihood of dying as it was.

You're probably right, but what if some caveman was like "I sometimes have a desire to stop running when chased by a predator, to end it all and be consumed"

 

[Julgran]

Probably, history repeats itself

Their methods might have looked like this:

1. Beat self with club until dead
2. Hang self in a liana
3. Eat everything you see in case something is dangerous enough to kill

Jokes asides, I'm not sure that they thought too much about suicide, since they had to keep thinking about surviving. However, I can imagine many of the first humans simply gave up finding food and such, because it was too hard, and I don't count that as suicide.

 

[Deleted member 847]

No



edit

Our distant ancestors
didn't have the intelligence necessary to figure out that death can be a solution to their pain,
they didn't even have a concept of death, they were instinctively afraid of being hurt/hunted, and that's all.
They were as smart as a pet. Had some memory and some minimum analytical skills (they remembered what
was dangerous and what wasn't, how to use rocks and crap like that)

if they felt stressed or depressed they just suffered without doing anything about it,
other than simple reflexes like scratching their wound, yell or something
Think about your dog, if you have one, and now give him a humanoid body

they were animals with simple minds
like today's chimps
If they killed themselves it was most likely an accident

I don't know about cro-magnon, but those were just as smart as you are, except they didn't go to school and stuff
(their brain was a little bit bigger than ours actually, but that doesn't necessarily mean they were smarter)

 

[DynamicDepression]

i have read ctb never existed until slavery. can you think of any animals living in nature that ctb ?

That does not make any sense since slavery has always been a part of human civilization. Practically every society has practiced at least some form of slavery at some point in its history, whether on systematic or individual levels.

There are many reasons why animals don't CTB. Evolution is all about survival, which is why every lifeform has survival instincts. Without evolving those instincts, the species would die out rather quickly. In addition, most animals (at least all I know of, but I'm no expert) do not possess the cognitive functions to realize that suicide is a means to end one's suffering.

Also, applying human morals to animals does not work. Many insects have caste systems, for example, something people find (or at least should find) repulsive in the human world. Again, because of their lacking cognitive functions, we cannot hold them to the same standard as people.

 

[lofticries]

Hmm not sure. Cavemen could have partaken in risky behavior because of distress though.

i have read ctb never existed until slavery. can you think of any animals living in nature that ctb ?

Inside the Mystery of Animal 'Suicide'

The idea of animals taking their own lives has intrigued humankind for aeons.

www.vice.com

'are nocturnal and loathe noise and human contact'

Looks like I found my spirit animal.

 

[8evergo]

You're probably right, but what if some caveman was like "I sometimes have a desire to stop running when chased by a predator, to end it all and be consumed"

There is definitely a way to sacrifice oneself to the gods
I would like to sacrifice myself for the gods pm me

 

[WhitePill]

This is a cool question. I would lean towards no but drugs/plants/toxic substances were definitely a thing back then. I can imagine there were some unintentional suicides as well as cavemen who elected to forgo the typical dangers of their life and overdose from substance abuse. Still... who knows.

 

[8evergo]

Yes, for certain activities such as rituals or sacrifices there were certain substances that made you happy, there were also mushrooms or plants for hunting that demanded your concentration and if someone was ill there was the medicine man who was familiar with practices and flowers and also made sacrifices for people They captured prisoners or volunteers who get what during the sacrifice feel happy and get an orgasm it was a time when everyone got what they wanted

 

[TLEEA]

Easy to be suicidal when there's bigger predators to annihilate you right away.

 

[Deleted member 847]

Easy to be suicidal when there's bigger predators to annihilate you right away.

yeah being eaten alive is far from a peaceful death

 

[TLEEA]

I don't know. I think cavemen have really no idea what a peaceful death should be like anyway.

 

[Deleted member 847]

I don't know. I think cavemen have really no idea what a peaceful death should be like anyway.

That zebra knew what a painful one was though
"Uuumhhmmmm AAAAAAAAAhhhhwwuuuuu ahhhhwwwfff aaeehhhhww "
2:14

 

[7b48hl]

I don't think the history is true what there are saying in the history books we are made a slave Volk for the reptilian s
In history the don't need to make ctb the worse no busses there were people who sacrificed if I were willing to let myself be sacrificed

Are you familiar with the prison planet theory

 

[Deleted member 847]

Are you familiar with the prison planet theory

I used to believe in it back when I was crazy

 

[Celerity]

I tend to agree with Dr. Roy Baumeister's theory of suicidal ideation, so I would say few to no cavemen thought of suicide.

Being Suicidal: What It Feels Like to Want to Kill Yourself

blogs.scientificamerican.com

"Most people who kill themselves actually lived better-than-average lives. Suicide rates are higher in nations with higher standards of living than in less prosperous nations; higher in US states with a better quality of life; higher in societies that endorse individual freedoms; higher in areas with better weather; in areas with seasonal change, they are higher during the warmer seasons; and they're higher among college students that have better grades and parents with higher expectations.

Baumeister argues that such idealistic conditions actually heighten suicide risk because they often create unreasonable standards for personal happiness, thereby rendering people more emotionally fragile in response to unexpected setbacks. So, when things get a bit messy, such people, many of whom appear to have led mostly privileged lives, have a harder time coping with failures. "A large body of evidence," writes the author, "is consistent with the view that suicide is preceded by events that fall short of high standards and expectations, whether produced by past achievements, chronically favorable circumstances, or external demands." For example, simply being poor isn't a risk factor for suicide. But going rather suddenly from relative prosperity to poverty has been strongly linked to suicide. Likewise, being a lifelong single person isn't a risk factor either, but the transition from marriage to the single state places one at significant risk for suicide. Most suicides that occur in prison and mental hospital settings occur within the first month of confinement, during the initial period of adjustment to loss of freedom. Suicide rates are lowest on Fridays and highest on Mondays; they also drop just before the major holidays and then spike sharply immediately after the holidays. Baumeister interprets these patterns as consistent with the idea that people's high expectations for holidays and weekends materialize, after the fact, as bitter disappointments."

A quick reading of Baumeister here may make it seem as if he is denigrating people who consider suicide, but I don't think he sees it this way. I am of the opinion that life is inherently pretty shitty whether you consider ending it early or not. I simply think that how one views life's difficulties matters more than how terrible they actually are. Some of the least suicidal and highly religious people in the world live lives of extreme poverty and destitution.

Setting aside Baumeister, many people have theorized that loneliness is a modern invention, and loneliness is one of the most important precursors to suicide. Our cavemen ancestors lived in small, tightly knit groups. I don't think most of them struggled with the rejection that even an average, happy person faces in today's societies.

 

[GenesAndEnvironment]

Tfw no cave-gf, chronic cave-pain. Yeah some prolly did, but idk. Same brain as ours, right? Same intelligence and stuff.

 

[chocolatebar]

What do you mean by caveman? If you mean early homo sapiens, they probably did, but it may not be possible to get evidence on it. The question is a great one and deserves much more thinking.

Another interesting question is when did the first suicide happen and if it was human. There are controversies involving reports of dolphins who comited suicide, but it's not clear of it was, in fact, a voluntary death.

There's a famous essay called the last messiah which pictures what could be the very first suicide. It's a very interesting read.

 

[8evergo]

Are you familiar with the prison planet theory

Yeaah I think that Fakt we live not onn a ball and we are in a prison

 

[Ironweed]

I'll bet some of them were willing to sacrifice themselves for the greater good, as with the case of Captain Oates. An altruistic suicide.

Something akin to voluntary senicide might have been on the table as well. As in, sacrificing of self so the tribe survives with one less burden.

I doubt they had something akin to Durkheim's egoistic or anomic suicide, though it would be cool to be proven wrong.

 

[wait.what]

yeah being eaten alive is far from a peaceful death

Lion: "Hey, babe. Netflix and chill? I brought dinner."
Lioness: "Oooooohhh!"

(I am aware that it is actually the female lions who hunt. Also, I realize that few lions even know what Netflix is, because of low tv ownership among lions.)

I don't know. I think cavemen have really no idea what a peaceful death should be like anyway.

Yeah, most of modern folks seem to think of a peaceful death as dying in your bed while asleep. I think that would probably be possible in a nomadic or semi-nomadic hunter-gatherer society, but not very likely. You'd have to be quick about it. Get sick on Tuesday, die by Wednesday night, everyone pulls up stakes at dawn on Thursday.

I suppose at times members of a band of prehistoric nomads might have been willing to carry an injured or ill person in a litter or drag them around on a travois, but I expect that it would SUCK. "Sorry to hear about the compound fracture of your femur, Thag. That mammoth just wasn't as dead as he looked, I guess. It's too bad about the gangrene that's setting in, too. We've got to be moving on though, so we can either leave you here for the vultures and hyenas, or we can drag you along for a while on this draggy thing. Try not to scream too loud as the draggy thing hits bumps and rocks though, ok? You might attract the leopards again."

Or maybe they had a different idea of peacefulness. Perhaps the goal was to be at peace with your own mortality, so you'd go out with a crumb of dignity, no matter what form your death happened to take.

Thag: "Oh, you're here to slaughter me, are you, leopard? Clearly you have never met me, Thag Grzeskowiak-Spink Jr., son of Thag Grzeskowiak-Spink Sr., in mighty battle! I shall pull on your ears until your face comes off your skull! I shall bite your spots off! I shall twist your pelvis around backwards, so your feet don't know if you're coming or going! You will rue the day you first heard the name Thag Grzeskowiak-Spink Jr., son of Thag Grzeskowiak-Spink Sr.! Have at you, leopard! Do your worst!!"
Leopard: "K."
Thag: "BLEAARRGHHH! He pulled my face off my skull!!"
Somebody: "Dammit Thag, we told you!

I think death in bed is probably overrated anyway. Being bedridden sounds incredibly dull, lonely, and frustrating to me. Feed me to the leopards any day. Well, the metaphorical leopards. A few small, meek metaphorical leopards. Okay, maybe one. Nvm, scratch the leopards.

I tend to agree with Dr. Roy Baumeister's theory of suicidal ideation, so I would say few to no cavemen thought of suicide.

[

I actually don't see that one … it doesn't take into account that suicide rates can also be quite high in societies that are pretty hostile to individualism. Japan is a case in point. It has always been quite suicide-tolerant, and in some eras and contexts, suicide has been positively glorified. Even required, although clearly that treads the borderline of murder. It's certainly been commanded by authority figures at times.

Hirohito knew exactly which cultural buttons to push to pressure young men into flying their Zeros straight into the hulls and decks of Allied warships. Those buttons represented duty and self-sacrifice, not rugged individualism. Officers acting in the Emperor's name knew what buttons to push in order to drive the women of some Japanese islands to take their children by the hand and jump off cliffs to their deaths, just ahead of the U.S. Navy entering Japanese waters. (I've never heard that Hirohito himself ordered Japanese civilians to kill themselves, either directly or through his representatives, but it would have been on-brand.) None of that happened because Meiji Japan was too individualistic.

I think it's probably fair to say that more people complete suicide during times of great change, especially If it's viewed as change for the worse. During the stock market crash of 1929, there really were businessmen who killed themselves by jumping from high office building windows. Such affluent people may be more at risk during catastrophic downturns of fortune because they have more to lose. Someone living in a remote tar paper shack or a tent city under an overpass may be somewhat inured to catastrophic downturns of fortune, because for them, that is just any given Tuesday.

I can't really say whether prehistoric cave life was on the whole more similar to Wall St. wealth or Los Angeles homelessness. It probably depended a lot on the cave, and the caprices of the weather, and exactly how many leopards had been stalking around lately.

It may have been difficult even for a cave person's family to know for sure whether his or her death was voluntary. Did Gronk mistake a poisonous mushroom for an edible one? Or was he just unable to face another Ice Age winter in Europe? Did Bog-Louise of the Beautiful Brow Ridge accidentally startle the wooly rhino that ran her over, or was she just thinking: "I'm an old lady of 37. I have arthritis. I have parasites. I've been knocked up 20 times because I'm pair-bonded with a horndog and nobody's invented the damn pill yet. My brow ridge isn't even all that beautiful anymore. Fuck this noise. I'm going to go arrange a suicide by rhino."

That kind of thing probably happened, and while I can't say how common Neolithic suicide might have been, I do feel skeptical of claims that only people living in "soft" conditions kill themselves, while those who have had painful, dangerous lives do not. I'm pretty sure that only people who are in a great deal of pain seriously contemplate committing suicide. Also, how can you even tell if someone deliberately ended their lives if the town streets are being criss-crossed with live ammunition all day?

Maybe some unfortunate soul caught a stray bullet that metaphorically had their name on it. Maybe they purposely stood in the crossfire until they got a bullet labeled, "To whom it may concern."

 

[theboy]

Of course. CTB is as old as the sun

 

[Lily (Osako)]

i have read ctb never existed until slavery. can you think of any animals living in nature that ctb ?

But hasn't slavery pretty much always existed?

 

[Regrets]

I think their daily lives were much less stressful back then. Some may have CTBed but I believe they were proportionally less than nowadays.

 

[emptyjokes]

Very rarely, if at all. I'm of the opinion that there is an ideal balance between hardship and reward, and when those two factors are balanced it produces purpose and gratitude. If a group of ~200 humans are living in a tribe and trying to keep the world at bay, they probably are always going to be busy with some kind of hard work. Once they're done for the day, being able to rest in some form of shelter that can keep you (mostly) out of the elements probably feels like the highest of luxuries. You'll be extremely grateful to have it, and the fact that your work is directly connected to the comforts you enjoy will provide you with a sense of purpose.

Slavery, capitalism, authoritarian governments, poverty, the list goes on. All of these things will leave people over-worked, under-rewarded, and disconnected from the fruits of their labor. A lot of current day society is structured in a way that leaves most people deprived of a lot of their sources of gratitude and purpose, which of course, leads to deaths of despair (research Deaths of Despair for further reading!)

 

[Celerity]

Lion: "Hey, babe. Netflix and chill? I brought dinner."
Lioness: "Oooooohhh!"

(I am aware that it is actually the female lions who hunt. Also, I realize that few lions even know what Netflix is, because of low tv ownership among lions.)

Yeah, most of modern folks seem to think of a peaceful death as dying in your bed while asleep. I think that would probably be possible in a nomadic or semi-nomadic hunter-gatherer society, but not very likely. You'd have to be quick about it. Get sick on Tuesday, die by Wednesday night, everyone pulls up stakes at dawn on Thursday.

I suppose at times members of a band of prehistoric nomads might have been willing to carry an injured or ill person in a litter or drag them around on a travois, but I expect that it would SUCK. "Sorry to hear about the compound fracture of your femur, Thag. That mammoth just wasn't as dead as he looked, I guess. It's too bad about the gangrene that's setting in, too. We've got to be moving on though, so we can either leave you here for the vultures and hyenas, or we can drag you along for a while on this draggy thing. Try not to scream too loud as the draggy thing hits bumps and rocks though, ok? You might attract the leopards again."

Or maybe they had a different idea of peacefulness. Perhaps the goal was to be at peace with your own mortality, so you'd go out with a crumb of dignity, no matter what form your death happened to take.

Thag: "Oh, you're here to slaughter me, are you, leopard? Clearly you have never met me, Thag Grzeskowiak-Spink Jr., son of Thag Grzeskowiak-Spink Sr., in mighty battle! I shall pull on your ears until your face comes off your skull! I shall bite your spots off! I shall twist your pelvis around backwards, so your feet don't know if you're coming or going! You will rue the day you first heard the name Thag Grzeskowiak-Spink Jr., son of Thag Grzeskowiak-Spink Sr.! Have at you, leopard! Do your worst!!"
Leopard: "K."
Thag: "BLEAARRGHHH! He pulled my face off my skull!!"
Somebody: "Dammit Thag, we told you!

I think death in bed is probably overrated anyway. Being bedridden sounds incredibly dull, lonely, and frustrating to me. Feed me to the leopards any day. Well, the metaphorical leopards. A few small, meek metaphorical leopards. Okay, maybe one. Nvm, scratch the leopards.

I tend to agree with Dr. Roy Baumeister's theory of suicidal ideation, so I would say few to no cavemen thought of suicide.

I actually don't see that one … it doesn't take into account that suicide rates can also be quite high in societies that are pretty hostile to individualism. Japan is a case in point. It has always been quite suicide-tolerant, and in some eras and contexts, suicide has been positively glorified. Even required, although clearly that treads the borderline of murder. It's certainly been commanded by authority figures at times.

Hirohito knew exactly which cultural buttons to push to pressure young men into flying their Zeros straight into the hulls and decks of Allied warships. Those buttons represented duty and self-sacrifice, not rugged individualism. Officers acting in the Emperor's name knew what buttons to push in order to drive the women of some Japanese islands to take their children by the hand and jump off cliffs to their deaths, just ahead of the U.S. Navy entering Japanese waters. (I've never heard that Hirohito himself ordered Japanese civilians to kill themselves, either directly or through his representatives, but it would have been on-brand.) None of that happened because Meiji Japan was too individualistic.

I think it's probably fair to say that more people complete suicide during times of great change, especially If it's viewed as change for the worse. During the stock market crash of 1929, there really were businessmen who killed themselves by jumping from high office building windows. Such affluent people may be more at risk during catastrophic downturns of fortune because they have more to lose. Someone living in a remote tar paper shack or a tent city under an overpass may be somewhat inured to catastrophic downturns of fortune, because for them, that is just any given Tuesday.

I can't really say whether prehistoric cave life was on the whole more similar to Wall St. wealth or Los Angeles homelessness. It probably depended a lot on the cave, and the caprices of the weather, and exactly how many leopards had been stalking around lately.

It may have been difficult even for a cave person's family to know for sure whether his or her death was voluntary. Did Gronk mistake a poisonous mushroom for an edible one? Or was he just unable to face another Ice Age winter in Europe? Did Bog-Louise of the Beautiful Brow Ridge accidentally startle the wooly rhino that ran her over, or was she just thinking: "I'm an old lady of 37. I have arthritis. I have parasites. I've been knocked up 20 times because I'm pair-bonded with a horndog and nobody's invented the damn pill yet. My brow ridge isn't even all that beautiful anymore. Fuck this noise. I'm going to go arrange a suicide by rhino."

That kind of thing probably happened, and while I can't say how common Neolithic suicide might have been, I do feel skeptical of claims that only people living in "soft" conditions kill themselves, while those who have had painful, dangerous lives do not. I'm pretty sure that only people who are in a great deal of pain seriously contemplate committing suicide. Also, how can you even tell if someone deliberately ended their lives if the town streets are being criss-crossed with live ammunition all day?

Maybe some unfortunate soul caught a stray bullet that metaphorically had their name on it. Maybe they purposely stood in the crossfire until they got a bullet labeled, "To whom it may concern."

Loneliness isn't just the purview of individualistic societies. Ritual suicide was the realm of individuals who had been shamed for some misdeed. Ostracism and loneliness go hand in hand.

 

[Tiberius85]

No. Cavemen still lived in accordance with human nature. It was first about survival of oneself, then of the species and then of the offspring. All in the name of procreation. Cavemen had no time to develop suicidal thoughts because they had enough on their plate to ensure these things.

 

[Panna]

i have read ctb never existed until slavery. can you think of any animals living in nature that ctb ?

This video

Spoiler: penguin

comes to mind. The penguin for whatever reason keeps trying to reach the mountains, ignoring the feeding grounds, and its colony. As stated in the video, his actions will lead to death.