> If you think artists find it hard to scratch a living these days, you're not going to find much support for following your passion when there is hunting, gath

> If you think artists find it hard to scratch a living these days, you're not going to find much support for following your passion when there is hunting, gathering and defending against predators to do. You seem to seriously overestimate the average workload of prehistoric communities (or underestimating the average workload of present day individuals). Also I don't think the concept of making "a living" transfers to gift economies. Nor do you need to spend 16 hours a day every day "being an artist" to develop remarkable artistic skill. Strict division of labor is a fairly recent development that in its present form stems from industrialisation requiring work to be split into discrete processes to enable automation.