Huh, US people are modern day hunter gatherers, how about that.
Comment on Excellent point...
PugJesus@piefed.social 11 hours ago
First part is true. We didn’t evolve to have ‘jobs’, but instead to live in small and unspecialized societies.
Second half is an absurdly utopian view of hunter-gatherer societies. Hunter-gatherer societies do less work than subsistence farmers, but more work than modern day 40-hour workweek laborers. Not only that, but it comes at a price of severe food insecurity and low survival rates for anyone with serious health problems.
AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world 5 hours ago teyrnon@sh.itjust.works 9 hours ago
“Work,” following herds of game and hunting, is not the same thing as schlepping it to some multinational soulless corp 5 days or more a week for what is now approaching starvation wages for many.
The hunter gatherers are understood to have had more free time, and a higher standard of living in many respects, than their ancestors that started to farm, and were subsequently conquered by organized groups of armed men that subjugated them.
PugJesus@piefed.social 8 hours ago
“Work,” following herds of game and hunting, is not the same thing as schlepping it to some multinational soulless corp 5 days or more a week for what is now approaching starvation wages for many.
You’re right, it’s much fucking harder and ‘starvation wages’ in the context of hunter-gatherer society is fucking laughable.
Don’t mistake an unfair scenario in the modern day with it being worse than the past.
The hunter gatherers are understood to have had more free time,
Slightly more, yes.
and a higher standard of living in many respects,
Fucking what.
Material accumulation was only possible with the advent of sedentary societies, which were overwhelmingly based on subsistence farming.
than their ancestors that started to farm, and were subsequently conquered by organized groups of armed men that subjugated them.
The ’neat’ notion of hunter-gatherer societies being overwhelmingly conquered is deeply outdated - as is, for that matter, the notion of a strict and immediate demarcation between hunter-gatherer and sedentary farming societies in most regions.
rumschlumpel@feddit.org 4 hours ago
Hunter-gatherers definitely had a lower quality of life in many material ways, but I’d assume that they were doing pretty well in terms of social and psychological wellbeing.
PugJesus@piefed.social 3 hours ago
I dunno that I’d take a stance either way. “Evolved for” is different from “thrives in”, after all. We also evolved for the physical health conditions of being pre-civilizational hunter-gatherers, but that doesn’t actually mean that our physical health is optimal in the conditions we evolved for.
teyrnon@sh.itjust.works 7 hours ago
As to the last paragraph, I said the opposite, that farmers were subjugated in a way the tribal hunter gatherers were not.
You can talk better or worse, but for a lot of people, life is hell right now. More than you may know. The people building you phones for instance. Or making your clothes. Or most of your other cheap bullshit we used to make here with union labour.
arrow74@lemmy.zip 10 hours ago
Damn beat me to it
Only caveat is I wouldn’t say they did “less” work than contemporary subsistence farmers. They did more varied work. The repetitive work done by a subsistence farmer left definitive marks on the bones and led to conditions like arthritis. For the hunters gathers their bone density points to high levels of activity, and I doubt they were doing intense exercise regiments
merc@sh.itjust.works 7 hours ago
The first part isn’t true. We evolved to do whatever’s necessary to survive and pass on our genes. Whether that’s living in small societies and foraging (and fucking), or farming, or hunting, or living in big cities going out to night clubs so we can get laid. Our bodies haven’t changed too much from those of apes who live in small societies and hunt and forage. But, evolution gave us a huge brain and doesn’t take millennia of evolution to adapt.
Even though are brains are adaptable, there are limits. In many ways the brain processes the world in a way that’s useful for a primate living in a small group in a savanna surrounded by possible threats. For example, if the grass is moving in a certain way, a brain that interprets that as having meaning might survive better than one that doesn’t. Maybe there’s a lion approaching in a stealthy way. That way of assuming there’s a brain behind a pattern leads humans to believe in gods, or to think that ChatGPT is their girlfriend. That’s something that might be a maladaptive trait in the modern world, but not enough for evolution to strongly select against it.
As for hunter gatherers, they didn’t have exercise regimens, or form into regiments.
arrow74@lemmy.zip 7 hours ago
You misunderstood, all humans have the potential for that level of bone density. It is lifestyle determined. Basically as your muscles pull on your bone, particularly in childhood through early adulthood, your bone mass increases. The more physical labor you do the more your bone mass increases.
So prehistoric hunter gathers had higher bone densities on average than contemporary farmers. And more than most modern humans. Not because our bodies changed, but because our activities did.
Of course all of these averages are on distribution curves. The exercise bit was a joke since the only modern people with close to the same bone density would be athletes
PugJesus@piefed.social 8 hours ago
It’s generally accepted that, in terms of hours-per-day, hunter-gatherers worked (and still work) less time than subsistence farmers.
arrow74@lemmy.zip 7 hours ago
I generally disagree, but my specialty is not Neolithic people’s nor hunter gathers. I’m pulling in mostly my general coursework, but as I was taught the skeletal evidence points otherwise.
If you’re relying on any studies using modern hunter gatherer groups as an analog that’s largely been discounted through skeletal comparison.
minorkeys@sh.itjust.works 3 hours ago
Yeah but we could do it waaaaay better now.
Darkenfolk@sh.itjust.works 1 hour ago
Could we though?