Some clues :
Douglas P. Fry : Pacified Past
Azar Gat : Warfare as an Ancient Feature
Robert L. Carneiro : Complexity and State Formation
Was the 20th century one of the most violent in human history ? (with two world wars and numerous other conflicts) ?
i also like the documentary series : “The Ascent of man” from the BBC in 1973 by Jacob Bronowski.
I think Alt-Hist-Hub put it best,
People have nearly completely rebuilt Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
In ancient times it was so common to end a war by murdering everyone in the losing city and destroying all its infrastructure that we had come to believe real cities like Troy and even entire ancient empires like the Hittites were myths before we found their knocked over burned and flattened ruins.
There are several cities in central asia and the middle east that are either still or only now recovering from the amount of destruction unleashed on them during the mongol invasions. Had those events been set further back in history it is entirely possible we would never have known the names of cities like Samarkand or Baghdad.
Even with nuclear fire capable of glassing an entire planet we have managed to be far less war like than our ancestors.
But our weapons now can kill millions in an instant, and millions more subsequently. Missiles and such a regularly guided by Playstation controllers thousands of miles away.
Troy may have had a few thousand to massacre. We were more violent, but at least we actually had to face the violence we committed.
Edit: I did not mean this as an argument against what you shared. I can see why it might be read as such. I only meant to add another aspect to the conversation.
A good point, but I personally see it like this: a small percent of humans created weapons of extreme destruction, then the small percent of humans with access to them still did not kill as many as they did back then. The faceless violence sucks, but weapons development was set to outpace peace development before every living human was born. Pretty soon everyone with access to those weapons will have simply inherited it, making them more capable of war but not more warlike.