8 ms·

Makes you wonder if Hunter gatherer times were better. Due to the much lower population densities than feudal times there would have been less famine I imagine

Makes you wonder if Hunter gatherer times were better. Due to the much lower population densities than feudal times there would have been less famine I imagine.

ppeetteerr 9y ago
It really depends on where the people lived. Iceland survived for 1000 years on a diet of some root vegetables, fish, milk and mammals. I would not wish their existence on anyone today. People in warmer climates would have a better diet but it's clear that agriculture and husbandry were historically more desirable over pure hunting and gathering, even in warmer regions like Egypt.
- cgh 9y ago
  That Icelandic diet sounds pretty similar to how I eat today. What's unhealthy about it?
  - ppeetteerr 9y ago
    It's not the same cooking you've come to expect. There is a whole wikipedia entry on the subject: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_cuisine#Medieval_Iceland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_cuisine#Medieval_Ice...
  - Eric_WVGG 9y ago
    I assume your response is coming from a low-carb/paleo perspective? No leafy greens or vitamin-rich vegetables. The vegetables that are there (root vegetables) are carby and not especially nutritious. Huge vitamin deficiency across the board.
    - cgh 9y ago
      That is simply incorrect. For example, beef liver is about twenty times more nutritious than fruit by mass. My original question was a bit cheeky as I already knew the answer.
      - ivanhoe 9y ago
        Yes, but don't forget that for a relatively small amount of a beef liver you need to kill a whole cow. And when you kill the animal you couldn't cherry-pick the parts of the meat you use, everything was used while it lasted. The parts that could be preserved would last for a while and things like a liver would be eaten right away or used to make sausages. In the middle age common folks didn't eat meat as often as we do today, it was a luxury. They primarily used a lot of buttermilk, cheese and eggs instead.
    - gehwartzen 9y ago
      Not when you eat the entire animal including organ meat as these folks undoubtedly did.
  - puranjay 9y ago
    You get your diet from a warm supermarket. Or heck, delivered to your door. The Icelandic ancestors didn't have that luxury in their country's bitter cold
- jordanb 9y ago
  > it's clear that agriculture and husbandry were historically more desirable over pure hunting and gathering, even in warmer regions like Egypt. It's clear that agricultural societies were more fit than hunter-gatherer societies. Agricultural societies could breed more people and use them to kill the hunter-gatherers and take their land. Even if the meat/vegetable eaters were bigger and stronger than the grain eaters, there were simply a lot more grain eaters. Classic Greek myths are full of references to "golden age" men who were displaced by more degenerate modern, civilized men. I can't help read those myths as a story of the rise of agriculture.
  - staticautomatic 9y ago
    Indeed, many of the Vikings who gave up on raiding often settled in what's now England, Ireland, and Normandy, whereas their discovery of Iceland was an accident and its settlement was only partly intentional.
  - maze-le 9y ago
    These "golden age" men of the Greek myths also lived in palaces (palace of agamemnon) and practiced agriculture. In these myths some typical topoi are also cattle raids, palace intrigues and territorial disputes. These are not the hallmarks of hunter-gatherer societies. These myths should be treated as such, myths. Maybe they have a little historical truth in it, since the mycenean people (precursor to the archaic greek civilisation) definitly had palaces and an elaborate trade network spanning the eastern mediterranean. These are more advanced feats than pre-archaic greek civilisation, wich developed into smaller tribal and rural communities at the time before homer wrote his epics.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - posterboy 9y ago
      sounds like those would be the "degenerate modern, civilized men" or do you think the GP means the doric invaders?
- danieltillett 9y ago
  As bad as Iceland might have been, Greenland was worse.
dogruck 9y ago
Hunter gatherer times were certainly not superior to today. That's a pervasive myth. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_savage https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_savage
- forkandwait 9y ago
  While nobility is bullshit, better nutrition as evidenced by height and tooth remains is true, only catching up in the 20th century, except for the rich of course. Sorry I don't have a source. (The benefits of civilization may have only accrued to a small proportion of the population for most of history. )
  - dublinben 9y ago
    Jared Diamond's essay The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race makes this argument quite convincingly: http://www.ditext.com/diamond/mistake.html http://www.ditext.com/diamond/mistake.html
    - wefwef233 9y ago
      Ordered this book but haven't touched it yet: http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2017/10/01/551018759/are-hunter-gatherers-the-happiest-humans-to-inhabit-earth http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2017/10/01/55101875...
      - dogruck 9y ago
        Doesn't look too happy to me -- maybe because I'm over 30 and would be dead. Also, I loved my mother (who is dead) -- but at least she didn't die in childbirth. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy
        red75prime 9y ago
        Life expectancy at birth was low because of high children mortality. If you've made it to adolescence, you could expect to live 50-80 years. https://condensedscience.wordpress.com/2011/06/28/life-expectancy-in-hunter-gatherers-and-other-groups/ https://condensedscience.wordpress.com/2011/06/28/life-expec...
Tuna-Fish 9y ago
Less famine, much more war. Population densities don't stay down on their own -- people can breed quite rapidly in good conditions. What happens is that population rises to the point where there is no longer enough food for everyone, and then territorial clashes start happening, until someone identifies a weak neighbor tribe and slaughters them. So everything is better until that week you're fighting for your life, and the life of everyone you know and love. This is exactly how chimpanzees live today, and matches well with most of the archaeological remains we have of primordial hunter-gatherers. Our forebears lived very violent lives.
- Bromskloss 9y ago
  > Population densities don't stay down on their own You're right. Enough slacking! Gotta go to work!
- irrational 9y ago
  That sounds like a pretty good explanation for most conflicts up to the present day. We are just chimpanzees that wear clothes and can talk.
  - BaronSamedi 9y ago
    Don't forget our bizarre and inexplicable neoteny. We are the Peter Pans of the primate world.
- randomThoughts9 9y ago
  > Our forebears lived very violent lives. I've been reading some books on the subject that claim the contrary, also based on archaeological proofs (and on identifying faults with the existing studies). So I wouldn't state that with such confidence. See RoboTeddy's comment for some details on this POV. And also, if we look at bonobos, another primate closely related to us, we might get a completely different perspective on life in the distant past. It's just that we discovered chimpanzees first.
  - geezerjay 9y ago
RoboTeddy 9y ago
If you're curious about this, I'd recommend reading accounts of hunter-gatherer lives written by anthropologists! This book is fascinating in many ways: http://voidnetwork.gr/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/The-Dobe-Ju-hoansi-by-Richard-B.-Lee.pdf http://voidnetwork.gr/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/The-Dobe-Ju... In particular: * Level of food security (very high -- people only bothered to keep 3 days of food on hand, since it was so easy to get more) * Their social living arrangements (persistent "living groups" of 10-ish people, multiple of which might be camping around the same water hole at a given time. so there's a collection of people you're often around that rarely changes, and then other groups you see and live with for a time periodically) * Reasons why their population didn't explode despite lack of contraceptives (no crops --> no e.g. maize that can be turned into mash for kids --> kids breastfeed for years longer, which apparently acts as a contraceptive. As others are saying, life undoubtedly was quite different for hunter-gatherers in other regions.
- geezerjay 9y ago
  > * Reasons why their population didn't explode despite lack of contraceptives (no crops --> no e.g. maize that can be turned into mash for kids --> kids breastfeed for years longer, which apparently acts as a contraceptive. Actually, it's far more probable that population were kept low because everyone got killed at a very high rate compared with the rate of reproduction. With no medical care to treat diseases of wounds and with both man and nature invested in killing off people, population growth tends to be kept low.
  - donw 9y ago
    Malnutrition and starvation also have a strong impact on ovulation rate.
  - danieltillett 9y ago
    Read the The Life and Adventures of William Buckley [0] for an understanding of what hunter-gather life was like. No starvation, no disease, lots of children and yet a static population. 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Buckley_(convict) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Buckley_(convict)
fsloth 9y ago
There are quality-of-living trade offs. May I warmly recommend Yuval Harari's "Sapiens": https://www.amazon.com/Sapiens-Humankind-Yuval-Noah-Harari/dp/1846558239 https://www.amazon.com/Sapiens-Humankind-Yuval-Noah-Harari/d... It discusses this and other issues related to the cultural evolution of our species at length. Some of his views into modern life are especially eye opening.
puranjay 9y ago
From what I remember reading, agriculture was actually a downgrade from the hunter-gatherer lifestyle. Early crops were terribly hard to grow, had little nutrition value and agricultural practices too were primitive. People started growing crops out of necessity. In terms of food security, hunting-gathering was far easier. The average hunter also worked far fewer hours than the average farmer in antiquity.
- smallnamespace 9y ago
  I wonder if agriculture caused societies to go through a population explosion just because it became economically much more worthwhile to have young children. I'd assume in hunter-gatherer societies, children would not be that useful for hunting until they are fully grown, or in gathering until they've spent many years learning where to go to gather what. Also not useful in making tools, since those would take a lifetime to learn. Whereas children are readily useful in traditional farming even at a younger age, because there are all sorts of places one can employ unskilled manual labor on a farm. Hunter-gatherer societies had very low rates of demographic growth. And industrial societies are also seeing much lower population growth, because children are an enormous economic burden.
  - puranjay 9y ago
    Additionally, hunter-gatherer societies require both women and children to be mobile. Pregnant women are a liability, as are children who can't walk by themselves. This gives an impetus to at least wait 3-4 years between pregnancies. There is no such pressure on agrarian societies.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- posterboy 9y ago
  > agricultural practices too were primitive. I imagine there was no(t much) fieldwork, crops were raised on the side, if hunting and gathering was indeed easier. What else would explain foregoing that? Still today I sometimes dismissively assume that sowing seeds and just waiting is the simplest thing ever. Maybe neolithic people didn't need to process the crops either, instead feeding animals and eating them then, which is less efficient, energetically speaking.
katastic 9y ago
Until you remember everyone died from disease... and snakes (actual problem)... and larger tribes that decided "last night the moon was half, so it must mean we need to murder your tribe." People became food raisers because it was a better life. It allowed plentiful food so that others could do things unrelated to food. Art... and science. For one good documentary (or book), check out Guns, Germs and Steel. (it's usually found online and fun to watch!) A book which documents the reasons some civilizations went from tribes, to eventual empires, while others like one in Papa New Guinea remained hunter-gatherers. That tribe, for example, has no "beasts of burden" on the island, which were the initial "machinery" that multiplied the amount of work output a tribe could produce compared to one of only men. But at no point does anyone suggest that hunter-gathering was "better." It was the thing everyone wanted to get away from but certain societies had an easier time doing it. It's like that guy who eschewed modern society and went hiking out in Canada/Alaska with no research or even a map. He died. He died poisoned by simple plants that anyone would have told him not to eat. And he died less than a couple miles from a ranger station full of food, shelter, and an emergency phone/radio. "Oops." Romanticize all you want. But never forget it's a fantasy.

Makes you wonder if Hunter gatherer times were better. Due to the much lower population densities than feudal times there would have been less famine I imagine.

ppeetteerr 9y ago

It really depends on where the people lived. Iceland survived for 1000 years on a diet of some root vegetables, fish, milk and mammals. I would not wish their existence on anyone today. People in warmer climates would have a better diet but it's clear that agriculture and husbandry were historically more desirable over pure hunting and gathering, even in warmer regions like Egypt.

cgh 9y ago
That Icelandic diet sounds pretty similar to how I eat today. What's unhealthy about it?
- ppeetteerr 9y ago
  It's not the same cooking you've come to expect. There is a whole wikipedia entry on the subject: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_cuisine#Medieval_Iceland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_cuisine#Medieval_Ice...
- Eric_WVGG 9y ago
  I assume your response is coming from a low-carb/paleo perspective? No leafy greens or vitamin-rich vegetables. The vegetables that are there (root vegetables) are carby and not especially nutritious. Huge vitamin deficiency across the board.
  - cgh 9y ago
    That is simply incorrect. For example, beef liver is about twenty times more nutritious than fruit by mass. My original question was a bit cheeky as I already knew the answer.
    - ivanhoe 9y ago
      Yes, but don't forget that for a relatively small amount of a beef liver you need to kill a whole cow. And when you kill the animal you couldn't cherry-pick the parts of the meat you use, everything was used while it lasted. The parts that could be preserved would last for a while and things like a liver would be eaten right away or used to make sausages. In the middle age common folks didn't eat meat as often as we do today, it was a luxury. They primarily used a lot of buttermilk, cheese and eggs instead.
  - gehwartzen 9y ago
    Not when you eat the entire animal including organ meat as these folks undoubtedly did.
- puranjay 9y ago
  You get your diet from a warm supermarket. Or heck, delivered to your door. The Icelandic ancestors didn't have that luxury in their country's bitter cold
jordanb 9y ago
> it's clear that agriculture and husbandry were historically more desirable over pure hunting and gathering, even in warmer regions like Egypt. It's clear that agricultural societies were more fit than hunter-gatherer societies. Agricultural societies could breed more people and use them to kill the hunter-gatherers and take their land. Even if the meat/vegetable eaters were bigger and stronger than the grain eaters, there were simply a lot more grain eaters. Classic Greek myths are full of references to "golden age" men who were displaced by more degenerate modern, civilized men. I can't help read those myths as a story of the rise of agriculture.
- staticautomatic 9y ago
  Indeed, many of the Vikings who gave up on raiding often settled in what's now England, Ireland, and Normandy, whereas their discovery of Iceland was an accident and its settlement was only partly intentional.
- maze-le 9y ago
  These "golden age" men of the Greek myths also lived in palaces (palace of agamemnon) and practiced agriculture. In these myths some typical topoi are also cattle raids, palace intrigues and territorial disputes. These are not the hallmarks of hunter-gatherer societies. These myths should be treated as such, myths. Maybe they have a little historical truth in it, since the mycenean people (precursor to the archaic greek civilisation) definitly had palaces and an elaborate trade network spanning the eastern mediterranean. These are more advanced feats than pre-archaic greek civilisation, wich developed into smaller tribal and rural communities at the time before homer wrote his epics.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - posterboy 9y ago
    sounds like those would be the "degenerate modern, civilized men" or do you think the GP means the doric invaders?
danieltillett 9y ago
As bad as Iceland might have been, Greenland was worse.

dogruck 9y ago

Hunter gatherer times were certainly not superior to today. That's a pervasive myth. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_savage https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_savage

forkandwait 9y ago
While nobility is bullshit, better nutrition as evidenced by height and tooth remains is true, only catching up in the 20th century, except for the rich of course. Sorry I don't have a source. (The benefits of civilization may have only accrued to a small proportion of the population for most of history. )
- dublinben 9y ago
  Jared Diamond's essay The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race makes this argument quite convincingly: http://www.ditext.com/diamond/mistake.html http://www.ditext.com/diamond/mistake.html
  - wefwef233 9y ago
    Ordered this book but haven't touched it yet: http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2017/10/01/551018759/are-hunter-gatherers-the-happiest-humans-to-inhabit-earth http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2017/10/01/55101875...
    - dogruck 9y ago
      Doesn't look too happy to me -- maybe because I'm over 30 and would be dead. Also, I loved my mother (who is dead) -- but at least she didn't die in childbirth. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy
      - red75prime 9y ago
        Life expectancy at birth was low because of high children mortality. If you've made it to adolescence, you could expect to live 50-80 years. https://condensedscience.wordpress.com/2011/06/28/life-expectancy-in-hunter-gatherers-and-other-groups/ https://condensedscience.wordpress.com/2011/06/28/life-expec...

Tuna-Fish 9y ago

Less famine, much more war. Population densities don't stay down on their own -- people can breed quite rapidly in good conditions. What happens is that population rises to the point where there is no longer enough food for everyone, and then territorial clashes start happening, until someone identifies a weak neighbor tribe and slaughters them. So everything is better until that week you're fighting for your life, and the life of everyone you know and love. This is exactly how chimpanzees live today, and matches well with most of the archaeological remains we have of primordial hunter-gatherers. Our forebears lived very violent lives.

Bromskloss 9y ago
> Population densities don't stay down on their own You're right. Enough slacking! Gotta go to work!
irrational 9y ago
That sounds like a pretty good explanation for most conflicts up to the present day. We are just chimpanzees that wear clothes and can talk.
- BaronSamedi 9y ago
  Don't forget our bizarre and inexplicable neoteny. We are the Peter Pans of the primate world.
randomThoughts9 9y ago
> Our forebears lived very violent lives. I've been reading some books on the subject that claim the contrary, also based on archaeological proofs (and on identifying faults with the existing studies). So I wouldn't state that with such confidence. See RoboTeddy's comment for some details on this POV. And also, if we look at bonobos, another primate closely related to us, we might get a completely different perspective on life in the distant past. It's just that we discovered chimpanzees first.
- geezerjay 9y ago

RoboTeddy 9y ago

If you're curious about this, I'd recommend reading accounts of hunter-gatherer lives written by anthropologists! This book is fascinating in many ways: http://voidnetwork.gr/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/The-Dobe-Ju-hoansi-by-Richard-B.-Lee.pdf http://voidnetwork.gr/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/The-Dobe-Ju... In particular: * Level of food security (very high -- people only bothered to keep 3 days of food on hand, since it was so easy to get more) * Their social living arrangements (persistent "living groups" of 10-ish people, multiple of which might be camping around the same water hole at a given time. so there's a collection of people you're often around that rarely changes, and then other groups you see and live with for a time periodically) * Reasons why their population didn't explode despite lack of contraceptives (no crops --> no e.g. maize that can be turned into mash for kids --> kids breastfeed for years longer, which apparently acts as a contraceptive. As others are saying, life undoubtedly was quite different for hunter-gatherers in other regions.

geezerjay 9y ago
> * Reasons why their population didn't explode despite lack of contraceptives (no crops --> no e.g. maize that can be turned into mash for kids --> kids breastfeed for years longer, which apparently acts as a contraceptive. Actually, it's far more probable that population were kept low because everyone got killed at a very high rate compared with the rate of reproduction. With no medical care to treat diseases of wounds and with both man and nature invested in killing off people, population growth tends to be kept low.
- donw 9y ago
  Malnutrition and starvation also have a strong impact on ovulation rate.
- danieltillett 9y ago
  Read the The Life and Adventures of William Buckley [0] for an understanding of what hunter-gather life was like. No starvation, no disease, lots of children and yet a static population. 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Buckley_(convict) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Buckley_(convict)

fsloth 9y ago

There are quality-of-living trade offs. May I warmly recommend Yuval Harari's "Sapiens": https://www.amazon.com/Sapiens-Humankind-Yuval-Noah-Harari/dp/1846558239 https://www.amazon.com/Sapiens-Humankind-Yuval-Noah-Harari/d... It discusses this and other issues related to the cultural evolution of our species at length. Some of his views into modern life are especially eye opening.

puranjay 9y ago

From what I remember reading, agriculture was actually a downgrade from the hunter-gatherer lifestyle. Early crops were terribly hard to grow, had little nutrition value and agricultural practices too were primitive. People started growing crops out of necessity. In terms of food security, hunting-gathering was far easier. The average hunter also worked far fewer hours than the average farmer in antiquity.

smallnamespace 9y ago
I wonder if agriculture caused societies to go through a population explosion just because it became economically much more worthwhile to have young children. I'd assume in hunter-gatherer societies, children would not be that useful for hunting until they are fully grown, or in gathering until they've spent many years learning where to go to gather what. Also not useful in making tools, since those would take a lifetime to learn. Whereas children are readily useful in traditional farming even at a younger age, because there are all sorts of places one can employ unskilled manual labor on a farm. Hunter-gatherer societies had very low rates of demographic growth. And industrial societies are also seeing much lower population growth, because children are an enormous economic burden.
- puranjay 9y ago
  Additionally, hunter-gatherer societies require both women and children to be mobile. Pregnant women are a liability, as are children who can't walk by themselves. This gives an impetus to at least wait 3-4 years between pregnancies. There is no such pressure on agrarian societies.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
posterboy 9y ago
> agricultural practices too were primitive. I imagine there was no(t much) fieldwork, crops were raised on the side, if hunting and gathering was indeed easier. What else would explain foregoing that? Still today I sometimes dismissively assume that sowing seeds and just waiting is the simplest thing ever. Maybe neolithic people didn't need to process the crops either, instead feeding animals and eating them then, which is less efficient, energetically speaking.

katastic 9y ago

Until you remember everyone died from disease... and snakes (actual problem)... and larger tribes that decided "last night the moon was half, so it must mean we need to murder your tribe." People became food raisers because it was a better life. It allowed plentiful food so that others could do things unrelated to food. Art... and science. For one good documentary (or book), check out Guns, Germs and Steel. (it's usually found online and fun to watch!) A book which documents the reasons some civilizations went from tribes, to eventual empires, while others like one in Papa New Guinea remained hunter-gatherers. That tribe, for example, has no "beasts of burden" on the island, which were the initial "machinery" that multiplied the amount of work output a tribe could produce compared to one of only men. But at no point does anyone suggest that hunter-gathering was "better." It was the thing everyone wanted to get away from but certain societies had an easier time doing it. It's like that guy who eschewed modern society and went hiking out in Canada/Alaska with no research or even a map. He died. He died poisoned by simple plants that anyone would have told him not to eat. And he died less than a couple miles from a ranger station full of food, shelter, and an emergency phone/radio. "Oops." Romanticize all you want. But never forget it's a fantasy.