Of course, "daily exercise" may have simply included what amounts to a long walk, no? Not everything was heavily labor based. Certainly not year long.

More, if you go far enough back (not actually that far, frighteningly) and things like "respect for the life of others" drops out rather sharply.

So.... what, exactly, is the lesson here? My takeaway is that rose colored glasses can make even some of the most horrid of conditions (human history), somehow look good. Me? I'll take the present where I have a reasonable expectation that my kids will not die before me. By a long shot.