i think most of us couldn’t, but i wonder sometimes if i’d been born before agriculture what it’d be like.
i wonder what it’d be like to just generally live in simpler times.
There was more ambient danger and death, sure, yeah. You had to dedicate way more of your grey matter to surviving your environment - sounds like it sucks
but we weren’t meant for whatever this is, and there’s no way to make it more like what we were meant for without abandoning it all outright. at least that stuff is closer to who we actually are.
I think it varied quite a lot depending on the location and the time. We’re talking really hard to comprehend lengths of pre-historic time. Like 300,000 years of what we consider a modern human.
And the differences between hunting and gathering, and agriculture as @xj9@hexbear.net says are not as clear cut. Many “Hunter-Gatherer” societies might be moving between semi-permanent seasonal camps (sometimes leaving behind structures and dwellings) where they had planted different crops along the routes and at the places, so they could change with the climate and animal migration
Other permanent “agricultural” settlements, might have been permanent communities with crops growing, livestock etc, but also significant portions of their population going on hunting trips that might take weeks or pasturing livestock in different regions. And almost certainly some amount of foraging local areas. We know even medieval peasants still did that.
At any rates both might have had periods of peace and abundance, versus scarcity and extreme violence. There’s probably some hunter-gatherers whose lives were like the garden of Eden, others who it was like The Road. Likewise there’s probably farming communites who were like “we’ve cracked the code free food forever” and others a constant life of paranoia peering over your hill fort’s walls incase a neighboring tribes is going to attack, loot your granary and kill you.
Some places also just have consistently good weather, while others are seasonal, and then others have decades long cycles that decimate a region every once and a while, like the wrath of god, as well.
My understanding of nomadic life is that (at least in my NA region historically) its more like you move between areas to stay in comfy weather. Each camp has its own jobs and crops and such that are taken care of during a season and left alone until the next time you come back around. I think hunting and gathering is often not represented in a sensible way.
i think most of us couldn’t, but i wonder sometimes if i’d been born before agriculture what it’d be like.
i wonder what it’d be like to just generally live in simpler times.
There was more ambient danger and death, sure, yeah. You had to dedicate way more of your grey matter to surviving your environment - sounds like it sucks
but we weren’t meant for whatever this is, and there’s no way to make it more like what we were meant for without abandoning it all outright. at least that stuff is closer to who we actually are.
I think it varied quite a lot depending on the location and the time. We’re talking really hard to comprehend lengths of pre-historic time. Like 300,000 years of what we consider a modern human.
And the differences between hunting and gathering, and agriculture as @xj9@hexbear.net says are not as clear cut. Many “Hunter-Gatherer” societies might be moving between semi-permanent seasonal camps (sometimes leaving behind structures and dwellings) where they had planted different crops along the routes and at the places, so they could change with the climate and animal migration
Other permanent “agricultural” settlements, might have been permanent communities with crops growing, livestock etc, but also significant portions of their population going on hunting trips that might take weeks or pasturing livestock in different regions. And almost certainly some amount of foraging local areas. We know even medieval peasants still did that.
At any rates both might have had periods of peace and abundance, versus scarcity and extreme violence. There’s probably some hunter-gatherers whose lives were like the garden of Eden, others who it was like The Road. Likewise there’s probably farming communites who were like “we’ve cracked the code free food forever” and others a constant life of paranoia peering over your hill fort’s walls incase a neighboring tribes is going to attack, loot your granary and kill you.
Some places also just have consistently good weather, while others are seasonal, and then others have decades long cycles that decimate a region every once and a while, like the wrath of god, as well.
My understanding of nomadic life is that (at least in my NA region historically) its more like you move between areas to stay in comfy weather. Each camp has its own jobs and crops and such that are taken care of during a season and left alone until the next time you come back around. I think hunting and gathering is often not represented in a sensible way.
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