You must log in or # to comment.
I understand nostalgia, but I, for one, am not nostalgic for persistence hunting and foraging.
Whenever there are those anthropology shows where someone takes a camera into some place deep in the jungle where people still live some version of a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, there do seem to be some good points. They work hard, but there’s also a lot of relaxing. They can’t do much at night, so there’s often singing and dancing when the sun goes down. OTOH, there’s a lot of death. Child mortality is high, injuries that would be easily treated in a modern city are death sentences. And, there’s not much room for experimentation, following a different path, etc. Gender roles are rigid. Boys do what their father did. Girls do what their mother did. Life has been essentially unchanged as far back as anybody can remember, so you better accept that because as soon as you’re born your path is set.
And, as others have said, that only works in places that have abundant food year-round. Otherwise it’s way worse, with a lot more hard work just to not starve.
That makes me wonder about the hunter-gatherer lifestyle in areas that became the centres for farming, like the fertile crescent.
When they do find one of these primitive groups of people who are still living a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, they’re always going to be in some remote, inaccessible area. That’s the only way that they could still be doing hunting and gathering without the modern world catching up to them. But, that means that a whole lot of the world’s best land is unavailable to them because it’s where modern civilization exists.
So, what would a hunter-gatherer lifestyle have been like in the Fertile Crescent? Would it have been significantly easier than a hunter-gatherer lifestyle deep in the jungle in Indonesia or in the Amazon? It would have to have been easier than the hunter-gatherers who still hunt and gather in the Kalahari Desert, for example.
Fertile Crescent is a bit of a special case because they relied very heavily on their rivers, similar to Egypt. The land is kind of a wasteland already if you’re not immediately near a river or hand-dug canal.
I’m no historian or anthropologist so I’m just making things up here. But, I would guess that it’s not significantly easier than the hunter-gatherer that still exist. Mostly because I think otherwise they wouldn’t have switched to farming. The hunter-gathers that exist nowadays may lack formal education, but that doesn’t mean they’re all complete idiots. Somewhere in the last 30000 years some of them must have figured out that plants grow on the place you drop seeds. They haven’t switched to farming because it wasn’t worth the effort. Of course this is complicated by the issue that the amount of effort it takes to farm also varies from place to place. I’d guess farming is very hard in the desert. In the jungle farming is also difficult if you don’t have durable (i.e steel) implements to cut down hardwood trees. But given the climate hunting and gathering year round seems relatively easy there. The fertile crescent has relatively easy farming, but enough seasonal changes to make year round hunting-gathering much more risky.
I’m definitely going to run the risk of sounding very privileged here, but “they work hard, but there’s also a lot of relaxing. They can’t do much at night, so there’s often singing and dancing when the sun goes down” sounds quite a lot like my job, the jobs of my friends, the jobs of my parents and of my parents’ friends, and apparently the jobs of most people in my town because all of our pubs are relatively full every night.
When I’m done with work for the evening, usually between 1730 and 2000, that remaining time is mine. It’s not loads of time, but it’s mine. I can go out, or see friends, or hang out listening to music. I can get up early and see friends too. I understand that must be a lucky position to be in but I’m sure a lot of other people could also do this, right? Sure the budget is tight, and I have to be careful that I don’t go out every night and spend too much money, but yknow… Singing and dancing and relaxing etc still happens!
It’s not either-or. We don’t have to rewind time. What we need to do is learn from the past. What we gained and what we lost on the way.
Today there is a pervasive culture of individual responsibility, hustle, self improvement, competition… This is killing us all inside while benefiting the 0.01%. we need to learn the value of community again. We are pack animals, we have survived by sticking together and taking care of eachother for millennia.
Unless you lived in an area that had winter, and had to stockpile resource so you didn’t starve for 2-6 month soft the year.
Then someone had to pick the berries and then someone had to preserve the berries or cook the berries and someone had to store or transport the berries as you moved camp around etc.
I hate it when people make it sound like cavemen lived in some sort of equalitarian resource rich utopia.
Then you sit around painting fat horses on the walls for 2-6 months.
Carving statuettes of fat titted big booty ladies for “Ceremonial purposes”
Unless you lived in an area that had winter, and had to stockpile resource so you didn’t starve for 2-6 month soft the year.
and that’s why humanity was constrained to africa for most of its time on earth
I lived in a subsistence farming community that did everything by hand. Same techniques and crops for literally millennia. 450 or so people in mud huts.
Overall, no one wants this life. It’s back-breaking work. Kids don’t get counted in the census until they’re 5 because child mortality is so high. Women meeting at the well was the highlight of their day bceause it was the only thing they saw other people. If anyone was smart enough to learn to read and go to school, they usually left the village for better opportunities.
Everyone worked longer hours than a 9-5 because it’s agriculture. Rain doesn’t care about holidays or the weekend. Up before the sun every day for a few months. Most people in bed 2 hours after sundown.
Sure, people smiled. People laughed and had joy in their lives. But people also were just as petty and mean and clique-y as anywhere else. The only drama was on the radio and between each other.
3/10. Don’t generally recommend.
In my parents’ villages… they told me had fucking parasitic worms that creep up and will bit you and suck your blood and like feed off of your blood… I mean you don’t even see them coming when you’re busy working. And I was told that it’s very painful.
Like ew, that’s all I need to hear and I instantly hate rural areas forever. It’s why everyone in China wants to go to cities for work, farming is horrible. Also no machineary like the US has, it’s all manual.
Are you talking about leeches?
No idea. It was just described to me, not named. Not sure if my grandmother even had an education during that era of China, she was born just a few months before the PRC was proclaimed
Not to go all socialist here, but we create more than enough sustenance to not have to work so hard. But we’ve organized society to let a few people have all the surplus.
No, no. Feel free to go all socialist here. That’s what Lemmy is for. :)
Say what you will, but my evolved, neurodivergent, autistic brain is perfectly adapted to this overstimulated work life.
Also, I desperately need to know why everything is futile and no one seems to care.
Ah well. Back to work!
This life is what you get. It’s up to you what you make of it. Looking to external sources for “sense” or “meaning” is a fool’s errand.
Meaning is what you make of it.
It’s as corny as it is true.
deleted by creator
In front of?
Yeah
Edit: it means the same thing in this context
Also, I desperately need to know why everything is futile and no one seems to care.
most things are futile and nobody cares because for most people, the process is the goal. i.e. people only care about continuing the process, no matter whether it leads to any meaningful results or not. and that’s why they don’t care whether there’s meaningful results either.
The futile
The futile
It outlives the beautiful
The futile the futile the futile soI’m eating rat poison for dinner
Pull the chord from the phone
I am dining alone
I agree that the rigid 9-5 is not fulfilling for a lot of people, and would even go so far as to say we’d be happier as a whole if we could work outside of that prescribed structure.
I have to assume this person is being massively facetious with the tone of this tweet though. Obviously it’s twitter so it’s nonsense, but no, you wouldn’t just shoot the shit, pick some berries, and then chill out. You never been farming? It’s miserable, hard work. And when I was doing that, it was safe in the knowledge that I had food in my fridge and cupboards, so I wasn’t totally reliant on the food I could pick. And that’s farming, i.e. an established plot of land where I know food is meant to be, grown by me and people before me, that I should be able to pick from.
If I was scavenging, on unknown land? No fuckin way dude, honestly call me a weakling but I’ll work a 9-5 if it means I can afford (and have the opportunity to pick from a decent variety of) fair quality food, have decent leisure time to myself, and not have to worry about whether the food I’m picking, if I can find it, is gonna make me shit myself to death.
I have issues with the system, massive issues with the system, and I recognise I’m privileged to be in the position where my 9-5 makes me miserable but not suicidal and where the shops around me stock a variety of food, year-round, all of which I can try with a little bit of careful budgeting. It is definitely better than dying of bad berry disease in a god-forsaken cave.
The key here is (emphasis added):
I’ll work a 9-5 if it means I can afford… …fair quality food
I know you mention your privilege, and I’m glad you’re in the position you’re in where your job gives you the means and you live where you have access to a variety of good quality food. (I’m not glad the job makes you miserable.)
For so many, that’s just not the case. We can’t afford it, or if we can, we’re not just working a 9-5, we’re working two or more jobs, 10 or more hours a day, and shitty hours, more than five days a week, living in food deserts where food quality is terrible, and on and on.
Now, I agree with you. I’d be perfectly happy working my main job (I work two), if it meant I could afford to live my life without the constant stress of trying to afford to just exist.
Compare that to hunter gatherer lifestyle, where they worked to hunt/gather/shelter/etc themselves for 20ish hours a week and had significantly more leisure time and less stress.
Given the choice between the two, I’d live the hunter gatherer lifestyle rather than working 50+ hours a week as a wage slave to barely keep my head above water. And I know that’s not all daisies and rainbows either, but fuck capitalism and this construct we’re currently living in.
And the next day you followed an antelope for 14 hours until it couldn’t continue to run, you stabbed it with a spear, and drug it half a dozen miles back to camp.
“Picking berries and hanging out” is something that happened sometimes. What happened most of the time was hard as fuck work to make sure you and your family didn’t starve to death.
A global modeling study of foraging time found typical foraging requirements of about 3.5–5.5 hours per person per day, though this varies with environment and productivity.
Using those numbers for a family of 6, that means each of the parents are foraging 10.5+ hours a day to make sure everyone is fed (no, your 1-year-old isn’t doing any meaningful work). And that meets only one of the basic needs for survival. More hours per day must go into meeting those other needs as well. Shelter, potable water, clothing, medicine, and heat doesn’t come free. Far, far from it.
As I said, what happened most of the time was hard as fuck work to make sure you and your family survive.
Nuclear family wasn’t a thing for hunter gatherers. Tribe was 25 people strong on the low side, and 250 people strong on the high side.
And then you died of a tooth infection at the ripe age of 17.
Return to Monk?
Natalie: Are you afraid of frogs?
Adrian Monk: I don’t know. I’ve never been this close to one. [A frog lands on Monk’s shoe] Yes. The answer is yes. Put frogs on the list. Where’s the list?
Natalie: I got it. I got it. Where does it go?
Adrian Monk: Put them between possums and, uh, soccer riots. No, no, no. Uh, after after soccer riots. And before, uh, before hailstones. Yeah, so it goes…
Natalie: I got it, I got it: Soccer riots, frogs, hailstones.
Adrian Monk: At least now we know. Information really is power.
Statistically a group of 27 mating pairs is the minimum you can have before you run the risk of not having enough girls born to continue the population
You don’t reproduce within the same band.
Bands meet with other bands for that.
Historically when there weren’t enough women in the group they would raid another group and kidnap women in order to have enough children to continue their group. With cooperation, groups began to trade girls for goods with other groups. It is likely that this caused the decline of matriarchal households, because the new girls were foreign to the group and living in the home with her new husband and the husband’s mother.
The reality is much more complex that that.
And concerning population collapse, it’s possible for a population to disappear if there’s under a thousand isolated people. Disease, inbreeding, loss of crucial knowledge, climatic change, extreme weather, are all existential risks that a small population are exposed to.
There’s a lot of wisdom in this even though it’s oversimplified.
For me, the smaller I make my world the happier I seem to be. I spend most of my non-job and non-sleep time hanging with my family, working on my house, and doing what are essentially farm chores to take care of all our pets.
Working with your hands and engaging all your senses with real stimulus from the natural world is a huge part of it, even as somebody who has been terminally online since the 90s.
I thought it was more like a hundred
Eesh, no thanks. Thirty is company, but a hundred’s a crowd
I think I need at least 100.
Maybe you’re right, because you know at least half of them are gonna be bastards. Good thinking
what if luck is not your thing and you finish with 100 assholes instead of 30?
Well fuck, this is why I wanted it to be thirty. You could just about kill that many assholes!
Evolution continues. Some will survive.
You were also lucky if you lived to thirty
My son said this is untrue. Childhood mortality brings the mean down. If you lived past 8 you typically lived to 60+
