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I don't know how to break it to you but many if not most pre-technology hunter-gatherers lived horrible lives, full of pain and misery and died much younger, us

by Tenoke 4y ago

I don't know how to break it to you but many if not most pre-technology hunter-gatherers lived horrible lives, full of pain and misery and died much younger, usually as babies.

0xbadcafebee 4y ago
Hunter-gatherers are still living today without technology and they don't have miserable lives. Infant mortality is probably a feature, not a bug, considering what happens when there's too many humans in a given area.
- solveit 4y ago
  Actually it's good that women go through pregnancy and labour only to have the child die. Every woman should go through that once (or half a dozen times) in their lives. If they get lucky, they could die too!
jholman 4y ago
My understanding of the research is that the "horrible, pain and misery" is mostly wrong. My understanding is that pre-tech hunter-gatherers lived fairly pleasant lives, without a lot of pain and misery, with less work, less stress, more leisure, more play. However, it was much more possible to have an accident that leads to immediate or near-term death. And yes, the infant mortality rate was much, much higher. Higher quality of life while you're alive, but lower security (although higher individual security than pre-modern agriculture societies). The real problem with wanting that lifestyle is that it has a huge footprint in terms of relatively-good land required to support a small group. That's even true for the best land (places where fish just come to you, like parts of California or British Columbia), and it's even more true other places. So agriculturists can raise 100x the population, and thus 100x the army, on the same land. And they do so, and then they take your land. So to me, the answer to 0xbadcafebee is: nope, not unless you have a way to buy a lot of land and keep the surrounding culture at bay
pessimizer 4y ago
> died much younger, usually as babies This is of course because they were pretty long-lived, but had a high infant/childhood mortality rate. It's certainly a way to look at it, but if you counted every miscarriage as a negative lifespan, you could make the average lifespan even shorter. When hunter-gatherers lived past childhood, they lived almost as long as we live.

by Tenoke 4y ago

I don't know how to break it to you but many if not most pre-technology hunter-gatherers lived horrible lives, full of pain and misery and died much younger, usually as babies.

0xbadcafebee 4y ago

Hunter-gatherers are still living today without technology and they don't have miserable lives. Infant mortality is probably a feature, not a bug, considering what happens when there's too many humans in a given area.

solveit 4y ago
Actually it's good that women go through pregnancy and labour only to have the child die. Every woman should go through that once (or half a dozen times) in their lives. If they get lucky, they could die too!

jholman 4y ago

My understanding of the research is that the "horrible, pain and misery" is mostly wrong. My understanding is that pre-tech hunter-gatherers lived fairly pleasant lives, without a lot of pain and misery, with less work, less stress, more leisure, more play. However, it was much more possible to have an accident that leads to immediate or near-term death. And yes, the infant mortality rate was much, much higher. Higher quality of life while you're alive, but lower security (although higher individual security than pre-modern agriculture societies). The real problem with wanting that lifestyle is that it has a huge footprint in terms of relatively-good land required to support a small group. That's even true for the best land (places where fish just come to you, like parts of California or British Columbia), and it's even more true other places. So agriculturists can raise 100x the population, and thus 100x the army, on the same land. And they do so, and then they take your land. So to me, the answer to 0xbadcafebee is: nope, not unless you have a way to buy a lot of land and keep the surrounding culture at bay

pessimizer 4y ago

> died much younger, usually as babies This is of course because they were pretty long-lived, but had a high infant/childhood mortality rate. It's certainly a way to look at it, but if you counted every miscarriage as a negative lifespan, you could make the average lifespan even shorter. When hunter-gatherers lived past childhood, they lived almost as long as we live.