I'm not sure that is the point. I personally don't think we can treat the choice made by such large numbers of people as comparable to the choices of a few mode

I'm not sure that is the point. I personally don't think we can treat the choice made by such large numbers of people as comparable to the choices of a few modern cabin-dwelling weirdos. I think we should take seriously what appears to have seemed preferable for large numbers of people at the time, given the information they had, and lacking the benefit of centuries of hindsight.