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.
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
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
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.
“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.
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.
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.
Slightly more, yes.
Fucking what.
Material accumulation was only possible with the advent of sedentary societies, which were overwhelmingly based on subsistence farming.
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.