It’s generally accepted that, in terms of hours-per-day, hunter-gatherers worked (and still work) less time than subsistence farmers.
Comment on Excellent point...
arrow74@lemmy.zip 3 weeks agoDamn 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
PugJesus@piefed.social 3 weeks ago
arrow74@lemmy.zip 3 weeks 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.
merc@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks 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 3 weeks 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