At least in Judaism, all forms of labour, including domestic labour, has been strictly banned on Saturday, for centuries at least. They managed to survive alrig

At least in Judaism, all forms of labour, including domestic labour, has been strictly banned on Saturday, for centuries at least. They managed to survive alright. More to the point, a recent series of history blog posts discussed this question, and it seems like for most of the population, the food supply was not really limited by labour but rather by food storage ability and land area productivity (which is different). For much of the year aside from during the harvest, there was a lot of leisure time (even if people were starving, that wasn't something that harder work would necessarily solve). https://acoup.blog/2020/07/24/collections-bread-how-did-they-make-it-part-i-farmers/ https://acoup.blog/2020/07/24/collections-bread-how-did-they...