In a new article in Current Anthropology, researchers Dean Falk and Charles Hildebolt question some of the assumptions made in Pinker's book, arguing that because rates of violence are blind to actual population sizes, it remains to be seen whether or not the apparent decrease in contemporary violence is an artifact of scaling factors. (sciencedaily.com)
In fact, the mechanism of this apparent decrease is well known. (newscientist.com)
From his office at Humboldt University here in Berlin, which is decorated with posters of both the Ishtar Gate and the Antikythera mechanism (thought to be the world's oldest known computer), he explained that the tablet plots the apparent decreasing velocity of Jupiter from the planet's first appearance along the horizon, to 60 days later, and then 120 days later. (scientificamerican.com)