First part is true. We didn’t evolve to have ‘jobs’, but instead to live in small and unspecialized societies.
Second half is an absurdly utopian view of hunter-gatherer societies. Hunter-gatherer societies do less work than subsistence farmers, but more work than modern day 40-hour workweek laborers. Not only that, but it comes at a price of severe food insecurity and low survival rates for anyone with serious health problems.
Damn beat me to it
Only caveat is I wouldn’t say they did “less” work than contemporary subsistence farmers. They did more varied work. The repetitive work done by a subsistence farmer left definitive marks on the bones and led to conditions like arthritis. For the hunters gathers their bone density points to high levels of activity, and I doubt they were doing intense exercise regiments
It’s generally accepted that, in terms of hours-per-day, hunter-gatherers worked (and still work) less time than subsistence farmers.
I generally disagree, but my specialty is not Neolithic people’s nor hunter gathers. I’m pulling in mostly my general coursework, but as I was taught the skeletal evidence points otherwise.
If you’re relying on any studies using modern hunter gatherer groups as an analog that’s largely been discounted through skeletal comparison.
The first part isn’t true. We evolved to do whatever’s necessary to survive and pass on our genes. Whether that’s living in small societies and foraging (and fucking), or farming, or hunting, or living in big cities going out to night clubs so we can get laid. Our bodies haven’t changed too much from those of apes who live in small societies and hunt and forage. But, evolution gave us a huge brain and doesn’t take millennia of evolution to adapt.
Even though are brains are adaptable, there are limits. In many ways the brain processes the world in a way that’s useful for a primate living in a small group in a savanna surrounded by possible threats. For example, if the grass is moving in a certain way, a brain that interprets that as having meaning might survive better than one that doesn’t. Maybe there’s a lion approaching in a stealthy way. That way of assuming there’s a brain behind a pattern leads humans to believe in gods, or to think that ChatGPT is their girlfriend. That’s something that might be a maladaptive trait in the modern world, but not enough for evolution to strongly select against it.
As for hunter gatherers, they didn’t have exercise regimens, or form into regiments.
You misunderstood, all humans have the potential for that level of bone density. It is lifestyle determined. Basically as your muscles pull on your bone, particularly in childhood through early adulthood, your bone mass increases. The more physical labor you do the more your bone mass increases.
So prehistoric hunter gathers had higher bone densities on average than contemporary farmers. And more than most modern humans. Not because our bodies changed, but because our activities did.
Of course all of these averages are on distribution curves. The exercise bit was a joke since the only modern people with close to the same bone density would be athletes
Yeah but we could do it waaaaay better now.
Could we though?
Given our knowledge and power over things, yes. Absolutely.
I think that might be underselling the intelligence of early societies, though. People weren’t stupid, they just didn’t have the specialized institutions of education we have today. Societal structures took time to develop and iterate.
If you abandon modernity and return to a hunter-gatherer way of life with small communities, you will end up losing most of that knowledge after a generation or two if there are no institutions to continue providing education. But having those institutions wouldn’t fit a hunter-gatherer way of life.
I don’t think I’m doing that at all.
Yes, but that would be communism, which killed more people than nazism, so it’s diarrhea forever for everyone not already a billionaire.
Huh, US people are modern day hunter gatherers, how about that.
And 196 is the cave wall.
Ded
“Work,” following herds of game and hunting, is not the same thing as schlepping it to some multinational soulless corp 5 days or more a week for what is now approaching starvation wages for many.
The hunter gatherers are understood to have had more free time, and a higher standard of living in many respects, than their ancestors that started to farm, and were subsequently conquered by organized groups of armed men that subjugated them.
“Work,” following herds of game and hunting, is not the same thing as schlepping it to some multinational soulless corp 5 days or more a week for what is now approaching starvation wages for many.
You’re right, it’s much fucking harder and ‘starvation wages’ in the context of hunter-gatherer society is fucking laughable.
Don’t mistake an unfair scenario in the modern day with it being worse than the past.
The hunter gatherers are understood to have had more free time,
Slightly more, yes.
and a higher standard of living in many respects,
Fucking what.
Material accumulation was only possible with the advent of sedentary societies, which were overwhelmingly based on subsistence farming.
than their ancestors that started to farm, and were subsequently conquered by organized groups of armed men that subjugated them.
The ‘neat’ notion of hunter-gatherer societies being overwhelmingly conquered is deeply outdated - as is, for that matter, the notion of a strict and immediate demarcation between hunter-gatherer and sedentary farming societies in most regions.
Hunter-gatherers definitely had a lower quality of life in many material ways, but I’d assume that they were doing pretty well in terms of social and psychological wellbeing.
I dunno that I’d take a stance either way. “Evolved for” is different from “thrives in”, after all. We also evolved for the physical health conditions of being pre-civilizational hunter-gatherers, but that doesn’t actually mean that our physical health is optimal in the conditions we evolved for.
Only if you were the same as everyone else. If you were an unwanted child, or one with deformities or anything else that could be a “bad omen” you would have been left to die. Same if you were too injured or sick to treat or past your useful lifespan.
Sure. Lack of material goods and modern science is an issue. I certainly wouldn’t trade access to modern medicine with a healthy social life. But it’s a fact that tons of people in wealthy countries suffer from social isolation and stress from modern work life.
this is complete nonsense, there’s archeological evidence of people with all kinds of nasty deformities and injuries, who still lived to old age despite presumably needing to be carried and hand-fed.
Like for fuck’s sake, imagine being in a group where everyone is either your directly family or a close friend. Would you leave them to die… for anything at all?
I certainly hope you wouldn’t.
As to the last paragraph, I said the opposite, that farmers were subjugated in a way the tribal hunter gatherers were not.
You can talk better or worse, but for a lot of people, life is hell right now. More than you may know. The people building you phones for instance. Or making your clothes. Or most of your other cheap bullshit we used to make here with union labour.
Yeah but then you also don’t have medical care and climate controlled housing, or video games, so…
Or food security. But there’s definitely a golden middle, most of our work seems to only serve the enrichment of people who are detrimental to society.
I’m so sick of people idolizing shit like this. Go walk around a fucking cemetery from the 1800s or early. All you see is headstones with several dead babies on them. All of whom would have survived if they were born today.
Literally every society from all corners of the globe had a 50% mortality rate for children prior to 1950.
The reason why civilization is what it is today is because people didn’t like what civilization was before. (Yes, drastic simplification and yes we have lots of problems today, but at least everyone is less likely to die of disease and starvation.)
Being nomadic hunter/gatherers was so amazing, we invented subsistence agriculture just to get away from it. And people would abandon subsidence agriculture in favour of a career as a beggar/day laborer.
So yeah, have fun going back to that.
Being nomadic hunter/gatherers was so amazing, we invented subsistence agriculture just to get away from it.
David Graeber and David Wengrow (The Dawn of Everything) disagree. It was always very labor intensive with significant drawbacks (especially during seasons where crops won’t grow), to the point that many groups openly dismissed the idea of being farmers of any kind. It took ages to get “large scale” (plots larger than 1000m²) agriculture “right” enough for it to actually be worth the time spent.
The reason for the insistence on agriculture, despite all the hardships, among groups with all sorts of hierarchical organizations, is the real million dollar question.
Interestingly we still have hunter/gatherer tribes around today, but only in the lush rain forests. I always feel like the progress (especially towards agriculture and thus permanent settlements) only happened with migration to colder climates. Which makes sense, as it sucks being a hunterer/gatherer when there’s snow.
You can even experience it today: in the rain forests there’s shit growing everywhere. Hungry? Walk around randomly for 5 minutes, there’s bananas, or mango, or star fruit or whatever.
So the real question to me: why migrate in the first place?
I know at least two family members who would have died if they had been born even ten years earlier
Lol who needs videogames when you are literally free to do what you want?
Edit: I would miss videogames and i would probably be slimed in one week. It was lowkenuinely a joke.
I guess you have the freedom but not the ability
As is the case now.
Are you free, really? Free to do what? To live as you please? To do what you please?
Let’s see. How do you live? What does your freedom amount to?
You depend on your employer for your wages or your salary, don’t you? And your wages determine your way of living, don’t they? The conditions of your life, even what you eat and drink, where you go and with whom you associate, — all of it depends on your wages.
No, you are not a free man. You are dependent on your employer and on your wages. You are really a wage slave.
The whole working class, under the capitalist system, is dependent on the capitalist class. The workers are wage slaves.
So, what becomes of your freedom? What can you do with it? Can you do more with it than your wages permit?
Can’t you see that your wage — your salary or income — is all the freedom that you have? Your freedom, your liberty, don’t go a step further than the wages you get.
The freedom that is given you on paper, that is written down in law books and constitutions, does not do you a bit of good. Such freedom only means that you have the right to do a certain thing. But it doesn’t mean that you can do it. To be able to do it, you must have the chance, the opportunity. You have a right to eat three fine meals a day, but if you haven’t the means, the opportunity to get those meals, then what good is that right to you?
So freedom really means opportunity to satisfy your needs and wants. If your freedom does not give you that opportunity, than it does you no good. Real freedom means opportunity and well-being. If it does not mean that, it means nothing.
from Now and After by Alexander Berkman, Chapter 3: Law and Government. Available to read for free here.
I mean absolutely. And in the tribal past you wouldn’t have had many of the global and even regional supply systems we now have making much of our (limited) life possible now
But roaming the savanna with some stinky people, scavenging won’t give you the freedom to whatever as well. Don’t want to add to the pile of food because today you’re not feeling it? They’ll kick you out and you’ll get eaten by wolves by next Tuesday.
Edit: Hate it all you want, you’re not alone and in a society there are rules. Getting rid of capitalists is a good idea, but you’ll still have to contribute to the pile. Just way less and with a purpose beyond creating the next billionaire.
But complete freedom comes with complete loneliness. And all on your own, you’ll have a hard time.
Who said anything about being alone?
One of the core tenets of anarcho-communism (which this book is explaining and advocating for) is mutual aid.
Anarchy doesn’t mean no rules, it means no rulers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_aid
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_Aid:_A_Factor_of_Evolution
Therefore I must tell you, first of all, what Anarchism is not.
It is not bombs, disorder, or chaos.
It is not robbery and murder.
It is not a war of each against all.
It is not a return to barbarism or to the wild state of man.
Anarchism is the very opposite of all that.
Anarchism means that you should be free; that no one should enslave you, boss you, rob you, or impose upon you.
It means that you should be free to do the things you want to do; and that you should not be compelled to do what you don’t want to do.
It means that you should have a chance to choose the kind of a life you want to live, and live it without anybody interfering.
It means that the next fellow should have the same freedom as you, that every one should have the same rights and liberties.
Rules without people implementing them are useless and people disobeying the rules need to be reminded that they are there for a reason. I am sure your ideas sound beautiful, but we as human beings are flawed and this will probably never come.
You seem to think I want to adhere to the current system. I don’t, I think capitalism is cancer and needs to be eradicated. But I also think you don’t have the answer.
You clearly don’t know what anarchism truly is, but rather have an idea of what you think it is. I suggest giving the book I linked a quick browse. It’s not very long and is written specifically to be accessible to those who have never studied anarchism in depth.
But before I tell you what Anarchism is, I want to tell you what it is not.
That is necessary because so much falsehood has been spread about Anarchism. Even intelligent persons often have entirely wrong notions about it.
Link again for your convenience.
…you can code and learn coding by yourself
Are you writing code on a cave wall while the rest of the tribe keeps you fed or what’s the deal
You think technological progress only happens when profits are being generated or what is your thing?
We’re talking about hunter gatherer times. Who would’ve been supplying or manufacturing parts for the thing you’re coding for?
Maybe you are envisioning your role as the mad shaman talking to the tribe in python or something but during those times people did need to contribute something to the tribe
No we are talking about a world without the essential need to work to survive. But working for the society and not out of neccessaty
you can probably find something that runs DOOM
Imagine a long day chasing a deer on foot for 10km, drag it back home, and then start playing Monster Hunter while your group preparing the meal. That would be the bestest day.
Uh. Me! When I get bored I read, or play a game, or watch a movie. Not that I’d be bored because I’d be trying not to die in a primitive society.
That’s the thing, you’d only be spending the same small percentage of time vs location trying not to die (as per Palestine or Ukraine, or your country if 9/11 or WW3). Lifestyle would have most of the rest covered, same as trying not to die now. History & Wildlife documentaries only cover the most exciting parts. If nature was like that all the time, nothing could live.
So you could listen to a story (with your community), play a game (with your community), or watch the community drama.
The big misery is the healthcare being varying degrees of a guessing game, and extremely low levels of convenience. You can’t just walk 15 minutes, grab a handful of berries, a steak, and a potato then go fuck off with (some) family and ignore everyone else.
I don’t know, being a hunter gatherer won’t let me live the power fantasy of being Batman. I can’t pull all those slick moves in real life!
I imagine this person, and most modern humans, would not survive in a low-tech situation. The show “Naked and Afraid” is pretty good to get an understanding of why: not enough food. You “win” the show by surviving as a duo for 21 days, contestants have been failed for minor cuts and sleeping under a poisonous tree, among other issues.
The most successful dude I’ve ever seen on the show got put on an island covered in mice. His strategy involved setting up some rocks and the mice kept knocking the rocks over and killing themselves, which he would then prepare to eat. His co-survivor actually complained that he was catching so many mice that it was keeping her up at night. One of the only contestants to ever gain weight. He did get some leg cramps while swimming to the rescue near the end, otherwise 9/10 performance.
Lol still not gonna watch it but I’ll read synopses
I have 2.5 acres of swamp in Florida. I would starve very quickly if confined to that land. Yes, even with all my modern tools and knowledge, even given electricity and clean water.
I invite everyone who holds this opinion to go do some reenactment. The earlier the better, but really, anything pre 1800s will do for an idea of what life was before modernity.
Do they have any hunter gatherer reenactment societies?
When you have to work to eat and survive you quickly stop giving a shit that you’re “working.” It doesn’t feel like work to chop wood all day knowing it’s gonna keep you from shivering or freezing all night.
That doesn’t make it easy, it makes it less deflating. Work feels more like “work” when you’re just doing it to make some other asshole rich.
Apples to oranges comparing the early modern era, anywhere back to classical days, to prehistory.
It is. Being a hunter gatherer is significantly worse, but you won’t find many reenactors who will go for a weekend of prehistory.
I disagree if you are claiming being a hunter gatherer was worse than being a farmer. As do a lot of archeologists. For the reasons I already stated.
Farmers are at the mercy of the rulers of that region. They can’t just leave. They become slaves.
Maybe we’d see more caveman reenacting if mammoth burgers were a possibility
From my casual reading of history and what was invented/discovered at what times in different areas, life before, say, 1830-1850 would be unrecognizable to us. Hell, drop me back in my teens and I’d struggle to remember how to navigate the 80s! In just 55-years, I’ve seen such radical changes I sometimes feel swamped by history and tech.
Spend all day carving up a big booty “fertility goddess” to use later for “Ceremonial purposes”
Cave Inc. looking for Troglodyte Equine Prototyping Technician - We offer a competitive salary & free berries in the break cave. You bring: 5 years experience in cave painting and drawing, good team working skills.
I think we’ll get back there eventually, if we don’t murder ourselves in the process. This time though we’ll have chilled beer picking sessions and no large animal is going to crack our skull open when we try to cook supper.
we’ll get back there either because we finally figured out how to live peacefully, or because we didn’t and we nuked ourselves back to the stone age
You also lived for 32 years, tops, and had 9 children for 3 to survive
No, half the people died in early childhood and most of the rest lived for around 40-70 years. Agriculture also sometimes made life expectancies worse, even in the year 1900 life expectancy globally was still less than 35.
Year 1900 life expectancy seems like it would be more severely impacted by industrialization than agriculture. But yeah, hunter-gatherers don’t just drop dead at 32.
I think one thing that kept life expectancies low was high child mortality, that will skew the average downwards. Unless they were accounting for that measured separately
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And this is why I waste as much company time as possible 💅
I wonder how much I’ve saved over the years from almost only pooping at work.
my gut knows when I’m being held hostage in the office
Don’t forget the many, many hours spent weaving simple fabrics and baskets, cutting down and grinding wood and rocks into tools, lifting small wooden houses, fighting off annoying and nasty bugs, the many trips to bring water from a reliable source to the camp, maybe going 1 or 2 days without food because there are no edible plants/fruit around and the hunter party couldn’t get shit. You better not be squeamish about eating just about every part of animals, including brain, tongue, eyes, intestines, lungs, bone marrow.
Probably little to no seasoning to whatever you happen to eat, either. Salt? Good fucking luck if you’re far from the sea.
it’s really not that difficult to find rock salt, and extract it from plants. Definitely depends on the area but especially the plant route is generally reasonably accessible if you just know what to look out for.
And try not to die from the dodgy meat you were forced to eat, becuase its the only meat you have seen in the past 3 months.
You forget the hunting part. And caves were a not an all time thing, most had to follow the herds, or move to find game. You couldn’t stay in the same cave without exhausting the resources.
But hunter gatherer societies had a more egalitarian society, and had a lot of free time. After agriculture took off, armed groups could force them to do stuff and make their lives tougher a lot easier.
Agriculture also happened as an on/off season thing, with groups being nomad for a season, then “settling” and planting for another. No point in keeping a land year-round when half of that time there’s no actual land (underwater) or people around and the other half needs a lot of manpower to work it; manpower that is very ready to pack their shit and leave. There are many ways agriculture showed up and not all of them had an asshole bossing everyone while saying “MINE!”
“Should we tell them that most of these people got trampled to death by mamoths (or similar) once they were like 30?”
“Nah just smile and wave”
very strange to see people coming out of the woodworks here to go “um ackshually everyone before the construction of Ur died at 15 and people were born without feet due to malnutrition”
Like yeah sure, it wasn’t utopia, but it’s pretty clear that it was generally nice, otherwise they probably would have focused on things other than building temples with massive erect cocks statues…
Have to look deeper. I definitely want to spend thousands of hours playing games created by people with jobs and provided to me by people with jobs, and I don’t mind having a job of my own. But the fact that I am gaming mostly to retain some semblance of sanity indicates something is seriously fucked up
