this post was submitted on 27 Mar 2024
171 points (86.1% liked)
Showerthoughts
29172 readers
357 users here now
A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The best ones are thoughts that many people can relate to and they find something funny or interesting in regular stuff.
Rules
- All posts must be showerthoughts
- The entire showerthought must be in the title
- Posts must be original/unique
- Be good to others - no bigotry - including racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, or xenophobia
- Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Being a hunter/gatherer was much easier than agriculture?
Going off modern analogs and historic evidence, they had to work about 20 hours a week or even less...
https://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/for-95-percent-of-human-history-people-worked-15-hours-a-week-could-we-do-it-again.html
Look at pretty much any other animal, most of their time is hanging out resting while either being ready to run after food or run away so they're not food
With a low population density, it wasn't that hard for a tribe to get enough food for everyone.
Life was pretty sweet for everyone from what we can tell.
Does that count having to find or build shelter every time you had to relocate?
Why did a number of native American tribes settle and become agrarian? Seems unlikely it was forced by wealthy landowners.
...
Companies advertise their products, do you think the only people that buy them are ones who have seen the advertisements?
What does that have to do with my question?
I said Abrhamic religions were an advertisement for agriculture.
You asked my why anyone would move to agriculture if it hadn't been advertised to them.
I was trying to help you realize that.
No you didn't, and no they weren't, and no I didn't. Also I was talking before the arrival of the Spanish (though I only implied that part).
I think it may skew the numbers a bit if you count hiding / running away from predators as working.
Do humans have enough predators for that to be relevant?
Nah, how much time do you think your ancestors actually spent being chased by sabre-tooth tigers?
Do you have a good source for the life expected claim? That sounds interesting.
I do see some articles/blogs that claim that we're just getting back to the same adult life expectancy, but the majority of sources that look like they're actual studies or point to read data I can find don't seem to match. Seems more like it was not totally uncommon to live to 70 or 80, but if you survived to 30 or so (which was a much bigger if, even excluding infant mortality), you were probably going to make it more to about 50 or so.
Studies of relatively modern hunter gatherers seem to be similar. And of course how hostile the environment was made a difference.
But would be interested in reading more on it if you have some good sources
Somebody worked out that hunter/gatherers only averaged 4-5 hrs of work a day. I think I'm pulling this from a recent episode of 'No Such Thing as a Fish'