I don't know if this makes sense, but I read recently that contrary to many people's images, hunter-gatherers actually had much better lives than we do now. Less work-stress, more family-time, etc.
However, you are definitely right about infant mortality. Kids were 30 to 100 times more likely to die.
0) https://condensedscience.wordpress.com/2011/06/28/life-expec...
This means that life expectancy was short. It directly conflicts with
> short life expectancy is a myth, and that primitive cultures live[d] as long as we do
BTW, an extremely minor point: I intentionally used present-tense because primitive cultures still exist.
There are no cultures today which are comparable to primitive cultures of the past. One nice point I've seen made is that when hunter-gatherers were the rule, they could live on arable land. After the advent of agriculture, obviously, that became impossible.
Surely you know what I meant. If you made it to middle-age you lived just as long.
That's not what I took away from the article, but I could be wrong. That wouldn't be anything interesting to discuss or write about.
For a useful perspective from the other side, you might want to read Steven Pinker's The Better Angels of Our Nature.
Or was your comment meant to be snark that I didn't get?
Land ownership and class separation didn't start until agriculture.
Nope, just reporting what I read. It was on the interwebs ...