Yeah, its like none of these people have ever watched the series “Alone”. Hunter gathering is hard AF. There is a reason there was a population explosion when farming was invented, its WAY easier to survive.
You’d have the entire weight, knowledge and land maintenance and management of generations of your ancestors to help.
A random bunch of modern Americans with guns being dropped in the middle of nowhere is not the same thing at all…
Like “before agriculture”, which we are learning more and more makes little sense, people still managed plants in large scales. The woods around your village would be kept clean, and edible plants would be incentivized to grow. Hunting trails kept and traps set. Chances are there would be robust fishing with nets, as most humans lived near water.
And also, even “before agriculture”, there was horticulture. People grew and kept small gardens in their villages with edible plants. Many fruits and perennial edible vegetables were ‘domesticated’ “before agriculture”.
Chances are, if you weren’t born in a time of wild weather events, and you lived around 30o up or down the equator, you’d be fine food wise. You’d help with food, some people might be specialized in it, and your diets are diverse and healthy. You’d do other stuff with your time, make ceremonial clothes and instruments, weave, make baskets, make stone tools, make art, train children in crafts and arts, maybe you’d be the woodsman keeping the woods clean, safe, and teeming with edible plants.
Life obviously wouldn’t be easy, because even simple disease or injury could kill the average person. And with small numbers (100-150 is more realistic), it’s easy to reach numbers too small to maintain society with one or two disasters.
But on a day to day basis, life is for sure much easier and calm than a typical “post-agriculture” society.
“Easier” isn’t quite the word. It’s generally accepted that subsistence farming takes more labor per day per person to survive. Reliable is more the draw - if you have a choice between working 10 hours a day, but with a 10% chance of starving every year; or 14 hours a day with a 2% chance of starving every year, most people will choose the 14 hours a day - and the 14 hours a day choice will end up with an exponentially larger population after a dozen generations.
It probably has a lot more to do with farming supporting more people, which results in being able to support non-farmers who are either “nobility” of some kind, and/or warriors who will defend the farming territory and/or fight for better farming territory. In addition, I get the impression that once farming becomes possible, the “nobility” / “warrior” types stop forbidding hunting and gathering because hunter-gatherers are nomadic and they can’t easily be controlled and taxed. Some hunter-gatherers still exist on the fringes of society, but it’s normally not an option for most people. And, when the hunter-gatherers have one of those periods where they’re not able to successfully hunt or gather, in desperation I would bet that they often become raiders, raiding the farmers. So, it’s not like individual people are choosing between being hunter-gatherers or farmers. It’s that there’s a breakthrough in the ability to farm, and everybody nearby is converted into farmers.
Nobility forbidding hunting and gathering is really more of a medieval phenomenon, and has much more to do with the nobility themselves becoming a large population and enjoying the hunt (and the meat that comes from it). If they didn’t forbid it, it would be overhunted, and then those filthy poors would be enjoying the meat that rightly belongs to the bluebloods!
There’s often, in early farming societies, a great deal of ‘fluidity’ between subsistence farming, raiding, and hunting-gathering. Subsistence farming dominates because of the aforementioned advantages, but a tribe engaging in subsistence farming might up and burn all their houses down and go on the warpath, or leave the fields unsown for a few years while ranging the local woods. The early Germanic tribes are a great example of this, both in the variation from tribe-to-tribe, and in the way they could swiftly change from one mode of life to the other. The demarcation is not all that ‘strict’ compared to later ‘civilized’ societies which are, themselves, mostly surrounded by other subsistence farmers (or pastoralists).
While farmer vs. hunter-gatherer has much more to do with the community choice than the individual choice, even in the most settled sedentary premodern villages hunters and gatherers both remain as viable - and often specialized - ways of life.
But yes, generally the success of the sedentary farmers is not so much conversion (though there is that) as out-competing the hunter-gatherers.
I wonder how much of them shift had to do with weather patterns and rain/drought.
Or it even could have been to let fields recover, while foraging was good/easy.
Both of those are definite contributors - even ancient peoples understood that leaving land ‘fallow’ for a year or two led to better yields than plowing and planting every year.
It’s speculated by some, even, that climate change drove the entire ‘migration period’ which led Germanic tribes to overrun the Late Roman Empire, as their own lands became colder and less hospitable.
iirc, around the advent of agriculture, the average agriculturalist was significantly worse off than the average hunter-gatherer. They suffered from more malnutrition/nutritional deficiencies, had stunted growth, showed various signs of enduring backbreaking labor, and died younger if they lived past childhood. But the rate at which agriculturalist women got pregnant was 0.1% greater than that of hunter gatherer women, so… here we are.
Most of what we know about the work balance of pre historical humans is very speculative and based on very thin evidence.
In the strictest sense of pre-historical, sure.
In the sense of peoples who live in circumstances and technological constraints comparable to those pre-historical humans, we have plenty of evidence and ethnographic studies.
Some costal hunter gatherer socities got so good at fishing then really only worked a few hours a day. This is based primarily off of ethnographic evidence on the first contacts with Native Americans. And yes many had crops as well, but some groups were not really reliant on those.
That’s a very good caveat, but we still know that these socities had a lot of “free” time.
Free time is of course hard to define. If you have time to build a mound you have time outside of survival, but that may still be a mandatory societal obligation
That’d a bery good caveat, but we still know that these socities had a lot of “free” time.
Except I’m discussing literal survival. Protection from the elements and cold, gathering potable water, gathering and working materials for cooking and tools that are essential to processing catches to safely edible forms, etc etc etc. Coastal hunter-gatherer societies in particular are not standing in the surf collecting fish which just wash up on the shore; generally, it involves going out on the coastal waters in a boat - something which requires production, maintenance, tools for propulsion (like oars), and tools for fishing (like bone harpoons and nets). On top of that, most hunter-gatherer societies are not sedentary, which adds substantial travel time to the average workday per year.
The concept of hunter-gatherer societies having a lot of ‘free’ time springs from misconceptions like the above, confusing work for food with necessary work, in general. Hunter-gatherer societies have more free time than early sedentary subsistence farmers, but the difference is more 14 hour day vs. 10 hour day, not 14 hour day vs. 4 hour day.
Many of the costal socities of the southeastern united states became quite sedentary actually. All while still relying on wild food sources.
Like I said we have ethnographic evidence for this.
You are still making a good point in what these people needed for survival. Not quite sure why you felt the need to expand on the point I was agreeing with you on, but you are right those things take time.
We are disagreeing on how much time these things take. The historic accounts, ethnographic accounts, and archaeological evidence points to them having what I would classify as “a lot” of free time. Or at least more than you are assuming.
Of course these things are hard to directly quantify. We’ll never truly know if these people had 2 or 6 free daylight hours a day to engage in non-survival related activities. We know they had time for arts and mound construction. Those aren’t strictly survival, but human society likes to blend those lines. You don’t have to build a mound or create a necklace for survival, but there may be societal obligation to do so
Also to be clear from my first comment I was talking about certain societies not all hunter gatherers
Many of the costal socities of the southeastern united states became quite sedentary actually. All while still relying on wild food sources.
Of the Southeast? I thought you were talking about the Northwest. You can’t be serious. The Southeast was overwhelmingly farmer-dominated, and there’s only one set of mounds known to have been constructed in the area by hunter-gatherers.
We are disagreeing on how much time these things take. The historic accounts, ethnographic accounts, and archaeological evidence points to them having what I would classify as “a lot” of free time. Or at least more than you are assuming.
Curious, because it seems to me all the evidence points in the opposite direction - that hunter-gatherers did not have an overwhelming amount of free time when compared to subsistence farmers.
We know they had time for arts and mound construction.
I did also specify coastal societies. Evidence suggests that while there was some light agriculture that was no where near the bulk of their calories. Those primarily came from marine sources.
Florida and coastal Georgia are the best examples.
You find mounds scattered throughout, but you are right the largest examples are typically connected to farming reliant groups. Except on the coast you’ll see the opposite. However these do tend to be much smaller mound sites, and no I’m not speaking about the shell middens. You can argue if those were intentional or created as a result of natural refuse accumulation
Also great point on the farmers having time for other activities too. That’s a good point and I have no counter for it
I did also specify coastal societies. Evidence suggests that while there was some light agriculture that was no where near the bulk of their calories. Those primarily came from marine sources.
Everything I know about Native American coastal societies in the southeast, which admittedly is nowhere near my specialization or main field of interest, refers to them in context as agricultural and maize-oriented. Only a few societies along the the Caribbean were both sedentary and predominantly dependent on the sea for their sustenance, and the largest I know of, the Calusa, practiced aquaculture, which is more comparable to pastoralists than hunter-gatherers.
tbf, hunter-gatherer lifestyles are more work-intensive than that, even if still less work-intensive than subsistence farming.
Yeah, its like none of these people have ever watched the series “Alone”. Hunter gathering is hard AF. There is a reason there was a population explosion when farming was invented, its WAY easier to survive.
Not really a great comparison though.
You’d have the entire weight, knowledge and land maintenance and management of generations of your ancestors to help.
A random bunch of modern Americans with guns being dropped in the middle of nowhere is not the same thing at all…
Like “before agriculture”, which we are learning more and more makes little sense, people still managed plants in large scales. The woods around your village would be kept clean, and edible plants would be incentivized to grow. Hunting trails kept and traps set. Chances are there would be robust fishing with nets, as most humans lived near water.
And also, even “before agriculture”, there was horticulture. People grew and kept small gardens in their villages with edible plants. Many fruits and perennial edible vegetables were ‘domesticated’ “before agriculture”.
Chances are, if you weren’t born in a time of wild weather events, and you lived around 30o up or down the equator, you’d be fine food wise. You’d help with food, some people might be specialized in it, and your diets are diverse and healthy. You’d do other stuff with your time, make ceremonial clothes and instruments, weave, make baskets, make stone tools, make art, train children in crafts and arts, maybe you’d be the woodsman keeping the woods clean, safe, and teeming with edible plants.
Life obviously wouldn’t be easy, because even simple disease or injury could kill the average person. And with small numbers (100-150 is more realistic), it’s easy to reach numbers too small to maintain society with one or two disasters.
But on a day to day basis, life is for sure much easier and calm than a typical “post-agriculture” society.
“Easier” isn’t quite the word. It’s generally accepted that subsistence farming takes more labor per day per person to survive. Reliable is more the draw - if you have a choice between working 10 hours a day, but with a 10% chance of starving every year; or 14 hours a day with a 2% chance of starving every year, most people will choose the 14 hours a day - and the 14 hours a day choice will end up with an exponentially larger population after a dozen generations.
It probably has a lot more to do with farming supporting more people, which results in being able to support non-farmers who are either “nobility” of some kind, and/or warriors who will defend the farming territory and/or fight for better farming territory. In addition, I get the impression that once farming becomes possible, the “nobility” / “warrior” types stop forbidding hunting and gathering because hunter-gatherers are nomadic and they can’t easily be controlled and taxed. Some hunter-gatherers still exist on the fringes of society, but it’s normally not an option for most people. And, when the hunter-gatherers have one of those periods where they’re not able to successfully hunt or gather, in desperation I would bet that they often become raiders, raiding the farmers. So, it’s not like individual people are choosing between being hunter-gatherers or farmers. It’s that there’s a breakthrough in the ability to farm, and everybody nearby is converted into farmers.
Nobility forbidding hunting and gathering is really more of a medieval phenomenon, and has much more to do with the nobility themselves becoming a large population and enjoying the hunt (and the meat that comes from it). If they didn’t forbid it, it would be overhunted, and then those filthy poors would be enjoying the meat that rightly belongs to the bluebloods!
There’s often, in early farming societies, a great deal of ‘fluidity’ between subsistence farming, raiding, and hunting-gathering. Subsistence farming dominates because of the aforementioned advantages, but a tribe engaging in subsistence farming might up and burn all their houses down and go on the warpath, or leave the fields unsown for a few years while ranging the local woods. The early Germanic tribes are a great example of this, both in the variation from tribe-to-tribe, and in the way they could swiftly change from one mode of life to the other. The demarcation is not all that ‘strict’ compared to later ‘civilized’ societies which are, themselves, mostly surrounded by other subsistence farmers (or pastoralists).
While farmer vs. hunter-gatherer has much more to do with the community choice than the individual choice, even in the most settled sedentary premodern villages hunters and gatherers both remain as viable - and often specialized - ways of life.
But yes, generally the success of the sedentary farmers is not so much conversion (though there is that) as out-competing the hunter-gatherers.
I wonder how much of them shift had to do with weather patterns and rain/drought.
Or it even could have been to let fields recover, while foraging was good/easy.
Or just early ADHD?
Both of those are definite contributors - even ancient peoples understood that leaving land ‘fallow’ for a year or two led to better yields than plowing and planting every year.
It’s speculated by some, even, that climate change drove the entire ‘migration period’ which led Germanic tribes to overrun the Late Roman Empire, as their own lands became colder and less hospitable.
iirc, around the advent of agriculture, the average agriculturalist was significantly worse off than the average hunter-gatherer. They suffered from more malnutrition/nutritional deficiencies, had stunted growth, showed various signs of enduring backbreaking labor, and died younger if they lived past childhood. But the rate at which agriculturalist women got pregnant was 0.1% greater than that of hunter gatherer women, so… here we are.
Most of what we know about the work balance of pre historical humans is very speculative and based on very thin evidence.
In the strictest sense of pre-historical, sure.
In the sense of peoples who live in circumstances and technological constraints comparable to those pre-historical humans, we have plenty of evidence and ethnographic studies.
Totally depends on the environment you’re in.
Some costal hunter gatherer socities got so good at fishing then really only worked a few hours a day. This is based primarily off of ethnographic evidence on the first contacts with Native Americans. And yes many had crops as well, but some groups were not really reliant on those.
For food. Human labor for survival includes much more than food.
That’s a very good caveat, but we still know that these socities had a lot of “free” time.
Free time is of course hard to define. If you have time to build a mound you have time outside of survival, but that may still be a mandatory societal obligation
Except I’m discussing literal survival. Protection from the elements and cold, gathering potable water, gathering and working materials for cooking and tools that are essential to processing catches to safely edible forms, etc etc etc. Coastal hunter-gatherer societies in particular are not standing in the surf collecting fish which just wash up on the shore; generally, it involves going out on the coastal waters in a boat - something which requires production, maintenance, tools for propulsion (like oars), and tools for fishing (like bone harpoons and nets). On top of that, most hunter-gatherer societies are not sedentary, which adds substantial travel time to the average workday per year.
The concept of hunter-gatherer societies having a lot of ‘free’ time springs from misconceptions like the above, confusing work for food with necessary work, in general. Hunter-gatherer societies have more free time than early sedentary subsistence farmers, but the difference is more 14 hour day vs. 10 hour day, not 14 hour day vs. 4 hour day.
Many of the costal socities of the southeastern united states became quite sedentary actually. All while still relying on wild food sources.
Like I said we have ethnographic evidence for this.
You are still making a good point in what these people needed for survival. Not quite sure why you felt the need to expand on the point I was agreeing with you on, but you are right those things take time.
We are disagreeing on how much time these things take. The historic accounts, ethnographic accounts, and archaeological evidence points to them having what I would classify as “a lot” of free time. Or at least more than you are assuming.
Of course these things are hard to directly quantify. We’ll never truly know if these people had 2 or 6 free daylight hours a day to engage in non-survival related activities. We know they had time for arts and mound construction. Those aren’t strictly survival, but human society likes to blend those lines. You don’t have to build a mound or create a necklace for survival, but there may be societal obligation to do so
Also to be clear from my first comment I was talking about certain societies not all hunter gatherers
Of the Southeast? I thought you were talking about the Northwest. You can’t be serious. The Southeast was overwhelmingly farmer-dominated, and there’s only one set of mounds known to have been constructed in the area by hunter-gatherers.
Curious, because it seems to me all the evidence points in the opposite direction - that hunter-gatherers did not have an overwhelming amount of free time when compared to subsistence farmers.
Okay? So did sedentary farmers?
I did also specify coastal societies. Evidence suggests that while there was some light agriculture that was no where near the bulk of their calories. Those primarily came from marine sources.
Florida and coastal Georgia are the best examples.
You find mounds scattered throughout, but you are right the largest examples are typically connected to farming reliant groups. Except on the coast you’ll see the opposite. However these do tend to be much smaller mound sites, and no I’m not speaking about the shell middens. You can argue if those were intentional or created as a result of natural refuse accumulation
Also great point on the farmers having time for other activities too. That’s a good point and I have no counter for it
Everything I know about Native American coastal societies in the southeast, which admittedly is nowhere near my specialization or main field of interest, refers to them in context as agricultural and maize-oriented. Only a few societies along the the Caribbean were both sedentary and predominantly dependent on the sea for their sustenance, and the largest I know of, the Calusa, practiced aquaculture, which is more comparable to pastoralists than hunter-gatherers.