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> For around 280,000 years, roughly 95 percent of our history as Homo sapiens, we lived as hunter-gatherers. OT, but I find this fact mindboggling whenever I r
by xg15 8mo ago
> For around 280,000 years, roughly 95 percent of our history as Homo sapiens, we lived as hunter-gatherers.
OT, but I find this fact mindboggling whenever I read it.
Our way of timekeeping and general education emphasizes the last 2 millennia. Popular (highschool level) history usually goes back maybe 5-8. The furthest is maybe the end of the ice age ~14 millennia ago.
But then you learn there are still 270 millennia of human history left that we know almost nothing of...
- sdenton4 8mo agoAnd the total human population in prehistory was tiny, likely under a million for much of that time, and possibly dropping to a few thousand at some point. The total human experience of those 250k years may not be much more than the last few thousand...
- xg15 8mo agoGood point, and in a way even more crazy.