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The world still has some hunter gatherer societies living today, so studying them could give us some insight into how many hours our hunter gatherer ancestors w
by francisofascii 5y ago
The world still has some hunter gatherer societies living today, so studying them could give us some insight into how many hours our hunter gatherer ancestors worked.
- sillyquiet 5y agoThose existing hunter gathers, almost invariably, have close economic contact with modern agricultural societies, so unfortunately there's a limit to how much studying them can tell us as far as that goes.
- losvedir 5y agoI don't think that's a given. Or, at least, not if the extent of the argument is "well, they seem primitive to me, I assume my ancestors were primitive, so...". The hunting and gathering (and storing, and shelter, and guarding, and...) surely were as varied as semi-modern (pre globalization) societies. The amount of work would depend on the natural environment and climate, hunting or fishing, trade with other local tribes, culture and mythologies. I'd argue that the few, highly sequestered, remaining hunter gatherer societies, by virtue of being the only ones still around, are likely to be very much outliers in some dimensions and actually plausibly quite different from our own ancestors.
- trisiak 5y agoThe article makes a point that contemporary hunter gatherers are not living the life like their ancestors. "Modern" cultures displaced them into much less favorable environments.
- kjkjadksj 5y agoEven without displacement, the amount of game available in an area a few centuries ago must have been at least an order of magnitude more dense before unlimited commercialized overhunting and overfishing decimated populations.