Eleven years ago we launched the Seshat project with the goal of collecting data that would enable us to test the many theories aiming to explain the evolution of large-scale complex human societies over the past 10,000 years. We now have a bunch of papers, some already published, oth

What was the quality of life for people living in historical and prehistoric societies? One particularly important dimension of quality of life is freedom from violent death. How high was the probability of being murdered by another person? Modern statistics that express violent death