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 pleas

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