3 ms·
People who point this out tend to forget that's because for most of that long history the alternative options were pretty much: 1. be born to the right parents,
by terminalshort 1y ago
People who point this out tend to forget that's because for most of that long history the alternative options were pretty much: 1. be born to the right parents, 2. peasant farm laborer. We're not going back to that, so might as well forget it for purposes of analysis.
- Balgair 1y agoAside: Bret Devereaux has a series on the remarkably similar lives of a peasant farm laborers throughout time and space here: https://acoup.blog/2025/07/11/collections-life-work-death-and-the-peasant-part-i-households/ https://acoup.blog/2025/07/11/collections-life-work-death-an... TLDR: Holy shit, so much infant mortality, penicillin and vaccination are god-sends, holy shit. Also, your fields were all over the place and everything extra gets eaten up by taxes from Big Man.
- fulafel 1y agoThings really went downhill when people started farming. Wars, disease, hard labor, etc.
- Balgair 1y agoProbably not? I can't find the link, but I think Bret also had an article on how nomadic cultures had generally worse lives than settled ones, from what little we can know. If I recall correctly, it's hard to tell, as nomadic cultures don't really record things. But from the burial sites and little other evidence we have, it seems (again via mostly their bones) that their lives were much harder, shorter, more disease ridden, and more violent than what we see in agricultural remains. But also, trying to say for certain that any one set of bones was from a nomad, a settler, or something of a mix, was very difficult. Like, such categories aren't really all that 'real' when you have to sit down and fit a particular femur into a category. But, again, I want to stress that I'm trying to recall something here, and that the thing I'm recalling also stressed that the physical evidence is quite scant as is and very hard to discern when you have it.
- fulafel 1y agoSounds like you've been reading stuff that has the opposite views on this than what I have. I thought about linking book and journal article sources but i'm sure you can look up the scientific consensus yourself and it'll be more credible that way.
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 1y agoI long for the romantic life of rolling into town, offering fair work for fair wages, having a fling with one or two maidens, and then moving on It might have only been possible for a small handful of people who were, unlike me, strapping, young, men, and fictional
- Rover222 1y agoI don’t know, kinda feel like this is the modern digital nomad life.
- wolvesechoes 1y ago> We're not going back to that I think future holds couple of surprises for you.