5 ms·

Population density through out history has been far lower with far fewer people around and much more spread out. People didn't typically live in cities. Travel

• comfypotato 4y ago
  The paper is discussing a hyper isolation that hasn’t often been seen historically. As stated, 1 in 10 Europeans didn’t see any friends or family outside of their household for an entire year. I do agree with you that it’s ultimately apples and oranges to compare our current social state to our ancestors’.
  • recuter 4y ago
    For a long long time 9/10 of Europeans didn't leave their village for a multitude of reasons. If the village is small and remote enough that's functionally the same thing. When you did leave you might not see your family and friends for years if you even managed to come back alive. If you lived in a viking settlement or out in the wilderness of the Wild West or some secret monastery at the top of a mountain range in Tibet that's pretty damn isolated. Or a lighthouse. Or an island. 'etc.
    • chitowneats 4y ago
      What about those of us trapped somewhere with no friends or family in the local area? Serfs had their spouses, children, and parents to socialize with, even when cut off mostly from the rest of society. Some percentage of us experienced an alone-ness that really has no historical precedent. For some, it persisted many months.
      • recuter 4y ago
        I fall into that percentage. I got stuck in a very severe lockdown whilst traveling. It was unpleasant to say the least. However we should disentangle the stress of the situation, the uncertainty about the future, the arbitrary restrictions on previously taken for granted personal freedoms and the abrupt change to a lifetime of normalcy from the bummer of being alone. Solitude and loneliness are not the same thing. Some people actually thrived during lockdown. Others choose to isolate with no relation to it. All I am saying is that it is not written in your DNA that your mental health must deteriorate due to lack of socializing. It is not so much unprecedented as it is unusual and involuntary.
        • ch4s3 4y ago
          Can you point to any research that supports your extraordinary claim?
    • ch4s3 4y ago
      > If the village is small and remote enough that's functionally the same thing No it isn't. Interacting with with 120-150 neighbors[1] on a daily basis is a richer form of social interaction than is available to most people in the West today. For most of history people lived in groups of up to a few hundred, being isolated wasn't the norm. [1] https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/news-wires-white-papers-and-books/farmers-and-peasants-building-peasant-communities https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/news-wires-white-papers...
      • jasmer 4y ago
        My grandparents lived on a farm there was nobody around for some distance. And many 'villages' in Europe were just 2 or 3 households, not really villages. I think the OP's point is reasonable for context.
        • ch4s3 4y ago
          You’re talking about a completely different time period. This is also historically abnormal. Premodern farmers almost universally lived in villages of 100 or more people. Check out some sources I linked. Widely dispersed freeholding is super unstable and even more so without modern tools and techniques.
        • recuter 4y ago
          My condolences, as it is apparently clinically impossible for them not to have developed severe psychological issues as a result. ;)
          • ch4s3 4y ago
            The discussion here is clearly about COVID isolation and the wild bullshit claims you’re making about history. Being in a community of even 3 households isn’t remotely similar to a single adult in COVID isolation and that should be obvious. You’re doing a great job ignoring any criticism of your claims.
          • jasmer 4y ago
            Yeah I spent much of my childhood around there it's a different kind of social system but I have not a single worry for them. I think they're more normal and happy than urban types who are a bit untethered, depressed, overly busy, unfulfilled a bit directionless. They have big families and know a lot of people for a long time. Regular people have funerals where 300 people come to the wake. My grandfather had to have three days of open casket there were so many people. He was a man of few words, he just owned a store and so got to know a ton of people.
    • comfypotato 4y ago
      You’re speaking to my point. A household of 4-5 and a typical village have extremely different social dynamics. Similarly the groupings (villages, tribes, etc.) of primal humans were much larger than a household of 4-5. (Your examples of lighthouses and religious hermits are too rare to be seriously compared to the average person. These extreme examples are probably similar to what I’m talking about, though. We just don’t know as much about them as we do a typical village.) Pandemic aside, we live in a world where it is much more possible to live in this hyper isolation than ever before.
    • wwtrv 4y ago
      Well back then all of your friends and relatives were probably living in the same village. Now they might be spread-out over hundreds of kilometers or even much more. Seems like fundamentally different situations to me. > If you lived in a viking settlement or out in the wilderness of the Wild West or some secret monastery at the top of a mountain range in Tibet that's pretty damn isolated. Or a lighthouse. Or an island. 'etc. That was a statistically insignificant proportion of the population even back then (assuming by 'viking settlement' you mean in Greenland or something like that)
    • janef0421 4y ago
      It was actually fairly rare for people to spend their entire lives in their villages during the medieval era. People would regularly travel within their region, and it was typical for a person to undertake multiple longer journeys within their lifetime, often to religious sites.
• ch4s3 4y ago
  I'm sorry, this is nonsense. Serfs worked fields in small groups in housheolds of 5-8 individuals[1] and communally feasted dozens of times per year not to mention attending religious services. Hunter gatherers spen(d)t hours a day just gossiping[2] and engaged in communal rituals[3]. We also know from studying prisoners that isolation breaks peoples' brains[4]. [1] https://acoup.blog/2020/07/24/collections-bread-how-did-they-make-it-part-i-farmers/ https://acoup.blog/2020/07/24/collections-bread-how-did-they... [2]https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12052-010-0306-1 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12052-010-0306-1 [3] https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9780429488818-18/ritual-made-us-human-matt-rossano https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/97804294... [4]https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2020.00840/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2020.0084...
• hibikir 4y ago
  Looking at population density at a global level, or at a national level, is going to be giving you misleading results. If your goal is to evaluate whether people in history lived close to other people, you need a very different metric: Population density of the neighborhood where the median person lives. For instance, if you look at population density overall, Germany has a far higher population density than Spain. This is, however, because most of Spain is empty. Even when you look at rural areas, what you see is not American style homesteads, but people living in a relatively dense village, and traveling to their farm. In that environment, social isolation is very difficult: Just buying food and going to some kind of workplace leads to being very close to a whole lot more people than, say, your average American does. So when we go back in time in most places, we might not see that much cross-settlement travel, but how dense are the settlements? How much can you avoid other human beings? Just like travel was dangerous, living in a place that was a long distance from your next neighbor was also dangerous: The best protection against attack was to have enough neighbors very close, as to make it really difficult to get away with attacking you. We have ruins of many settlements, going back well before writing, and it's normal to see places that might have housed a dozen or so families, all in screaming distance. Therefore, I don't see how we can support that some form of relative social isolation was the norm everywhere. If anything, it's the modern American suburb, where in practice we don't need to exchange a word with the neighbors, and most retail transactions are impersonal, is what happens to be historically novel. The pandemic just made it more extreme.
  • recuter 4y ago
    I like this reply and agree with most of what is written. > So when we go back in time in most places, we might not see that much cross-settlement travel, but how dense are the settlements? Depending on when and where sometimes not very dense at all. > How much can you avoid other human beings? You don't need to avoid anyone but going days and weeks without speaking to people was not so inconceivable as it is now. > If anything, it's the modern American suburb, where in practice we don't need to exchange a word with the neighbors, and most retail transactions are impersonal, is what happens to be historically novel. That's the slightly different lament of not knowing your neighbors. The loss of togetherness and sense of community. The bad vibes. I agree with all that, you can feel more alone surrounded by an ocean of people than being part of a small tight knit group of people surrounded by an ocean. Conversely, mental health problems have been on the rise for a long time prior to the pandemic. No doubt it brought these issues to the forefront and didn't help things. All I pointed out is that there is no shortage of precedent or examples of isolation and it does not necessarily imply that your mental health has to deteriorate. Forced isolation or alienation from neighbors on the other hand is far more likely to be harmful. So is substituting actual social relationships with parasocial interactions online and apps.
• Behemoth66 4y ago
  I believe you’re confusing meeting new people and isolation. Living alone was extremely rare until recent history [1]. Not having freedom of movement, or not living in a city does not mean social isolation. Villages back in history used to celebrate holidays together, families were much larger, everyone knew everyone since birth etc… I just woke up but don’t feel like pulling up the sources but I believe the exact opposite of your statement. Social isolation is a modern phenomenon that was extremely rare before in history. It was incredibly difficult to survive just by yourself. [1] https://archive.org/details/goingsoloextraor00eric https://archive.org/details/goingsoloextraor00eric
• deleted 4y ago
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• AntiRemoteWork 4y ago