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The average person has no idea how hard life was back then. I think something like 50% of a ships sailors would die from scurvy on long distance voyages. East I

by pookha 3y ago

The average person has no idea how hard life was back then. I think something like 50% of a ships sailors would die from scurvy on long distance voyages. East Indian Company's ships could lose 70%. And a lot of these dudes were getting kidnapped and forced into service by press gangs (Naval ships). The market for lemons was life and death...Every day I thank God that I'm alive in the 21st century.

DiscourseFan 3y ago
Yeah but then you hear about tribal societies, which didn't have access to modern medicine but they spent a lot of time just sort of hanging out and having sex and the only other thing they did was walk long distances and hunt and pick berries and shit. THAT doesn't sound terrible at all.
- yowlingcat 3y ago
  One of the operative activities there, hunting, seems quite stressful. Not sure that a return to said tradition would feel like a step forward for a lot of folks.
- Swizec 3y ago
  Hunting sounds fun to us because we’re like fat domestic cats. Do some hunting, then go back to your supermarket dinner. Maybe eat what you caught as a special treat, if it’s nice. Subsistence hunting is more like didn’t catch anything today? Guess we starve until next time. oopsies. Hope you don’t get too hungry and weak to perform at your next hunt. Fingers crossed.
  - jfoutz 3y ago
    It's been a while since I had an anthropology class. If I remember correctly, it's really tied to how harsh the environment was. So natives in Alaska had to hunt or starve. For equatorial people, the stakes were much lower. There was an abundance of alternatives. One way to look at it, how much art did they produce? Lots of art? Food was probably pretty easy to come by. Scratch a line on a log? Those folks worked _hard_ to survive. I'm sure there were lean times for everybody. I'm not trying to say you or parent poster are wrong, I'm saying it's a big world, and all of those things and more were true for somebody, somewhere.
    - civilitty 3y ago
      > One way to look at it, how much art did they produce? Lots of art? Food was probably pretty easy to come by. Scratch a line on a log? Those folks worked _hard_ to survive. That's really only applicable to desert civilizations and those in colder environments where decomposition is arrested, which were unfortunately the harsher environments. Humans in the tropics are more likely to use wood and other organic materials to produce art, which don't survive for very long. The oldest wooden art is only 9,500 years old [1] whereas the oldest stone tools are over 3 million years old [2]. The oldest wooden tools, on the other hand, are hundreds of thousands of years old for spears and tens of thousands of years old for axe handles. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shigir_Idol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shigir_Idol [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lomekwi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lomekwi
- katbyte 3y ago
  Not so great for childbirth, infants, elderly, those who do get sick, etc
- cm2012 3y ago
  Also, like 50% of deaths in tribal society were from violence. Believe me, your current life is better.
  - kangda123 3y ago
    Interesting, do you have any sources for this?
    - _a_a_a_ 3y ago
      I can't give a source but a figure I heard was 30% to 90% of males died prematurely in preindustrial[1] cultures due to violence. Can't remember the source, sorry. [1] My word, afraid I can't recall the right/more precise one. (Edit: I went looking for the source for this figure, tried Google, plugged in the text "30% to 90% of males died prematurely violence preindustrial" and the very first result was this exact comment! After less than 9 minutes! Although strangely, Google reports it as being 13 hours ago? All very odd).
      - thimkerbell 3y ago
        Does Google have anyone tasked with investigating and resolving such mysteries?
JJMcJ 3y ago
Saw an episode of the show "Finding Your Roots", exploring the ancestry of the guests. One of the guests was of Italian descent and one of his ancestors moved from Sicily to Louisiana in the late 19th Century. Many of those Italians worked as laborers on the sugar plantations. So, as Henry Louis Gates, Jr., the host, said, Sicily was so poor that working on a Louisiana sugar plantation was better.
- leafmeal 3y ago
  I learned about the plight of Sicilian immigrants in New Orleans at that time from Annie Proulx's historical fiction book "Accordion Crimes". She was inspired in a large part by a lynching of Italian immigrants which was depicted in the book https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1891_New_Orleans_lynchings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1891_New_Orleans_lynchings

by pookha 3y ago

DiscourseFan 3y ago

Yeah but then you hear about tribal societies, which didn't have access to modern medicine but they spent a lot of time just sort of hanging out and having sex and the only other thing they did was walk long distances and hunt and pick berries and shit. THAT doesn't sound terrible at all.

yowlingcat 3y ago
One of the operative activities there, hunting, seems quite stressful. Not sure that a return to said tradition would feel like a step forward for a lot of folks.
Swizec 3y ago
Hunting sounds fun to us because we’re like fat domestic cats. Do some hunting, then go back to your supermarket dinner. Maybe eat what you caught as a special treat, if it’s nice. Subsistence hunting is more like didn’t catch anything today? Guess we starve until next time. oopsies. Hope you don’t get too hungry and weak to perform at your next hunt. Fingers crossed.
- jfoutz 3y ago
  It's been a while since I had an anthropology class. If I remember correctly, it's really tied to how harsh the environment was. So natives in Alaska had to hunt or starve. For equatorial people, the stakes were much lower. There was an abundance of alternatives. One way to look at it, how much art did they produce? Lots of art? Food was probably pretty easy to come by. Scratch a line on a log? Those folks worked _hard_ to survive. I'm sure there were lean times for everybody. I'm not trying to say you or parent poster are wrong, I'm saying it's a big world, and all of those things and more were true for somebody, somewhere.
  - civilitty 3y ago
    > One way to look at it, how much art did they produce? Lots of art? Food was probably pretty easy to come by. Scratch a line on a log? Those folks worked _hard_ to survive. That's really only applicable to desert civilizations and those in colder environments where decomposition is arrested, which were unfortunately the harsher environments. Humans in the tropics are more likely to use wood and other organic materials to produce art, which don't survive for very long. The oldest wooden art is only 9,500 years old [1] whereas the oldest stone tools are over 3 million years old [2]. The oldest wooden tools, on the other hand, are hundreds of thousands of years old for spears and tens of thousands of years old for axe handles. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shigir_Idol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shigir_Idol [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lomekwi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lomekwi
katbyte 3y ago
Not so great for childbirth, infants, elderly, those who do get sick, etc
cm2012 3y ago
Also, like 50% of deaths in tribal society were from violence. Believe me, your current life is better.
- kangda123 3y ago
  Interesting, do you have any sources for this?
  - _a_a_a_ 3y ago
    I can't give a source but a figure I heard was 30% to 90% of males died prematurely in preindustrial[1] cultures due to violence. Can't remember the source, sorry. [1] My word, afraid I can't recall the right/more precise one. (Edit: I went looking for the source for this figure, tried Google, plugged in the text "30% to 90% of males died prematurely violence preindustrial" and the very first result was this exact comment! After less than 9 minutes! Although strangely, Google reports it as being 13 hours ago? All very odd).
    - thimkerbell 3y ago
      Does Google have anyone tasked with investigating and resolving such mysteries?

JJMcJ 3y ago

Saw an episode of the show "Finding Your Roots", exploring the ancestry of the guests. One of the guests was of Italian descent and one of his ancestors moved from Sicily to Louisiana in the late 19th Century. Many of those Italians worked as laborers on the sugar plantations. So, as Henry Louis Gates, Jr., the host, said, Sicily was so poor that working on a Louisiana sugar plantation was better.

leafmeal 3y ago
I learned about the plight of Sicilian immigrants in New Orleans at that time from Annie Proulx's historical fiction book "Accordion Crimes". She was inspired in a large part by a lynching of Italian immigrants which was depicted in the book https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1891_New_Orleans_lynchings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1891_New_Orleans_lynchings