3 ms·

Hunter gatherers did have it better than the early agricultural societies. They worked much less during any given day, lived longer, and were healthier. Hunter

by bmitc 5y ago

Hunter gatherers did have it better than the early agricultural societies. They worked much less during any given day, lived longer, and were healthier. Hunter gatherer societies can live as long as people in modern, developed societies. You're ignoring the amount of stress and mental disorders skyrocketing in modern societies. With those, it makes a human life almost a tragedy, stretched out due to modern medicine and protocols keeping people alive.

slothtrop 5y ago
I think you mean better than early North American settlers. Agriculture is quite old, and integral to the birth of Civilization. Not really clear what the disparity might have been at the onset, though it might have been a hybrid system. It seems that even some indigenous societies in the Americas experimented with agriculture. > You're ignoring the amount of stress and mental disorders skyrocketing in modern societies. That might say something about developments in technology, or wealth inequality - not so much society revolving around agriculture.
- bmitc 5y ago
  No, I meant all the way back to the birth of agriculture. See Against the Grain by James C. Scott.
  - slothtrop 5y ago
    A bit skeptical since he wrote Seeing Like A State but I'll put it on my list.
    - bmitc 5y ago
      What were your issues with Seeing Like a State? I haven't read it myself yet, so I'm curious.
  - UglyToad 5y ago
    To give a +1 here, I think Against the Grain makes a nice companion to Debt from what I assume are separate ends of the left-right spectrum within libertarianism, or at least I guess so from Against the Grain having a positive review from the Cato Institute on the cover. They both construct convincing narratives from looking at the history that deconstruct the "just so" stories of economists. From AtG you see how most of 'civilization' throughout history has been experienced by most people as slavery and warfare and living standards actually improved, or at least didn't become much worse, for many with things like the fall of Rome. Debt is fascinating because it shows just how new and novel the current inescapable logic of capitalism actually is. Adam Smith's fanciful notion of a fully formed civilization of shopkeepers who adopt coinage to streamline barter is shown to be complete nonsense and with it the foundations of much of "assumed" thought about how people and markets organise themselves.
gruez 5y ago
>Hunter gatherer societies can live as long as people in modern, developed societies. Yeah theoretically if nothing bad happens to you you can live to 80, just like people in developed countries. The difference is that all the random causes of death (eg. dysentery, or infection because you cut yourself) drags down the life expectancy down to significantly below 80. In other words, people in "modern, developed societies" living to 80 is the average outcome, but for hunter gatherers that might be the 99th percentile outcome. Your comment casually ignores this.
- ramblenode 5y ago
  The average life expectancy of hunter-gatherers is low mostly due to high infant mortality followed by mortality of those under 15 years. If you live to 15 you have a pretty good shot of living to 60. The modal age at death is 68-78 [0]. Notably, the health span of hunter-gatherers may be longer. Those who survive have healthier older years. Heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and dementia are very rare in H-G culture at ages where they become widespread in subsistence culture. [0] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/obr.12785 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/obr.12785
  - gruez 5y ago
    > The average life expectancy of hunter-gatherers is low mostly due to high infant mortality followed by mortality of those under 15 years. If you live to 15 you have a pretty good shot of living to 60. The modal age at death is 68-78 [0]. Even that's "mostly" from infant mortality, a significant non-infant mortality still remains. From your linked article >~60% of newborns in these populations survive to age 15 and ~40% to age 45. Those who survive to age 45 can expect to live another ~20 years In other words, even if you survive past 15, there's a 33% chance that you won't make it to 45. >Notably, the health span of hunter-gatherers may be longer. Those who survive have healthier older years. Heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and dementia are very rare in H-G culture at ages where they become widespread in subsistence culture. Is there a direct source for the healthspan claim? The study you linked substantiates the individual disease instances being lower, but that could also be caused by dying at around 68-78, before those ailments usually set in.
Georgelemental 5y ago
The average level of happiness might be higher in hunter-gatherer societies, but the population they can support is far lower, so the total amount of well-being is also far lower.
- api 5y ago
  You're the only person to even slightly respond to what I wrote. Everyone else repeated primitivist memes without engaging with the argument at all. My hypothesis was that the edge cases were likely a problem. You might have been able to live well in a hunter-gatherer society of you were healthy and if natural disasters and invading peoples left you alone. I'm sure deciding which children should live or die in a random weather-induced famine or watching invaders kill your family takes the shine off being a hunter-gatherer. I suspect there are multiple reasons for the birth of civilization, agriculture, and technology, but one of these was probably as a form of insurance. Others probably included cults and religion, effectiveness at warfare (defensive or offensive), and simple fascination with and emulation of impressive feats like megalithic architecture (in other words mimetic behavior). Of course people are right that there is no panacea and that we may have traded one set of problems for another, but that's how things go. History is a walk across state space exploring various nooks and crannies and finding out what angels and demons lurk there.

by bmitc 5y ago

slothtrop 5y ago

I think you mean better than early North American settlers. Agriculture is quite old, and integral to the birth of Civilization. Not really clear what the disparity might have been at the onset, though it might have been a hybrid system. It seems that even some indigenous societies in the Americas experimented with agriculture. > You're ignoring the amount of stress and mental disorders skyrocketing in modern societies. That might say something about developments in technology, or wealth inequality - not so much society revolving around agriculture.

bmitc 5y ago
No, I meant all the way back to the birth of agriculture. See Against the Grain by James C. Scott.
- slothtrop 5y ago
  A bit skeptical since he wrote Seeing Like A State but I'll put it on my list.
  - bmitc 5y ago
    What were your issues with Seeing Like a State? I haven't read it myself yet, so I'm curious.
- UglyToad 5y ago
  To give a +1 here, I think Against the Grain makes a nice companion to Debt from what I assume are separate ends of the left-right spectrum within libertarianism, or at least I guess so from Against the Grain having a positive review from the Cato Institute on the cover. They both construct convincing narratives from looking at the history that deconstruct the "just so" stories of economists. From AtG you see how most of 'civilization' throughout history has been experienced by most people as slavery and warfare and living standards actually improved, or at least didn't become much worse, for many with things like the fall of Rome. Debt is fascinating because it shows just how new and novel the current inescapable logic of capitalism actually is. Adam Smith's fanciful notion of a fully formed civilization of shopkeepers who adopt coinage to streamline barter is shown to be complete nonsense and with it the foundations of much of "assumed" thought about how people and markets organise themselves.

gruez 5y ago

>Hunter gatherer societies can live as long as people in modern, developed societies. Yeah theoretically if nothing bad happens to you you can live to 80, just like people in developed countries. The difference is that all the random causes of death (eg. dysentery, or infection because you cut yourself) drags down the life expectancy down to significantly below 80. In other words, people in "modern, developed societies" living to 80 is the average outcome, but for hunter gatherers that might be the 99th percentile outcome. Your comment casually ignores this.

ramblenode 5y ago
The average life expectancy of hunter-gatherers is low mostly due to high infant mortality followed by mortality of those under 15 years. If you live to 15 you have a pretty good shot of living to 60. The modal age at death is 68-78 [0]. Notably, the health span of hunter-gatherers may be longer. Those who survive have healthier older years. Heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and dementia are very rare in H-G culture at ages where they become widespread in subsistence culture. [0] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/obr.12785 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/obr.12785
- gruez 5y ago
  > The average life expectancy of hunter-gatherers is low mostly due to high infant mortality followed by mortality of those under 15 years. If you live to 15 you have a pretty good shot of living to 60. The modal age at death is 68-78 [0]. Even that's "mostly" from infant mortality, a significant non-infant mortality still remains. From your linked article >~60% of newborns in these populations survive to age 15 and ~40% to age 45. Those who survive to age 45 can expect to live another ~20 years In other words, even if you survive past 15, there's a 33% chance that you won't make it to 45. >Notably, the health span of hunter-gatherers may be longer. Those who survive have healthier older years. Heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and dementia are very rare in H-G culture at ages where they become widespread in subsistence culture. Is there a direct source for the healthspan claim? The study you linked substantiates the individual disease instances being lower, but that could also be caused by dying at around 68-78, before those ailments usually set in.

Georgelemental 5y ago

The average level of happiness might be higher in hunter-gatherer societies, but the population they can support is far lower, so the total amount of well-being is also far lower.

api 5y ago
You're the only person to even slightly respond to what I wrote. Everyone else repeated primitivist memes without engaging with the argument at all. My hypothesis was that the edge cases were likely a problem. You might have been able to live well in a hunter-gatherer society of you were healthy and if natural disasters and invading peoples left you alone. I'm sure deciding which children should live or die in a random weather-induced famine or watching invaders kill your family takes the shine off being a hunter-gatherer. I suspect there are multiple reasons for the birth of civilization, agriculture, and technology, but one of these was probably as a form of insurance. Others probably included cults and religion, effectiveness at warfare (defensive or offensive), and simple fascination with and emulation of impressive feats like megalithic architecture (in other words mimetic behavior). Of course people are right that there is no panacea and that we may have traded one set of problems for another, but that's how things go. History is a walk across state space exploring various nooks and crannies and finding out what angels and demons lurk there.