this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2024
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I'm pretty sure as they were fighting wild animals, they were all Y'know, this sucks. Let's invent things so our children's children never have to fight wild animals just to live.
I think I'd prefer taking on the occasional mountain lion with my tribe to working 50 hr weeks, but I guess they made the choice for me.
You can still do that if you really want to
Nah, the people at the zoo tend to frown on that.
almost: nobles made the choice for you.
the majority of our ancestors are just people, who did the obvious thing and worked towards making life as easy and enjoyable as possible.
but then some ten thousand years ago nobles became a thing and ever since then they've exploited the common people for their own gain, and instead worked to make life MORE stressful for the average person because they didn't give a shit about them.
make your ancestors proud: eat the rich
Agriculture is the culprit. As hunter-gatherers, there wasn't enough food to create winter stores, and we had to migrate towards the equator during winter months and back during the hot summer. Then we developed growing enough that we could homestead and stay in place with winter stores (and get cabin fever).
Then raiders figured out they could raid homesteads, and some raiders figured out they could just tax the homesteads in a protection racket, though it meant protecting them from other raiders. And bam! Feudalism!
(Later on we'd realize, with generations and generations, that one Joffrey or John of England or Caligula can bring to ruin the legacy of ten fair and just kings prior to them, and we didn't really get fair and just all that often. Now we're still trying to figure out how to prevent aristocrats, plutocrats and autocrats from consolidating power away from the people. It's a sociological development we don't have yet.)
Yes, modern primitives work eight hours a week compared to us. On the other hand, it's not the mountain lions. It's famine and plague that will kill you (and your family) horribly. The ones killed by a wandering bear are the lucky ones.