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I imagine that a massive mammoth would require the whole village to bring to the ground and back to the village. Conversely, the whole village isn't needed if i

I imagine that a massive mammoth would require the whole village to bring to the ground and back to the village. Conversely, the whole village isn't needed if it is just chicken on the menu tonight. Hence, I would argue that you need a relatively complex society if dinner is mega fauna. I also don't entirely follow your point that goes from 'backbreaking work' to 'sedentary lifestyle'. The latter only happened in the post war years when we worked out how to have all of the energy we need on tap. Before then, life was hard, albeit not for everyone since we have hierarchies.

AlotOfReading 1y ago
That point is one of many reasons good archaeologists avoid conflating the idea of social complexity with sedentary societies. Modern megafaunal hunters like the Hadza are socially complex. What they don't have are sedentary lifestyles and permanent, entrenched social stratification, even though they're aware that these things are possible.
Qem 1y ago
Meat spoils fast. So your society would need no record keeping(writing) because without refrigeration or salt mining you can't store meat like grain. Animals move around, so taking tons of meat kilometers back to the village takes time that's already counting for spoilage. So you are less likely to have a village in first place. That would be more pratical to go full nomadic and set temporary camp near the carcass of the more recently slaughtered multi-ton beast. No need to transport anthing besides yourself. > I also don't entirely follow your point that goes from 'backbreaking work' to 'sedentary lifestyle'. The latter only happened in the post war years when we worked out how to have all of the energy we need on tap By sedentary lifestyle I don't mean individual sedentarism, like being a couch potato. I mean society-wide, in the sense of not living in permanent settlements were people spend their lives mostly in the same plot of land, but are constantly on the move.
- tokai 1y ago
  You can dry meat. In areas with permafrost you can dig it down and freeze it. You can also just let it ferment. From places like Gontsy we know some hunter gathers transported their kills back to their village before processing it. https://arheologia.com.ua/index.php/arheologia/article/view/45 https://arheologia.com.ua/index.php/arheologia/article/view/...
tokai 1y ago
>I also don't entirely follow your point that goes from 'backbreaking work' There is research pointing to hunter gathers only needed to do a couple of hours of work daily, while neolithic people engaged in agriculture had to work much longer hours for the same kcal output. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31832-8/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
- throwup238 1y ago
  The anthropological research that came up with 2-3 hours of work per day only looked at time spent away from camp gathering, hunting, and fishing. When you account for food processing, cooking, water collection, firewood gathering, tool making, shelter maintenance, and textile production the numbers go way up. 40-50 hours per week for a modern hunter gatherer tribe is the floor, and the numbers for a prehistoric hunter gatherer society likely looked significantly worse. Once migrations are taken into account (which is why they do 2-3 hours per day of hunting), the numbers really don’t look that rosy. This compares to a floor of 50-70 hours per week for premodern agriculture. The other side of it is that many of our estimates for agriculture come from hierarchical societies where a significant fraction of the work performed every year was heavily taxed. It’s hard to disentangle how much work was performed for sustenance of one’s family or village compared to the greater societies development (noble extravagance and all).
HarHarVeryFunny 1y ago
It would obviously be more work to bring home a mammoth than something smaller like a deer, but I don't think that that suggests anything much different about the complexity of society. At the end of the day it's just a bunch of hunters bringing home the bacon, perhaps fetching the women to help if there was a lot to bring back. I'm reminded of the "Alone" TV series where one contestant shot an 800lb Ox with a bow and arrow and single-handedly butchered it and carried it back 2 miles to his camp (requiring about a dozen trips).
fuzzfactor 1y ago
>a massive mammoth would require the whole village to bring to the ground Now if they can only all pull together as a team, it's double Whoppers for everybody. After they come out the winner :)

AlotOfReading 1y ago

That point is one of many reasons good archaeologists avoid conflating the idea of social complexity with sedentary societies. Modern megafaunal hunters like the Hadza are socially complex. What they don't have are sedentary lifestyles and permanent, entrenched social stratification, even though they're aware that these things are possible.

Qem 1y ago

Meat spoils fast. So your society would need no record keeping(writing) because without refrigeration or salt mining you can't store meat like grain. Animals move around, so taking tons of meat kilometers back to the village takes time that's already counting for spoilage. So you are less likely to have a village in first place. That would be more pratical to go full nomadic and set temporary camp near the carcass of the more recently slaughtered multi-ton beast. No need to transport anthing besides yourself. > I also don't entirely follow your point that goes from 'backbreaking work' to 'sedentary lifestyle'. The latter only happened in the post war years when we worked out how to have all of the energy we need on tap By sedentary lifestyle I don't mean individual sedentarism, like being a couch potato. I mean society-wide, in the sense of not living in permanent settlements were people spend their lives mostly in the same plot of land, but are constantly on the move.

tokai 1y ago
You can dry meat. In areas with permafrost you can dig it down and freeze it. You can also just let it ferment. From places like Gontsy we know some hunter gathers transported their kills back to their village before processing it. https://arheologia.com.ua/index.php/arheologia/article/view/45 https://arheologia.com.ua/index.php/arheologia/article/view/...

tokai 1y ago

>I also don't entirely follow your point that goes from 'backbreaking work' There is research pointing to hunter gathers only needed to do a couple of hours of work daily, while neolithic people engaged in agriculture had to work much longer hours for the same kcal output. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31832-8/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

throwup238 1y ago
The anthropological research that came up with 2-3 hours of work per day only looked at time spent away from camp gathering, hunting, and fishing. When you account for food processing, cooking, water collection, firewood gathering, tool making, shelter maintenance, and textile production the numbers go way up. 40-50 hours per week for a modern hunter gatherer tribe is the floor, and the numbers for a prehistoric hunter gatherer society likely looked significantly worse. Once migrations are taken into account (which is why they do 2-3 hours per day of hunting), the numbers really don’t look that rosy. This compares to a floor of 50-70 hours per week for premodern agriculture. The other side of it is that many of our estimates for agriculture come from hierarchical societies where a significant fraction of the work performed every year was heavily taxed. It’s hard to disentangle how much work was performed for sustenance of one’s family or village compared to the greater societies development (noble extravagance and all).

HarHarVeryFunny 1y ago

It would obviously be more work to bring home a mammoth than something smaller like a deer, but I don't think that that suggests anything much different about the complexity of society. At the end of the day it's just a bunch of hunters bringing home the bacon, perhaps fetching the women to help if there was a lot to bring back. I'm reminded of the "Alone" TV series where one contestant shot an 800lb Ox with a bow and arrow and single-handedly butchered it and carried it back 2 miles to his camp (requiring about a dozen trips).

fuzzfactor 1y ago

>a massive mammoth would require the whole village to bring to the ground Now if they can only all pull together as a team, it's double Whoppers for everybody. After they come out the winner :)