Hacker News Reader

> > The basic shaping is estimated to have taken around 200 hours, and in total the recreation likely took more than 370 hours.

> Nearly a year of "full time" work at 40hrs/week went into this

Sorry, I think you may be mistaken? From the section you quote, it looks like it's about 370 hours, or 9 weeks of full time effort. That's still a lot, but certainly not nearly a year.

I can also imagine that someone with a lot of practice might be significantly faster than some unskilled researchers.

I also don't think it rules out it being something for a child. It's not so rare to do big projects for you kids even today, over many evenings and weekends. And when you don't have any books to read or screens to watch...

Ya, I tend to agree. I think I personally have spent 9 weeks of effort on gifts for 2-3 people in my lifetime, and I don't even have kids yet.

That’s because you don’t have kids yet.

Not being a hunter-gatherer also helps, I imagine.

It could also be passed down through multiple siblings and possibly generations. And possibly the creation of it was itself a pasttime.

Yes you are right not sure how I flubbed that one. Made an edit in my comment.

Too busy thinking about sex and religion.

I can imagine them not having a lot to do during winter nights, besides sitting by the fire. That's a lot of time for carving.

They had a lot to do during winter, though, cause it was a society with subsistence economy.

If 30-40k timelines are right that's way before agriculture and any kind of "economy". It's firmly hunter-gatherers and there's not much of that to do when it's after sunset.

"Economy" by merits of its definition is an applicable term for hunter-gathering societies. And is used widely in this quality, in fact.

Nobody says they couldn't find a time to do carving (existence of the artifact shows they could). The issue in question is comparative value of the time spent on it. Hunting, gathering and concomitant works were certainly both physically and mentally very demanding activities, and their way of life required thoughtful spending of energy. Consequently, whatever irregular pastime they had should have to be extremely valuable. It makes 'toy theory' somewhat unconvincing.

Pastimes are in fact incredibly valuable. And it's possible the motivations that led to the creation of this artifact wasn't just all about the end product.

Subsistence economy as a hunter gatherer is much easier than as a farmer.

I don't think so. I know, somebody recently re-popularized Sahlins theory claiming that HG essentially spent most of their lives happily dancing and singing around fires, but the popularity, I believe, is due to tapping into the lost paradise trope, not because it's well-established.

For instance, I heard Reich said in a podcast that genes linked to obesity, and diabetes, which in our times are, of course, seen as detrimental, were norm among Eurasian WHG population. And this suggests they weren't detrimental to them. Now, what would make quick fat in-body production beneficial? I guess, when your calories intake is uncertain and irregular. There are other researches on the same Kalahari Bushmen, Sahlins used to made the theory of HG affluence, which e.g. emphasize how food scarcity affects customs of food sharing. Similar observations made about "uncontacted" Amazonian tribes, where food theoretically is abundant, but the amount of time, and effort one needs to extract them with pre-metal era tools is still too high to go to rest without at least a slight feeling of hunger.

Reality is that Sahlins probably made observations in an unusually good year, and then romanticized them too much. And that's the only data point on which the theory rests to the best of my knowledge, with many points contradicting it.

One may argue that hunting with its short feedback loop, and camaraderie of a tight group relying on each other's help are healthier psychologically compared to office politics and closing boring tasks, or even farming work - not without merit. But uncertainty of survival, calorie deficit, and amount of both mental, and physical effort HG-ing required is definitely underappreciated among followers of "Original affluent society" theory. HG didn't have easy lifestyle with long creative rests. It's just something we'd love to believe, because of how cool it sounds.

It could have been a member of the tribe that was disabled and had nothing but time. There's evidence to suggest that individuals like that weren't simply discarded.

There are a number of plausible explanations including just someone DID have the time and wasn't all that busy. That's even more likely but I wanted to call out the perspective that it might not have been the most typical situation that led to this.

>Nearly a year of "full time" work at 40hrs/week went into this

You uh, missed a decimal point there. A year at 40 hours/week would be 2000 hours, not 200. The quote "unless the sculpture was created slowly at odd moments over several months" seems accurate in light of that, but rather odd: why wouldn't it be created slowly at odd moments over several months, or even years? Was prehistoric man lacking in free time? The article eventually continues: "why would a community living on the edge of subsistence, whose primary concerns were finding food, keeping that fire going, protecting children from predators, allow someone to spend so much time away from those tasks?" Keeping a fire going or protecting from predators are tasks with rather a lot of down time. I can easily imagine a person doing either of those while also whittling on a piece of bone. It's also just ridiculous to assume that subsistence living meant being constantly on the verge of starvation. Sometimes times were bad, and many people died. Then later, times were good, food could be obtained easily, and plenty of time would be left over for leisure tasks.