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I think this is far less evident than usually assumed. The life of the last hunter gatherer tribes is probably the best approximation we have on how our ancesto

I think this is far less evident than usually assumed. The life of the last hunter gatherer tribes is probably the best approximation we have on how our ancestors may have lived. And while death is a more common (and swifter, less problematic) occurrence for these people, they were hardly unhappy compared to us -- sure, they didn't have iphones.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
Many times I find these studies that show that hunter gathering was not all that bad are written from male perspectives. It is great to be a guy hunting with your buddies if the women are the ones doing the hard work of gathering. Also, you don’t experience the dangers of pregnancy and childbirth. Many times these hunter gatherer societies have much higher maternal and infant mortality than ours, and higher rates of violence against women. It is technology and the knowledge based economy that gives women an equal footing. Before that, men took advantage of their relative physical strength and size to consign women to secondary roles.
- new2628 6y ago
  I'm very skeptical of projecting back 21th century feminism to tens of thousands of years ago. If you look at bears/wolves/elephants or any other mammals in the wild, you don't see females taken advantage of or in secondary roles. I see no reason to believe early humans were worse, unless I am looking very hard to find a victim where there isn't any.
- belorn 6y ago
  Research into hunter gathering has major issues to the point where we can't really say much about their life. Most studies tries to find surviving hunter gathering that looks like they have not been influenced by non-hunter gatherers, but they are very few that still exist and those that do tend to be semi-hunter gathering rather that true hunter gathering, and they are useally located in very specific environments which limits how useful observations are. What those studies do find in common is is that hunting is an minority part of the diet and both sexes spend most time gathering. Hunting is more an act of opportunity or desperation. When it comes to violence there is/was two camps with the research community, one claiming major violence in hunter gathering and the other arguing very low level of violence. One side accuse the other of pacifying the past, and the other side claims people are warifying the past. More modern consensus seems to lean towards less violence since the majority of time spent for all members of a hunter gathering group is on gathering. There just are not time to spend on violence when 75% of waking hours is spent on creating food for the day. Farming is historically the mechanism which allowed people to spend less time per day on food and more time on social interaction and social fighting over dominance. It also made people more vulnerable, as crops can be destroyed and weather can cause disruption, which then has a direct connection to increased violence. When people started domesticating animals they further increased their food source vulnerability since animals can be stolen, and there is research linking ancestry of herding with increased biological response to aggression with the hypothesis of increased risk being the primary factor behind greater aggression. I know a good book if you want to dig into all the different theories around this subject, but it is a pretty complex area of research.
  - new2628 6y ago
    Very interesting comment, do mention the book title. Since you seem knowledgeable on the topic, I'm curious what is the current view of the San people in the Kalahari. I read several books on them by members of the Marshall family, and I can see how these may be seen as romanticizing their subjects and not entirely objective, yet these books give a very compelling view, and are clearly based on first hand knowledge and experience. E.g. Elizabeth Marshall: The harmless people, 1959.
    - belorn 6y ago
      For violence and its history, and meta analyzes, Behave - The biology of humans by Robert Sapolsky has several good chapters on the history of violence including that of hunter gatherers (chapter "Fractured bones* in particular).

RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago

Many times I find these studies that show that hunter gathering was not all that bad are written from male perspectives. It is great to be a guy hunting with your buddies if the women are the ones doing the hard work of gathering. Also, you don’t experience the dangers of pregnancy and childbirth. Many times these hunter gatherer societies have much higher maternal and infant mortality than ours, and higher rates of violence against women. It is technology and the knowledge based economy that gives women an equal footing. Before that, men took advantage of their relative physical strength and size to consign women to secondary roles.

new2628 6y ago
I'm very skeptical of projecting back 21th century feminism to tens of thousands of years ago. If you look at bears/wolves/elephants or any other mammals in the wild, you don't see females taken advantage of or in secondary roles. I see no reason to believe early humans were worse, unless I am looking very hard to find a victim where there isn't any.
belorn 6y ago
Research into hunter gathering has major issues to the point where we can't really say much about their life. Most studies tries to find surviving hunter gathering that looks like they have not been influenced by non-hunter gatherers, but they are very few that still exist and those that do tend to be semi-hunter gathering rather that true hunter gathering, and they are useally located in very specific environments which limits how useful observations are. What those studies do find in common is is that hunting is an minority part of the diet and both sexes spend most time gathering. Hunting is more an act of opportunity or desperation. When it comes to violence there is/was two camps with the research community, one claiming major violence in hunter gathering and the other arguing very low level of violence. One side accuse the other of pacifying the past, and the other side claims people are warifying the past. More modern consensus seems to lean towards less violence since the majority of time spent for all members of a hunter gathering group is on gathering. There just are not time to spend on violence when 75% of waking hours is spent on creating food for the day. Farming is historically the mechanism which allowed people to spend less time per day on food and more time on social interaction and social fighting over dominance. It also made people more vulnerable, as crops can be destroyed and weather can cause disruption, which then has a direct connection to increased violence. When people started domesticating animals they further increased their food source vulnerability since animals can be stolen, and there is research linking ancestry of herding with increased biological response to aggression with the hypothesis of increased risk being the primary factor behind greater aggression. I know a good book if you want to dig into all the different theories around this subject, but it is a pretty complex area of research.
- new2628 6y ago
  Very interesting comment, do mention the book title. Since you seem knowledgeable on the topic, I'm curious what is the current view of the San people in the Kalahari. I read several books on them by members of the Marshall family, and I can see how these may be seen as romanticizing their subjects and not entirely objective, yet these books give a very compelling view, and are clearly based on first hand knowledge and experience. E.g. Elizabeth Marshall: The harmless people, 1959.
  - belorn 6y ago
    For violence and its history, and meta analyzes, Behave - The biology of humans by Robert Sapolsky has several good chapters on the history of violence including that of hunter gatherers (chapter "Fractured bones* in particular).