I think you're creating a false dichotomy here - either some massive interconnected, and relatively singular, society - or people living literally alone. If you

I think you're creating a false dichotomy here - either some massive interconnected, and relatively singular, society - or people living literally alone. If you're at all into video games, the game Kingdom Come Deliverance, is unique in that it's not only based on real 15th century European (Bohemia - present day Czech Republic) locations but engaged in extensive research to create as accurate a physical representation of these places as possible. So it can give you a tremendous feel for how "society" in the past might have felt in terms of scale and layout. And a decent sized city, would typically be smaller than a large suburban neighborhood now a days, in spite of there being hundreds of millions of humans alive at the time. And so I wouldn't view stuff as like 'society vs outsider', but rather large numbers of mostly self sufficient societies. ---- The channel discussion is really interesting! The original Primitive Technology channel [1] is 100% authentic and an amazing channel. But its growing popularity spawned a bunch of imitators including the Cambodian one (or 10) you're referencing. The imitators began doing ever more elaborate stuff for clicks, except it pretty much begin being obviously faked at some point - like multi-story spring fed swimming pools with crystal clear water, all constructed with extensive cuts and editing that was the video version of this meme. [2] For the original you can watch him do stuff in real time, with no cuts or editing. And it's very doable yourself. Townsends uses edits and cuts, but again there's nothing like 'zomg how could they possibly do that' - it's just historical recreations, like building a log cabin, blacksmithing, and so on. All the stuff that would have been carried out in beginning one of these many little autonomous 'mini societies.' [1] - https://www.youtube.com/@primitivetechnology9550 https://www.youtube.com/@primitivetechnology9550 [2] - https://s3.amazonaws.com/marquee-test-akiaisur2rgicbmpehea/wBn1xt8Q0Sy016ajDSt0_Screen%20Shot%202015-11-17%20at%204.01.11%20PM.png https://s3.amazonaws.com/marquee-test-akiaisur2rgicbmpehea/w...