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You should probably revisit your assumption that life in paleolithic times was necessarily so terrible. I believed this by default as well before actually reading up on the topic. Let's start with the data we have: 1. From bones, we know that the average height decreased as people started farming. Bones became more fragile, teeth less healthy etc. This was probably caused by a worse diet and more disease. 2. By studying hunter gatheres in today's Africa, we know they spend less than 5 hours a day hunting and gathering. They spend much more time than us relaxing and socializing. 3. From bones we know that hunter gatherers very rarely showed signs of violent deaths (counter to the stereotype).

I'm sure there is conflicting research about this, but it's clearly not as cut and dry as you make it seem.

So if life in paleolithic times was actually pretty decent, why did people start doing agriculture you might ask? Because hunter gatherers would inevitably be conquered by those who did, because farming can support more people, leave a surplus than can feed armies, and give the opportunity to invent new technology. Hunting and gathering never produces such a surplus, and wild resources are only enough for smaller tribes.

That's not to say we'd be better off living like hunter gatherers today, but we should probably keep an open mind. Maybe we can learn something about how to best live our lives.

By "relaxing and socializing", what exactly do you mean? Do you think they opened a good book and a bottle of Bordeaux?

Leisure time isn't valuable unless you have something to fill it with.

Plus, most of those statistics about historically higher "leisure time" are misleading, because anything that wasn't professional work was probably personal work; mending clothes, performing the brutal labor associated with pre-industrial cooking, etc. I'm also skeptical of any such claims directed at pre-civilization humans, because it's not like they could do a very good job of writing down what they did that day.

Exactly that - they talked with each other, told stories, passed on oral histories, and created very high quality crafts.

There was labor, but it was not "brutal". Food preparation, tool/clothing repair, etc took up a lot of time but it was not difficult and could be done while socializing.

In the earliest journals of scholars who visited early Native American cultures, the scholars actually complained about being bored due to actual lack of work that needed to be done. Everyone really was just chilling.

Which very high quality crafts are you referring to? Every pre-agriculture artifact I've seen looks to have been made by a modern three year old. The only impressive thing I've seen come from pre-agriculture society is agriculture.

Have you ever done long-distance backpacking or similar outdoorsmanship? Even with modern outdoors tech, conditions are often really rough. Pre-agriculture people were even worse off. It was very much brutal. They also had to contend with unchecked disease, malnutrition, and lethal weather.

Does a life of "just chilling" sound tolerable to you? These people had no intellectual pursuits, nothing to strive for. If certain parts of humanity hadn't developed agriculture and eventually industry, humans would just keep rolling around in the dirt and dying at 50 until an asteroid took us out of our misery.

A lot of work today can be done while socializing as well; it isn't really balanced to discount extra non-hunting/gathering work time because it wasn't their primary role.

I think we can all come together behind the idea that being isolated inside in a cube farm for >8 hours a day with minimal social interaction or variety of stimulus is unhealthy.

> Leisure time isn't valuable unless you have something to fill it with.

Soylent gree^W^W Socializing is people!

Not but 150 years ago there were still hunter-gatherers who thrived in the form of native american tribes:

>Before our white brothers arrived to make us civilized men, we didn't have any kind of prison. Because of this, we didn't have any delinquents. Without a prison, there can't be no delinquents. We had no locks nor keys therefore among us there were no thieves. When someone was so poor that he couldn't afford a horse, a tent or a blanket, he would, in that case, receive it all as a gift. We were too uncivilized to give great importance to private property. We didn't know any kind of money and consequently, the value of a human being was not determined by his wealth. We had no written laws laid down, no lawyers, no politicians, therefore we were not able to cheat and swindle one another. We were really in bad shape before the white man arrived and I don't know how to explain how we were able to manage without these fundamental things that (so they tell us) are so necessary for a civilized society.

-Lame Deer

Thrived sometimes, starved others, now and then died in violent conflict with other Native American tribes. Absolutely they got the short end of the stick from the US (and many other actors); but to pretend that the Americas were a peaceful utopia before the Europeans arrived is silly.

Who is pretending it was a peaceful utopia? That's silly. Counting coup (showing bravery in battle) would earn a man great prestige. Of course there was war between tribes and people went hungry at times, during a harsh winter for example. However, before the railroads and the gold rush expanded out West many Sioux tribes lived in relative homeostasis with their environment and had a nearly constant buffet of Buffalo.

The thing to keep in mind is that there were hundreds of Native American societies, and they varied considerably in their social practices. Slavery was fairly common on the Plains. The Pawnee still practiced human sacrifice in historic times. The Beaver Wars were unbelievably genocidal. It may be the case that some of the Siouan groups (such as the Quapaw) moved west was to escape social collapse and genocide. The enormous diversity of NAtive societies has been largely forgotten/erased through romanticization (itself a form of cultural domination) and sociocide).

Many of the tribes were non literate and had no form of written language which also contributes to the historical obfuscation. Many of those who did use a form of writing, such as the Mayans, had their historical writings deliberately destroyed by the Conquistadors and Inquisitors because their culture was seen as deeply heretical:

>We found a large number of books in these characters and, as they contained nothing in which were not to be seen as superstition and lies of the devil, we burned them all, which they regretted to an amazing degree, and which caused them much affliction.

-Bishop Diego de Landa, 1562

Offtopic, that sarcastic tone really caught me by surprise - it sounds more like an older New Yorker than a Native American tribal leader.

It is characteristic of his role as a Heyoka, or sacred clown.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heyoka

It's hard to quantify happiness or flourishing or whatever we define as the ultimate goal.

That said, it's quite clear that infant mortality, occasional starvation or death from minor infections and other paleolithic norms are not a benefit to whatever we define as the ultimate human goals. It's equally clear (regardless of quantification) that obesity, depression and suicide rates, loneliness, impostor syndrome and other features of 21st century life are not of benefit to us either.

I'm fairly sympathetic to the view that if you moved people into a "natural" setting for a few weeks or months where they gather food, live in close contact with natural cycles like daylight and weather and expose their bodies to the stresses of such a lifestyle, than many of these modern pathologies dissipate. I've experienced this (like many people report) when camping or trekking even for a few days. I am also inclined to accept (in a general way with few absolutes and much room for exceptions) the hypothesis that this is an evolutionary heritage.

Look Brother jacquesm… I agree that people get overblown with their health ideology and that it can get silly. We don't really want to be paleo or even know how. But, it's based on ideas that are interesting, appealing, and not nonsensical. So what if people get a little overexcited about them. You should listen to me when I get into a good futurism conversation. Your friend is looking for a way to live better and her approach is sensible. We also need a couple of puritans and extremists among us, as long as they're harmless. Someone needs to bear a flag and find out where the logical limits of some idea is, like Richard Stalman does for Free Software..

TLDR, sometimes we (people) get a little carried away with theory. But overall, these paleo ideas are nice ideas. They're intelligent, reasoning about ourselves as evolved beings and actively working to alleviate some of the ills. It's way more interesting (and sane) than most things people get passionate about. Ever visit HN when open vs private offices gets discussed?

> Your friend is looking for a way to live better and her approach is sensible.

I wish. She's one very small step away from becoming a street-person.

You're probably right.

But as far as I know, the short average lifespans back in the days had mostly to do with higher child mortality.

Life expectancy upon reaching adulthood is also a comparison that is frequently done. The arrival of effective hygiene and medicine in the last ~150 years has had a very clear effect on those numbers (a 65 year old US person today can expect to live 6 or 7 years longer than their 1900 counterpart. That's a 65 year old!).

I also think it's tough to correctly estimate the impact of medicine on quality of life. A lot of things in medicine are so effective that we forget they exist (like correcting cleft palate or whatnot).

Early hunter gathers had fewer communicable disease risks due to vastly lower population sizes. So, for example they did not get the seasonal flue. Consider, there was lot's of EU to America disease spread, but almost nothing went the other way. Despite the fact that south America had fairly large scale farming and population growth.

Excluding communicable diseases, most people stay fairly health until 50+ and many hunter gathers likely lived into there early 90's. Infection likely a major risk, but antibiotics are very recent and less necessary than frequently assumed.

This is a weird argument as a benefit to hunter gatherers. The benefits you're discussing are only tied to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle because of low population density. They would have the same issues if they were at the population density we are now...but they couldn't be, because the earth couldn't sustain them.

It's definitely not an argument in terms of looking to hunter gatherers for diet or fitness advice, though :)

I agree, I am not saying the lifestyle was overall great or anything. Just that it was better than you might think.

Though as to disease it's not just population density. Domesticated animals mostly birds, pigs, and cattle for example created a larger pool to spread disease. Though diseases will spread from primates to humans with minimal contact.

PS: You could also have separate populations with minimal contact and have fewer diseases evolve. So, we could have high population density as long as people did not travel or keep animals.

Syphilis is believed to be a New World disease.

I guess I'm not informed enough to start picking a number, but as far as I can tell, the life expectancy upon reaching adulthood has historically been notably lower than it is today, even prior to the horrors of civilization.

There where a few that made the trip back. But, an estimated ~95+% of people living in the Americas where killed by European diseases. Granted, some of this was deliberate biolocial warfare, and far more people immigrated to the new world than made the trip back. But, even still it's a huge difference.

Measles, Smallpox, Typhus, and Cholera for example where all major and easily spread diseases.

Antibiotics aren't the only modern advance to combat infection. Consider also the tools and knowledge (proper wound cleaning and binding) that's been developed to prevent infections in the first place.

True enough, but it's internal wounds where antibiotics are most useful. There are also a fair number of Antibacterial herbs for external wound treatment that where in use. Even just honey can be useful. A flowing stream is not sterilized, but can be used for wound treatment, the ocean is also useful for this.

The point is it's not as bad as you might think. Consider cavities, without refined sugar and massive quantities of grains there actually far less common.

That said, late stage hunter gathers where probably much worse off.

On the topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEYh5WACqEk

And the mortality of women in childbirth.

But you are right, if you lived to 12 you'd likely live a pretty long life - the average was lower though.

count the times you took anti-biotics, cut yourself deep enough or needed surgery (from bad teeth to things like an appendectomy) - if anything of those applies, you would very likely have died in the good old days.

my eye sight requires contact lenses, without i cannot survive.

there is a reason earth only had a minimal population at that time. the current billions of people are only possible through the modern marvels of medicine, agriculture, etc.

The increase in population size has much more to do with technical advancements in farming and food processing that with medicine. Main limiting factor was amount of food available, not diseases.

Most people's eyes are affected by modern lifestyle (all day staring at a computer screen). Eyes are muscles, use 'em or lose 'em. Looking at a two dimensional plane all day instead of constantly focusing on things at varying distances makes your eyes weaker. I bet a lot of us devs who wear glasses now and have terrible eyesight would have been better off in the olden days in terms of vision health.

i was 5 years old when they mounted ashtrays on my face due to really bad astigmatism. my family only had a black and white tv back then, i didn't watch much tv until much later in life.

not entirely sure your theory applies, to me at least.

i think you see much more people with bad eyesight nowadays as life/nature does not kill us off immediately. with minimal corrections we can be productive members of society (unlike 5k years ago).

hehe, true.

I had Meningitis when I was about one year old and a double Pneumonia when I was about twelve. But nothing happened in my adult life.

I'd imagine it would be a fairly even spread between violence, famines, dying while giving birth, simple diseases, infant mortality and accidents.

I submitted this yesterday but it got no traction. It's an interesting read, and she may enjoy it: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/12/31/the-s...

Interesting. I'll pass it on but I doubt it will find a receptive audience.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_savage