Do cavemen have more fun?
March 12, 2022 5:26 PM Subscribe
So I was thinking about traditional hunter gatherers and how once they’d caught their prey and gathered their food for the day, or done their day to day necessities, these people probably enjoyed life more than modern day people. Chances are they had more free time with their families or tribe to tell stories or make art.
I appreciate that they probably died earlier or succumbed to diseases that modern medicine has eradicated but overall, would the quality of their day to day life be better than ours? Has modern day civilisation actually made our life worse?
It probably depended on the environment: if there were minimal to no prey, they would be at risk of starvation. If there were abundant prey, probably, if those prey didn’t attract predators of humans as well. The food lifestyle would likely be similar to natural predators like lions in the wild. Feast or famine on an unpredictable basis.
As well, if there were too many people going after limited resources, there would be a risk of human against human violence.
posted by thesockpuppet at 5:36 PM on March 12, 2022 [2 favorites]
As well, if there were too many people going after limited resources, there would be a risk of human against human violence.
posted by thesockpuppet at 5:36 PM on March 12, 2022 [2 favorites]
You might want to read the book Sapiens, which posits that the move from a hunter/gather society to an agricultural society made things worse, including human happiness.
posted by FencingGal at 5:53 PM on March 12, 2022 [19 favorites]
posted by FencingGal at 5:53 PM on March 12, 2022 [19 favorites]
IANAAnthropologist but the answer is going to depend a lot on the climate and habitat/resource levels. It seems like it was a pretty good life to be a person in a fishing community in the Pacific Northwest pre-colonization. There are still foraging societies now, but they tend to be in zones of marginalized resources (thanks to -us-).
posted by janell at 6:24 PM on March 12, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by janell at 6:24 PM on March 12, 2022 [4 favorites]
Graeber’s new book Dawn Of Everything goes very deep on this topic, particularly on possible forms of politics and social relations in different H/G societies. KSR’s Shaman is a fictional portrait of this life. Sapiens felt … bullshitty to me when I read it. Not wrong per se, just fast & loose with research.
posted by migurski at 6:44 PM on March 12, 2022 [10 favorites]
posted by migurski at 6:44 PM on March 12, 2022 [10 favorites]
I recently finished the book The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow, which circles this topic for much of the book.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:52 PM on March 12, 2022 [8 favorites]
posted by Dip Flash at 6:52 PM on March 12, 2022 [8 favorites]
I get what you’re saying but a few holes in the logic.
Running for fitness is definitely more fun than running from saber toothed tigers.
Surviving every minute isn’t really equivalent to chilling. There was less safety so less chilling.
A lot of people come to my family’s farm thinking physical labor must be the perfect respite from the corporate world. Until they have to spend six hours kneeling in thorns and torquing the same muscle repeatedly with bloody hands on a 100 degree day , or spend a winter with no income.
posted by kapers at 6:52 PM on March 12, 2022 [8 favorites]
Running for fitness is definitely more fun than running from saber toothed tigers.
Surviving every minute isn’t really equivalent to chilling. There was less safety so less chilling.
A lot of people come to my family’s farm thinking physical labor must be the perfect respite from the corporate world. Until they have to spend six hours kneeling in thorns and torquing the same muscle repeatedly with bloody hands on a 100 degree day , or spend a winter with no income.
posted by kapers at 6:52 PM on March 12, 2022 [8 favorites]
The wikipedia article "Hunter-Gatherer" has a decent summary and resource list. For example:
posted by flug at 7:08 PM on March 12, 2022 [6 favorites]
According to Sahlins, ethnographic data indicated that hunter-gatherers worked far fewer hours and enjoyed more leisure than typical members of industrial society, and they still ate well. Their "affluence" came from the idea that they were satisfied with very little in the material sense. Later, in 1996, Ross Sackett performed two distinct meta-analyses to empirically test Sahlin's view. The first of these studies looked at 102 time-allocation studies, and the second one analyzed 207 energy-expenditure studies. Sackett found that adults in foraging and horticultural societies work, on average, about 6.5 hours a day, whereas people in agricultural and industrial societies work on average 8.8 hours a day.However, if you read the rest of the article there are a lot of caveats to that and a lot of variability.
posted by flug at 7:08 PM on March 12, 2022 [6 favorites]
In addition to what's been mentioned above, there's other risks, the migrating herds not showing up or showing up in smaller numbers, an attack by another nation, a natural disaster or outlier weather pattern. I remember a story of an Inuit community from 100 years ago where a member (who may have had a mental illness) was destroying the kayaks, etc. which would have been fatal for the community (some leaders killed the person for the good of the community).
I've seen articles similar to what you're talking about: hunter gatherers in southern Africa (I want to say Botswana) where they gathered enough roots, tree nuts, fruits and fish in a few hours. And in places like the British Columbia coast (as janell mentioned) and the Caribbean coast of Central America. But like the others mention above, I think that these may not have been the norm. And where it was possible, it may not necessarily have lasted.
posted by philfromhavelock at 7:24 PM on March 12, 2022 [2 favorites]
I've seen articles similar to what you're talking about: hunter gatherers in southern Africa (I want to say Botswana) where they gathered enough roots, tree nuts, fruits and fish in a few hours. And in places like the British Columbia coast (as janell mentioned) and the Caribbean coast of Central America. But like the others mention above, I think that these may not have been the norm. And where it was possible, it may not necessarily have lasted.
posted by philfromhavelock at 7:24 PM on March 12, 2022 [2 favorites]
Or who has never gone weeks without bagging the food that would make those children healthy. Or who has never had to haul water.
Yes. All work by hand takes forever.
Anyone who says cavemen 'worked' less than modern people has a messed up idea of how much work people have to do to stay alive.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:37 PM on March 12, 2022 [3 favorites]
Yes. All work by hand takes forever.
Anyone who says cavemen 'worked' less than modern people has a messed up idea of how much work people have to do to stay alive.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:37 PM on March 12, 2022 [3 favorites]
Very materialist analysis here. Spiritual outlook might make all the difference because it would frame experiences differently. Eg if (like all premodern societies) you believe in different dimensions, or rather these are a manifest reality for you, the death of a loved one would have a completely different meaning, as would your work and your play. I’ve heard it described as meaning built into all activities. Maybe that’s just incommensurable with our modern experience.
posted by The Toad at 7:46 PM on March 12, 2022 [6 favorites]
posted by The Toad at 7:46 PM on March 12, 2022 [6 favorites]
If you're someone who enjoys learning from fiction you might like Kim Stanley Robinson's book Shaman which talks a little bit about what life is like from a first person perspective from a time when humans were hunter gatherers. Doesn't speak to enjoyment per se but does kind of give you an idea of what day to day concerns were, or were posited to be (Robinson does a LOT of research but, of course, was not there)
posted by jessamyn at 8:26 PM on March 12, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by jessamyn at 8:26 PM on March 12, 2022 [4 favorites]
I read an article about a group of people who practice a form of free diving for very long periods…I’ll see if I can find it. They have minimal exposure to “civilization”. I couldn’t believe how old they all looked. It turns out this was due to chronic parasite infections plus general loss of teeth from not having dental care. I think there’s likely a defensible argument that hunter gatherer societies had better lives than farmers pre 1900s or thereabouts but it’s hard to say that that lifestyle is better than that of a 21st century office worker for most people.
posted by phoenixy at 9:03 PM on March 12, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by phoenixy at 9:03 PM on March 12, 2022 [2 favorites]
To me the higher quality life aspect was probably not that there was less work, but just that it wasn't "work" as we think of it. They were doing what made sense to them, in ways they found satisfying, at the times that felt right, not adhering to artificial schedules or being forced to do things they didn't want to do. It's not really that they had "some" "free" "time" after "work" to make "art", but every minute of every day was already theirs.
posted by bleep at 9:31 PM on March 12, 2022 [7 favorites]
posted by bleep at 9:31 PM on March 12, 2022 [7 favorites]
Jared Diamond called farming "the worst mistake in human history." Fairly short article that gets at exactly what you're talking about and worth a read.
posted by Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell at 9:36 PM on March 12, 2022 [5 favorites]
posted by Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell at 9:36 PM on March 12, 2022 [5 favorites]
They were doing what made sense to them, in ways they found satisfying, at the times that felt right, not adhering to artificial schedules or being forced to do things they didn't want to do.
I'm guessing that people very often didn't want to spend hours and hours stooping in bushes in the forest looking for berries and nuts.
posted by praemunire at 9:41 PM on March 12, 2022 [5 favorites]
I'm guessing that people very often didn't want to spend hours and hours stooping in bushes in the forest looking for berries and nuts.
posted by praemunire at 9:41 PM on March 12, 2022 [5 favorites]
You have never known true dread until you have fished fruitlessly for days in midwinter hoping to feed your family after a hungry animal has ransacked your stores.
Losing half your children before age 6 does not hurt less now than it did then, expectations be damned.
Family bonding and art and leisure happened when groups of people were stable enough not to worry about the next meal, or next season. That's why farming and herding were so seductive.
posted by ananci at 10:05 PM on March 12, 2022 [7 favorites]
Losing half your children before age 6 does not hurt less now than it did then, expectations be damned.
Family bonding and art and leisure happened when groups of people were stable enough not to worry about the next meal, or next season. That's why farming and herding were so seductive.
posted by ananci at 10:05 PM on March 12, 2022 [7 favorites]
Funny, you can tell who's lived in the wild woods and who hasn't. Or who has had a survival course or who hasn't. Or who's done a bunch of hunting and who hasn't. Or who's been homeless and who hasn't. Location, environment, and get this.... they knew what they were doing. Find water, build shelter, make fire, set snares, eat anything that moves (including insects). Birds and snakes and frogs and turtles and lizards and hares and boar and beast. It's all food. Pointy sticks, sharp rocks, bows, pointy thorns, animal hide... I've seen my neighbor throw a baseball 100' and knock a bird sitting on a fencepost dead. Don't you think that somebody who's spent their entire life throwing things at things trying to kill/stun/injure them doesn't get good at it? Knowing the plants and animals that are around, learning all about the territory they inhabit. We camp here, there's a shelter a day's walk that way near where good stuff is.... off we go and we'll be back in 3 days. If we're lucky one of the snares will have caught something and we'll cook it that night and bring it back.
It's just routine that's been going on for ages without change. Everybody knows how to do the things. Everybody does the things. Day after day. Not a bad life for what it is. Humans against the nature's random whims.
posted by zengargoyle at 10:07 PM on March 12, 2022 [3 favorites]
It's just routine that's been going on for ages without change. Everybody knows how to do the things. Everybody does the things. Day after day. Not a bad life for what it is. Humans against the nature's random whims.
posted by zengargoyle at 10:07 PM on March 12, 2022 [3 favorites]
Ok first of all, hunting big critters was rarely the main source of food. It's dangerous and you can't store meat for long, compared to gathering plant food as you walked. Foods which humans actually learned to replant along their routes long before traditional agriculture, so they'd be there next time. Native Americans basically farmed the forests they gathered from, removing weeds and planting to increase food sources. This always gets overlooked and it bothers me. Anyway!
Ursula LeGuin had a great quote that no set of humans has ever considered their lives "simple." Maybe you were fit and out in nature. Maybe you were happy with your group. But there was almost no remedy for illness or injury. Weather could be deadly. And humans could certainly still be horrible to each other in any circumstances. There was bound to be coercion and violence and abuse and unhappiness and other problems humans tend to have. And how easy was it to leave? Probably a matter of luck.
Some things were probably better in some places and times. But we really don't know enough about those early lives to say they were better overall.
Could or should humans live like that again, but with modern safety nets like medical care? Maybe, if we wanted to. LeGuin also had several stories set on worlds that did something like that, for those who chose it.
That doesn't mean we shouldn't look for models different from how we live now. But what we know about the prehistoric past is such a tiny amount that it's really impossible to know much.
posted by emjaybee at 10:21 PM on March 12, 2022 [6 favorites]
Ursula LeGuin had a great quote that no set of humans has ever considered their lives "simple." Maybe you were fit and out in nature. Maybe you were happy with your group. But there was almost no remedy for illness or injury. Weather could be deadly. And humans could certainly still be horrible to each other in any circumstances. There was bound to be coercion and violence and abuse and unhappiness and other problems humans tend to have. And how easy was it to leave? Probably a matter of luck.
Some things were probably better in some places and times. But we really don't know enough about those early lives to say they were better overall.
Could or should humans live like that again, but with modern safety nets like medical care? Maybe, if we wanted to. LeGuin also had several stories set on worlds that did something like that, for those who chose it.
That doesn't mean we shouldn't look for models different from how we live now. But what we know about the prehistoric past is such a tiny amount that it's really impossible to know much.
posted by emjaybee at 10:21 PM on March 12, 2022 [6 favorites]
Best answer: Some books with more info: Daniel Everett's Don't Sleep, There are Snakes, about the Pirahã; Everett went to Brazil to convert them, and found that they were doing so well it made no sense to him anymore to want to change their lives. James Scott's Against the Grain considers in detail the advantages of foraging vs. agriculture and why people made this apparently foolish choice.
It may be obvious, but maybe not: if you're used to modern life, you're probably not going to want to be a hunter/gatherer. But it's rather insulting ethnocentric to try to use that fact to dismiss the adaptation or happiness of the hunter/gatherers themselves. As Scott points, out, when people had a choice, they often escaped agricultural societies to go back to foraging. But agriculture supports far more people, and we can't go back.
Also note that the anthropologists compare hunter/gatherers with traditional agriculture-- before 1800 or so. In similar environments, the comparison often runs against the peasants: they lived shorter lives, were unhealthier, more disease-ridden, suffered more violence; and women were treated worse. But this doesn't mean that "modern day life" is worse than foraging. It's fashionable to be down on everything in modern life, but no, it's not worse than being a peasant.
Scott also mentions that being a nomad was pretty nice. On the other hand, one reason for that was that nomads could raid agricultural nations for grain and luxuries.
Finally, there was no single hunter/gatherer lifestyle. Living in the New Guinea rainforest, the Kalahari desert, or the Arctic coast were all very different lifestyles.
posted by zompist at 11:02 PM on March 12, 2022 [13 favorites]
It may be obvious, but maybe not: if you're used to modern life, you're probably not going to want to be a hunter/gatherer. But it's rather insulting ethnocentric to try to use that fact to dismiss the adaptation or happiness of the hunter/gatherers themselves. As Scott points, out, when people had a choice, they often escaped agricultural societies to go back to foraging. But agriculture supports far more people, and we can't go back.
Also note that the anthropologists compare hunter/gatherers with traditional agriculture-- before 1800 or so. In similar environments, the comparison often runs against the peasants: they lived shorter lives, were unhealthier, more disease-ridden, suffered more violence; and women were treated worse. But this doesn't mean that "modern day life" is worse than foraging. It's fashionable to be down on everything in modern life, but no, it's not worse than being a peasant.
Scott also mentions that being a nomad was pretty nice. On the other hand, one reason for that was that nomads could raid agricultural nations for grain and luxuries.
Finally, there was no single hunter/gatherer lifestyle. Living in the New Guinea rainforest, the Kalahari desert, or the Arctic coast were all very different lifestyles.
posted by zompist at 11:02 PM on March 12, 2022 [13 favorites]
Some have noted it, but it should be strongly emphasised: we don't know and we can't know. We can look at current day hunter-gatherers and compare, but every human in the world today has had some exposure to "modern" life with agriculture and cities. Even the Amazon had cities. And we can't know how this history influences the choices and experiences of contemporary hunter-gatherers.
If our civilisation were to collapse tomorrow, some of us would live on, and bring with us memories and technologies that would be hidden signs of what was lost. Not telephones or cars, but perhaps the shape of a pot or a fork.
And in prehistoric times, before there were farmers, everyone was perhaps a nomad? Or not. It seems that the prehistoric middens were used continuously for hundreds or even thousands of years, and it can have been a good life there, with tons of easily caught seafood and also seaweed for vegetables during winter. But we can't know if people moved inland during the summer season for nuts and berries and other fruits and vegetables.
I've always wondered why humans moved out of Africa. Africa is so huge and offers so many different landscapes and climates, but all seem more suitable for humans than say, Arabia or Greenland. Genetics show that most people didn't move out, so thats one thing.
posted by mumimor at 3:51 AM on March 13, 2022 [4 favorites]
If our civilisation were to collapse tomorrow, some of us would live on, and bring with us memories and technologies that would be hidden signs of what was lost. Not telephones or cars, but perhaps the shape of a pot or a fork.
And in prehistoric times, before there were farmers, everyone was perhaps a nomad? Or not. It seems that the prehistoric middens were used continuously for hundreds or even thousands of years, and it can have been a good life there, with tons of easily caught seafood and also seaweed for vegetables during winter. But we can't know if people moved inland during the summer season for nuts and berries and other fruits and vegetables.
I've always wondered why humans moved out of Africa. Africa is so huge and offers so many different landscapes and climates, but all seem more suitable for humans than say, Arabia or Greenland. Genetics show that most people didn't move out, so thats one thing.
posted by mumimor at 3:51 AM on March 13, 2022 [4 favorites]
I work in a museum with an exhibit on how early settler women in Western Canada did laundry. Every time I look at it, I get fucking exhausted - and it’s from a time period barely 100 years in the past.
So, they devoted their entire Monday every week to washing clothes. That was all they did on Mondays, was laundry. The water had to be hauled from the nearest river or creek. Many of them didn’t even have washboards at first; the clothes were just stirred in a big barrel and you hoped for the best re: cleanliness. If you did have a washboard, you got the fun bonus reward! of scrubbing with lye soap until your hands cracked and bled. They didn’t have enough time to heal between washdays, so often these sores became infected. Often, there were no doctors or medications available, especially so if you lived on a farm. It involved standing for hours. There was no one else to watch your children while all this was going on and you were often pregnant while doing it. It was also probably -35 because it’s winter here from October to April.
The exhibit makes me want to have a nap and then hug everyone involved in the invention of modern appliances and also the feminist movement. I do agree with you that our society has become wasteful and many people likely had a more closely knit sense of community in the past, out of necessity if nothing else, but otherwise - I prefer now.
posted by oywiththepoodles at 4:09 AM on March 13, 2022 [9 favorites]
So, they devoted their entire Monday every week to washing clothes. That was all they did on Mondays, was laundry. The water had to be hauled from the nearest river or creek. Many of them didn’t even have washboards at first; the clothes were just stirred in a big barrel and you hoped for the best re: cleanliness. If you did have a washboard, you got the fun bonus reward! of scrubbing with lye soap until your hands cracked and bled. They didn’t have enough time to heal between washdays, so often these sores became infected. Often, there were no doctors or medications available, especially so if you lived on a farm. It involved standing for hours. There was no one else to watch your children while all this was going on and you were often pregnant while doing it. It was also probably -35 because it’s winter here from October to April.
The exhibit makes me want to have a nap and then hug everyone involved in the invention of modern appliances and also the feminist movement. I do agree with you that our society has become wasteful and many people likely had a more closely knit sense of community in the past, out of necessity if nothing else, but otherwise - I prefer now.
posted by oywiththepoodles at 4:09 AM on March 13, 2022 [9 favorites]
Even leaving apart the material differences in life, surely a lot of this depends on who you are, what your personality is, and how you feel about different activities.
I've never been a hunter-gatherer, but from the outside it strikes me that one of the core differences between my life and their lives is that I have vastly more choice available to me. I can choose to uproot myself and move someplace warmer. I can choose who my functional family and neighbor-community are. Etc. Whereas a hunter-gatherer at least seems much more likely to be stuck with it -- this is the extended family or clan group you were born into, and it's going to be hard to go to a different one. If you were born in or near the swamps of north Florida, it would be really hard to just decide you'd rather live by the great lakes, if for no other reason than those lands are already inhabited by different people.
Anyway, suppose you're in a place that's rich enough to grant you that "free" time. Your question strikes me as being from someone who has a loving and kind extended family, as being from someone who at base gets along with and fits in with their local clan group. Not everyone has that luxury. Some nuclear and extended families are routinely abusive; others are just sort of indifferent but still not really conducive to long-term thriving. Some families, clan groups, and larger societies are radically intolerant of different personalities or otherwise of kinds of people who don't fit in.
Likewise, how you feel about telling stories and making art must surely depend on how you feel about the kind of stories and art that are welcome in your local group. Maybe it's a great outlet to express yourself, or maybe it's only an opportunity to express things your society says that you find profoundly wrong.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 5:51 AM on March 13, 2022 [3 favorites]
I've never been a hunter-gatherer, but from the outside it strikes me that one of the core differences between my life and their lives is that I have vastly more choice available to me. I can choose to uproot myself and move someplace warmer. I can choose who my functional family and neighbor-community are. Etc. Whereas a hunter-gatherer at least seems much more likely to be stuck with it -- this is the extended family or clan group you were born into, and it's going to be hard to go to a different one. If you were born in or near the swamps of north Florida, it would be really hard to just decide you'd rather live by the great lakes, if for no other reason than those lands are already inhabited by different people.
Anyway, suppose you're in a place that's rich enough to grant you that "free" time. Your question strikes me as being from someone who has a loving and kind extended family, as being from someone who at base gets along with and fits in with their local clan group. Not everyone has that luxury. Some nuclear and extended families are routinely abusive; others are just sort of indifferent but still not really conducive to long-term thriving. Some families, clan groups, and larger societies are radically intolerant of different personalities or otherwise of kinds of people who don't fit in.
Likewise, how you feel about telling stories and making art must surely depend on how you feel about the kind of stories and art that are welcome in your local group. Maybe it's a great outlet to express yourself, or maybe it's only an opportunity to express things your society says that you find profoundly wrong.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 5:51 AM on March 13, 2022 [3 favorites]
Best answer: Hunter gatherers weren’t (aren’t) engaging in much laundry like Victorian women, though Comanche women did spend a lot of time on the arduous task of preparing buffalo hides for use which – although they needed so many buffalo hides partly to trade for carbohydrates from agricultural neighbors, since they didn’t produce any themselves. The remarkable “Comanche Empire” by Pekka Hämäläinen (as well as other sources) speaks of the almost complete freedom of a pre-reservation Comanche man – clearly this didn’t extend to his female relatives as they had the responsibility of preparing hides, making camp, etc., though even these women were certainly more free than European women – in Europe or America – at the time. But then indigenous Plains tribes pre-reservation were also under constant threat of being raided, killed, kidnapped, enslaved or assimilated by neighboring tribes or Europeans, which would not be a happy event. But then again, they went raiding themselves (sometimes women too) which by all accounts brought a great deal of satisfaction and fulfillment.
Jean Liedloff spent a couple of years living with the Ye'kuana people of Venezuala (or maybe Brazil?) and also talked about their remarkable freedom compared to WEIRD societies. (She probably would have said that the search for happiness itself is a strange concept that we only came up with because we’re missing out on the inner sense of rightness about oneself and one’s place in the world which is fostered by the total care and acceptance the Ye'kuana show their infants and toddlers.) One observation was that since they could create all they needed in less than a whole day’s work, they had no need to create labor-saving devices like, for example, means to carry a large amount of water from the stream to their workspace at one time, and instead took several leisurely trips a day for water, calmly chatting and laughing. Ye'kuana or similar societies may be where the 6.5 hours work metric came from, but I haven’t come across it in my reading.
The author of Hunt Gather Parent spent some time with Hadzabe families in Tanzania as well as families from a couple of other non-WEIRD societies and records observations in her book.
Captain Cook’s crew had a lot of observations on native Hawaiians, including commenting on happiness or generally life-satisfaction – I think I read some of that in Blue Horizons by Tony Horvitz but it may have been elsewhere.
Closeness to the equator may be a factor in life-satisfaction quotient? Easier to make a living, so to speak.
Sorry for the lack of exact cites. There’s a lot to read out there and contemplate – though of course we can only see through our own cultural lens.
posted by acantha at 7:30 AM on March 13, 2022 [7 favorites]
Jean Liedloff spent a couple of years living with the Ye'kuana people of Venezuala (or maybe Brazil?) and also talked about their remarkable freedom compared to WEIRD societies. (She probably would have said that the search for happiness itself is a strange concept that we only came up with because we’re missing out on the inner sense of rightness about oneself and one’s place in the world which is fostered by the total care and acceptance the Ye'kuana show their infants and toddlers.) One observation was that since they could create all they needed in less than a whole day’s work, they had no need to create labor-saving devices like, for example, means to carry a large amount of water from the stream to their workspace at one time, and instead took several leisurely trips a day for water, calmly chatting and laughing. Ye'kuana or similar societies may be where the 6.5 hours work metric came from, but I haven’t come across it in my reading.
The author of Hunt Gather Parent spent some time with Hadzabe families in Tanzania as well as families from a couple of other non-WEIRD societies and records observations in her book.
Captain Cook’s crew had a lot of observations on native Hawaiians, including commenting on happiness or generally life-satisfaction – I think I read some of that in Blue Horizons by Tony Horvitz but it may have been elsewhere.
Closeness to the equator may be a factor in life-satisfaction quotient? Easier to make a living, so to speak.
Sorry for the lack of exact cites. There’s a lot to read out there and contemplate – though of course we can only see through our own cultural lens.
posted by acantha at 7:30 AM on March 13, 2022 [7 favorites]
Good luck getting an abortion 10,000 years ago.
posted by Hatashran at 9:02 AM on March 13, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by Hatashran at 9:02 AM on March 13, 2022 [2 favorites]
my theory (never having been a caveman, but having lived in both small, tightly knit, provincial sorts of communities and large, sophisticated, anonymous ones) is that work isn't the problem driving modern unhappiness. It's that our brains are still wired the way they evolved to be, to be comfortable and successful in small tribal arrangements, focused on solving problems that were directly relevant to our survival, with a limited number of people with whom our welfare was intertwined. And that living surrounded by thousands of strangers, and working often in the interests of people we don't even know, just isn't what we were designed for cognitively. As a result people live in a chronic mismatch between what their brains are built for and what they're used for.
Comparisons of the amount of "work" are just so apples and oranges that I don't think you can really compare. A desk job is qualitatively different in a thousand ways from digging for grubs to eat.
posted by fingersandtoes at 9:02 AM on March 13, 2022 [5 favorites]
Comparisons of the amount of "work" are just so apples and oranges that I don't think you can really compare. A desk job is qualitatively different in a thousand ways from digging for grubs to eat.
posted by fingersandtoes at 9:02 AM on March 13, 2022 [5 favorites]
Best answer: Yes.
Also no.
The thing about hunter gatherers is that they existed for millions of years in millions of climates. So an optimal hunter gatherer life will beat a sub-optimal civilized life, but a sub-optimal hunter gatherer life will lose to an optimal civilized life.
Their life had some pros: They knew everyone in the band and had close enough bonds for it to be to their advantage to all be cooperative. This in turn reduced a lot of the social anxiety. They didn't have a lot of uncertainty. Everyone knew what they would be when they grew up: a hunter gatherer, or where they would live - in the band's territory, and what there was in that territory and where it was: fish, stone, berries, roots, stems, insects, sap, mud, salt water etc. But people are people and an anxious person in that culture could still be anxious as to if there would be a drought or a war or that their bad tempered band mate would hit them or be mean to them.
It's like comparing if life in a village is better than life in a city. Depends on both. Life in a small band or village can be stifling - for example you can easily end up having bad luck and ending up without any suitable partners to choose from. It can also have an incredible sense of community and be hugely supportive. You can easily end up trapped with no choices - you don't have the anxiety that comes from not know where what and how you will face the future.
Idyllic life in a hunter gather band, or a village or a big cosmopolitan city is good. Crap times are crap times.
It's worth suggesting that at times when our population density was low enough that we could get away from each other and there was no competitive pressure things were better. It was that rise in population density that led us to compete for territory and to create civilization - which means that probably the end point of hunter gatherer societies were bad enough that civilization was at that time better or we wouldn't have done it. Apparently we killed each other a lot, so much so that most of the skeletal remains that we find from the late era and transition era died from violence, not natural causes. There is evidence that the violence was often clearly done by other humans.
So my answer is that at times it was better but the long term trend was that hunter gathering societies became worse places to live the longer we existed and civilization created more problems than it solved.
posted by Jane the Brown at 10:32 AM on March 13, 2022 [1 favorite]
Also no.
The thing about hunter gatherers is that they existed for millions of years in millions of climates. So an optimal hunter gatherer life will beat a sub-optimal civilized life, but a sub-optimal hunter gatherer life will lose to an optimal civilized life.
Their life had some pros: They knew everyone in the band and had close enough bonds for it to be to their advantage to all be cooperative. This in turn reduced a lot of the social anxiety. They didn't have a lot of uncertainty. Everyone knew what they would be when they grew up: a hunter gatherer, or where they would live - in the band's territory, and what there was in that territory and where it was: fish, stone, berries, roots, stems, insects, sap, mud, salt water etc. But people are people and an anxious person in that culture could still be anxious as to if there would be a drought or a war or that their bad tempered band mate would hit them or be mean to them.
It's like comparing if life in a village is better than life in a city. Depends on both. Life in a small band or village can be stifling - for example you can easily end up having bad luck and ending up without any suitable partners to choose from. It can also have an incredible sense of community and be hugely supportive. You can easily end up trapped with no choices - you don't have the anxiety that comes from not know where what and how you will face the future.
Idyllic life in a hunter gather band, or a village or a big cosmopolitan city is good. Crap times are crap times.
It's worth suggesting that at times when our population density was low enough that we could get away from each other and there was no competitive pressure things were better. It was that rise in population density that led us to compete for territory and to create civilization - which means that probably the end point of hunter gatherer societies were bad enough that civilization was at that time better or we wouldn't have done it. Apparently we killed each other a lot, so much so that most of the skeletal remains that we find from the late era and transition era died from violence, not natural causes. There is evidence that the violence was often clearly done by other humans.
So my answer is that at times it was better but the long term trend was that hunter gathering societies became worse places to live the longer we existed and civilization created more problems than it solved.
posted by Jane the Brown at 10:32 AM on March 13, 2022 [1 favorite]
Good luck getting an abortion 10,000 years ago.
You make a good point, but there were often abortifacients. There might also be a complaisant attitude towards neonaticide or infant neglect.
To the general discussion, I would add that the quality of resources that modern hunter-gatherers can draw on is very poor for the simple reason that we, the others, have got all the easy country. The fields and forests that are now underneath cultivation or urban sprawl were available for foraging. But then, that was no consolation during the Ice Age or a hard winter. See also the novel Reindeer Moon by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, in addition to Shaman.
posted by Countess Elena at 10:46 AM on March 13, 2022 [2 favorites]
You make a good point, but there were often abortifacients. There might also be a complaisant attitude towards neonaticide or infant neglect.
To the general discussion, I would add that the quality of resources that modern hunter-gatherers can draw on is very poor for the simple reason that we, the others, have got all the easy country. The fields and forests that are now underneath cultivation or urban sprawl were available for foraging. But then, that was no consolation during the Ice Age or a hard winter. See also the novel Reindeer Moon by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, in addition to Shaman.
posted by Countess Elena at 10:46 AM on March 13, 2022 [2 favorites]
One more thing I didn't see anyone mention that also comes into play... much of this work was done during DAYLIGHT. Summers were times to work hard and use that available daylight to prepare for winter, where sure, one might have more time cooped up in shelter... but might also be concerned about stores running low if the winter was longer or harder than normal.
posted by stormyteal at 12:23 PM on March 13, 2022
posted by stormyteal at 12:23 PM on March 13, 2022
If I were to come up with one good reason that people migrated to the North, where daylight and low temperature are issues, it would be that hunting and fishing are excellent during winter, and probably even better back in the stone age, before humans had killed off a lot of species. Also, with freezing temperatures, you don't need to worry about food going bad. You do need to worry about other predators stealing your catch, but it can also work as a bait.
In the summer season, you have to work to get as many of the roots and berries and mushrooms as possible, but it is rather nice work, and if you come across some small animals while picking, as you always do, they are extra bonus treats. Again, it was probably even easier before we ruined it all.
Back when the ratio of humans to the rest of the world was more balanced, I don't think the hunting/gathering food aspect of life was the biggest challenge. It was probably more of a problem to keep warm after the migration north. Making clothes and building homes was probably time consuming, given the technology of the day. Keeping the fire going without burning down the house might have been a worry. But we can't really know.
posted by mumimor at 2:35 PM on March 13, 2022 [1 favorite]
In the summer season, you have to work to get as many of the roots and berries and mushrooms as possible, but it is rather nice work, and if you come across some small animals while picking, as you always do, they are extra bonus treats. Again, it was probably even easier before we ruined it all.
Back when the ratio of humans to the rest of the world was more balanced, I don't think the hunting/gathering food aspect of life was the biggest challenge. It was probably more of a problem to keep warm after the migration north. Making clothes and building homes was probably time consuming, given the technology of the day. Keeping the fire going without burning down the house might have been a worry. But we can't really know.
posted by mumimor at 2:35 PM on March 13, 2022 [1 favorite]
Not to abuse the edit window: I have caught mice, moles, lizards and snakes when I was a child, with no special effort. Add in grasshoppers, all the fish, molluscs, shrimp, crabs. And I never spent a full day doing this, it wasn't subsistence, it was just being a kid in a rural area. Who also gathered berries and mushrooms, its really not a big deal. Roots and other vegetables like dandelion and (many) other leafy greens would require more knowledge, but since this was what people did for their living, I suppose they had that knowledge.
Actually, grains and fruits like apples would have been less available in the North, because they had to be developed through breeding to provide sufficient nourishment.
posted by mumimor at 2:45 PM on March 13, 2022
Actually, grains and fruits like apples would have been less available in the North, because they had to be developed through breeding to provide sufficient nourishment.
posted by mumimor at 2:45 PM on March 13, 2022
If I were to come up with one good reason that people migrated to the North... posted by mumimor
How about bugs? Winter is the season where there are no bugs stinging or biting. That was a major preoccupation of our ancestors in many areas.
posted by Jane the Brown at 3:58 PM on March 13, 2022 [1 favorite]
How about bugs? Winter is the season where there are no bugs stinging or biting. That was a major preoccupation of our ancestors in many areas.
posted by Jane the Brown at 3:58 PM on March 13, 2022 [1 favorite]
I just read Don't Sleep, There are Snakes, thank you zompist for the rec! Here's my summary of observations from the book relevant to the question and to other answers:
First off, a disclaimer that the Pirahã society is not fully cut off from modern society and is dependent on trade goods for things like medicine, matches, and metal goods of all kinds including motors, pots and pans, knives, etc., without which their lives would be much harder. Also, this is simply a description of Pirahã life as described by Daniel Everett and obviously doesn't apply to all hunter-gatherer societies nor is it even necessarily accurate, I'm just going by what Everett says.
Game and roots are abundant and food shortages didn't seem to be a big problem. The Pirahã don't mind being hungry and consider it character-building. They are not focused on the future and do not preserve food, unusual even for hunter-gatherer societies.
Workloads directly related to hunting and gathering are estimated by Everett at about 15-20 hours per week and there's little focus on saving labor or working efficiently, especially if it involves adopting novel technology or new ways of doing things. People seem to enjoy work and socialize a ton while doing it. On the other hand, children as young as four are expected to work just as much as adults. Everett also doesn't include other work like making bows and arrows or baskets or huts etc. or caring for children in his estimate of a "workweek" so it's a bit hard to get an overall picture.
The society is very focused on immediate practicalities of life and does not produce art or stories, although Pirahã do socialize and dance and have sex a lot. (They will tell anecdotes of things that have happened to them and have a form of what might be considered performance art but they don't have fiction or objects that are created to be aesthetically pleasing.)
Many Pirahã die young. They seem to have an enormously fatalistic attitude toward this and will let someone die (or even kill them) if they think they are "supposed" to die. This is taken in stride and while people can be sad about these deaths, depression or even taking time away from work to mourn is not culturally acceptable.
People seem to be happy and smile, laugh, etc. a lot, and suicide, depression, anxiety, etc. appear to be unknown. Everett believes the Pirahã to be much happier than any other group of people he's seen. He notes that this is unusual even for hunter-gatherer societies.
posted by phoenixy at 7:29 PM on March 13, 2022 [2 favorites]
First off, a disclaimer that the Pirahã society is not fully cut off from modern society and is dependent on trade goods for things like medicine, matches, and metal goods of all kinds including motors, pots and pans, knives, etc., without which their lives would be much harder. Also, this is simply a description of Pirahã life as described by Daniel Everett and obviously doesn't apply to all hunter-gatherer societies nor is it even necessarily accurate, I'm just going by what Everett says.
Game and roots are abundant and food shortages didn't seem to be a big problem. The Pirahã don't mind being hungry and consider it character-building. They are not focused on the future and do not preserve food, unusual even for hunter-gatherer societies.
Workloads directly related to hunting and gathering are estimated by Everett at about 15-20 hours per week and there's little focus on saving labor or working efficiently, especially if it involves adopting novel technology or new ways of doing things. People seem to enjoy work and socialize a ton while doing it. On the other hand, children as young as four are expected to work just as much as adults. Everett also doesn't include other work like making bows and arrows or baskets or huts etc. or caring for children in his estimate of a "workweek" so it's a bit hard to get an overall picture.
The society is very focused on immediate practicalities of life and does not produce art or stories, although Pirahã do socialize and dance and have sex a lot. (They will tell anecdotes of things that have happened to them and have a form of what might be considered performance art but they don't have fiction or objects that are created to be aesthetically pleasing.)
Many Pirahã die young. They seem to have an enormously fatalistic attitude toward this and will let someone die (or even kill them) if they think they are "supposed" to die. This is taken in stride and while people can be sad about these deaths, depression or even taking time away from work to mourn is not culturally acceptable.
People seem to be happy and smile, laugh, etc. a lot, and suicide, depression, anxiety, etc. appear to be unknown. Everett believes the Pirahã to be much happier than any other group of people he's seen. He notes that this is unusual even for hunter-gatherer societies.
posted by phoenixy at 7:29 PM on March 13, 2022 [2 favorites]
A hunter-gatherer may have had more joy and less work in their lives ... provided they were a young, healthy, able-bodied adult.
But all those people you know who wear glasses? Well, hunter-gatherer them may have died early from not being able to see a predator. And let's not talk about anyone who was unlucky enough to lose a limb or ... be old. We lament the shape of our bodies at 40 or 50 or 60; imagine the body of someone who's had a life of hard physical labor, who had to recover from innumerable injuries and illnesses without the help of modern medicine.
Lots more people would have died at birth or while giving birth. Many more would die at a very young age from one of the many diseases we now have vaccinations for. Get sick? Well, you might not make it through the winter ... or through the week, for that matter.
In short, there were many more "off-ramps" to being alive back then. Something that went wrong could go really really wrong. But the young, healthy, able-bodied adults? Yeah I guess they probably did have a pretty good time... for a while.
posted by panama joe at 7:31 PM on March 13, 2022 [3 favorites]
But all those people you know who wear glasses? Well, hunter-gatherer them may have died early from not being able to see a predator. And let's not talk about anyone who was unlucky enough to lose a limb or ... be old. We lament the shape of our bodies at 40 or 50 or 60; imagine the body of someone who's had a life of hard physical labor, who had to recover from innumerable injuries and illnesses without the help of modern medicine.
Lots more people would have died at birth or while giving birth. Many more would die at a very young age from one of the many diseases we now have vaccinations for. Get sick? Well, you might not make it through the winter ... or through the week, for that matter.
In short, there were many more "off-ramps" to being alive back then. Something that went wrong could go really really wrong. But the young, healthy, able-bodied adults? Yeah I guess they probably did have a pretty good time... for a while.
posted by panama joe at 7:31 PM on March 13, 2022 [3 favorites]
Has modern day civilisation actually made our life worse?
There’s the possibility that our life seems worse, because we’ve civilized to the point at which we can support people whose entire job it is to tell us that our life isn’t good enough, but could be so much better if only we bought this profit, or paid for that service.
posted by fabius at 5:37 AM on March 14, 2022 [1 favorite]
There’s the possibility that our life seems worse, because we’ve civilized to the point at which we can support people whose entire job it is to tell us that our life isn’t good enough, but could be so much better if only we bought this profit, or paid for that service.
posted by fabius at 5:37 AM on March 14, 2022 [1 favorite]
Toothaches and childbirth are what give me pause.
posted by nouvelle-personne at 9:09 PM on March 14, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by nouvelle-personne at 9:09 PM on March 14, 2022 [1 favorite]
Also migraines. All those skulls with weird cutout trepanned holes, from a time of no anesthetic and few or no actual metal blades, speak to a certain level of desperation.
posted by amtho at 2:55 PM on March 16, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by amtho at 2:55 PM on March 16, 2022 [2 favorites]
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