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Comment by trhway | Hacker News Reader

>their average level of physical fitness based on archeological evidence would rate at the elite level today

you don't see a contradiction between "pleasant life" and top fitness? I mean what can be a reason that the average was such a high level of physical fitness? May it be that "pleasant life" was so rife with challenges and dangers that only top fitness allowed for survival?

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Imagine a life where you had to strenuously hunt for 30 hours a week and then partied for the rest of the time. It’d result in both a high level of physical fitness and be pretty pleasant. I don’t know if that’s an accurate description of their life, but it shows that the two terms aren’t contradictory.

's/hunt/study/' and that is our University years. While definitely pleasant, it didn't result in high mental fitness though :)

We'll that explains why stone toolkits stayed pretty similar for thousands of years. Ancient hunter gatherers were a bunch of frat boys with some elders (that can still move with the hunting band/clan) leading them.

City living aren't that healthy (especially in the Neolithic) but you have lots of time to make new things... And use them in the future instead of needing to abandon them when your band moves on.

You are not at a high fitness level without a decent food supply.

That is thriving, not simply surviving.

you have to imagine we mostly descended from the groups which thrived and not the ones who eked by

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