>But I wondered if aborigines beat low status members and women for economic reasons, or for mating reasons, or for something else?

I'm not sure if you're Aussie, but please understand that problems like domestic violence and incest/rape still exist in Aboriginal communities to a large extent.

There are also an army of "nice" middle class, urban white people performing the most mind-bending mental gymnastics possible to shift the blame away from the perpetrators and onto white society in general (who, to be fair, brutally mistreated the Aboriginal population for the better part of two centuries during a colonial campaign of conquest).

To me, within that context, the more interesting question is not whether or not there were economic/mating pressures on aboriginal populations that lead to the brutal behviour, but why a middle-class 21st century professional is looking to excuse it.

Ah, I wasn't thinking about any of that stuff. I was thinking of whether small economies could exist without economic coercion backed by violence, where this thread started. The Yanamamo were mentioned as a group that doesn't do that, the men and women carry about their work without the need for coercion. You replied that there's violence against low-status members in Aborigines communities, and wondered if the Yanamamo really were non-violent.

I don't know that it's relevant that the Aborigines are violent. Nor, I admit in hindsight, was my reply about modern people also being violent. I intuited that your comment was irrelevant, but didn't do a good job of putting that into words.

The question was whether the proverbial dishes could get done without violence, and if the Yanamamo do it then the answer is "yes", it is possible, regardless of whatever Aborigines or modern people do. I don't think that white guilt over the treatment of Aborigines is relevant to that question, either.

I'm a bit familiar with the Yanamamo. I had a class that focused on them specifically. I know that they have graduations of violence, mostly to do with mating, which can boil over between villages, but I don't remember there being any economic coercion, men and women do their different jobs without any punishment/violence that I can recall.

(A discussion like this could morph into the idea of "women's work", asking why do the Yanamamo men hunt and the women work. But societies using money have the same concept of women's work, so that would be a separate conversation form money vs no-money societies.)

Until someone shows me different, I think the the Yanamamo comment is right, based on my knowledge of them they don't use economic coercion that I know of to proverbially get the dishes washed.

Apologies for bringing white guilt into it. I misread your comment and reacted.

Regarding the aborigines, the impression I got from the accounts was that these acts of violence were more about dominance than strict economic coercion. I get where you're coming from in that regard.

I would be interested to hear what an anthropologist has to say, but until then it seems like your evidence is stronger.