3 ms·

Hunter gatherers didn't necessarily suffer that much. Sure, they faced a lot of environmental challenges like bugs, a lack of air conditioning, hunger, and seri

Hunter gatherers didn't necessarily suffer that much. Sure, they faced a lot of environmental challenges like bugs, a lack of air conditioning, hunger, and serious diseases like malaria and smallpox, but they arguably had much easier social customs than we do now. There were no clothes, no laws, no social signaling for the most part. If you didn't like your tribe, I'm sure you were free to run away and eat berries in the forest and try to figure it out yourself. These days being homeless is illegal and they face a lot of harassment. You are forced to conform and commute to a job to pay for a bed to sleep in.

krapp 8y ago
>There were no clothes, no laws, no social signaling for the most part. If you didn't like your tribe, I'm sure you were free to run away and eat berries in the forest and try to figure it out yourself. What archaeological or anthropological evidence are you basing these assumptions on? Why would hunter gatherers not wear clothes, when they can offer useful protection against the elements? Why would they not have common customs or taboos ("laws?") at least at the level of families and clans when even gorillas have some semblance of it? It seems as if you're just assuming the past was some idyllic and anarchist inversion of modernity.
- trgv 8y ago
  I agree with your comment. > Why would hunter gatherers not wear clothes, when they can offer useful protection against the elements? I was curious about this and looked it up. Apparently there was some period of time during which humanity did not wear clothes. This has been determined by looking at the DNA of hair lice versus clothes lice and seeing where they diverged: http://news.ufl.edu/archive/2011/01/uf-study-of-lice-dna-shows-humans-first-wore-clothes-170000-years-ago.html http://news.ufl.edu/archive/2011/01/uf-study-of-lice-dna-sho...
  - tvmalsv 8y ago
    That went in a direction I didn't expect! Very interesting, thanks :)
gascan 8y ago
The occasional brush with a health condition, serious injury, and/or surgery hints to me that we have become so well protected from physical pain that we barely remember what we are so lucky to avoid.
WalterSear 8y ago
The threat of disease became much higher when cities appeared.

krapp 8y ago

>There were no clothes, no laws, no social signaling for the most part. If you didn't like your tribe, I'm sure you were free to run away and eat berries in the forest and try to figure it out yourself. What archaeological or anthropological evidence are you basing these assumptions on? Why would hunter gatherers not wear clothes, when they can offer useful protection against the elements? Why would they not have common customs or taboos ("laws?") at least at the level of families and clans when even gorillas have some semblance of it? It seems as if you're just assuming the past was some idyllic and anarchist inversion of modernity.

trgv 8y ago
I agree with your comment. > Why would hunter gatherers not wear clothes, when they can offer useful protection against the elements? I was curious about this and looked it up. Apparently there was some period of time during which humanity did not wear clothes. This has been determined by looking at the DNA of hair lice versus clothes lice and seeing where they diverged: http://news.ufl.edu/archive/2011/01/uf-study-of-lice-dna-shows-humans-first-wore-clothes-170000-years-ago.html http://news.ufl.edu/archive/2011/01/uf-study-of-lice-dna-sho...
- tvmalsv 8y ago
  That went in a direction I didn't expect! Very interesting, thanks :)

gascan 8y ago

The occasional brush with a health condition, serious injury, and/or surgery hints to me that we have become so well protected from physical pain that we barely remember what we are so lucky to avoid.

WalterSear 8y ago

The threat of disease became much higher when cities appeared.