The snake (of the trouser variety) tempts Eve with the forbidden fruit (hanky panky) that she shares with Adam. The consequence of which is painful childbirth.
They’re even specifically stated to be naked for this situation.
The snake (of the trouser variety) tempts Eve with the forbidden fruit (hanky panky) that she shares with Adam. The consequence of which is painful childbirth.
They’re even specifically stated to be naked for this situation.
Being a hunter/gatherer was much easier than agriculture?
Going off modern analogs and historic evidence, they had to work about 20 hours a week or even less…
https://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/for-95-percent-of-human-history-people-worked-15-hours-a-week-could-we-do-it-again.html
Look at pretty much any other animal, most of their time is hanging out resting while either being ready to run after food or run away so they’re not food
With a low population density, it wasn’t that hard for a tribe to get enough food for everyone.
Life was pretty sweet for everyone from what we can tell.
I think it may skew the numbers a bit if you count hiding / running away from predators as working.
Do humans have enough predators for that to be relevant?
Nah, how much time do you think your ancestors actually spent being chased by sabre-tooth tigers?
Does that count having to find or build shelter every time you had to relocate?
Why did a number of native American tribes settle and become agrarian? Seems unlikely it was forced by wealthy landowners.
…
Companies advertise their products, do you think the only people that buy them are ones who have seen the advertisements?
What does that have to do with my question?
I said Abrhamic religions were an advertisement for agriculture.
You asked my why anyone would move to agriculture if it hadn’t been advertised to them.
I was trying to help you realize that.
No you didn’t, and no they weren’t, and no I didn’t. Also I was talking before the arrival of the Spanish (though I only implied that part).
The adult life expectancy for hunter-gatherers was higher than that of adults for most of the modern era. Some developed nations with healthcare access returned to similar levels, but not until the mid 20th century. It is now on the downturn again in some of these countries.
Adult life expectancy does not measure how easy life is, but it is arguably a good proxy for quality of life as we know that people with hard lives statistically die younger.
Agriculture introduced a lot of health and social issues. It allowed humans to explode in number and territory, but that wasn’t because they were living better lives. They were sickly and stunted. Just like today, population expansion was likely enacted for the benefit of the top actors on the hierarchy chart (tribal leaders then, business leaders now). Strongly vertical hierarchies and the inequality associated with it do not appear to have regularly occurred prior to agriculture. Neither did widespread slavery. In 2023 there were still 50 million+ people enslaved in the world, even though slavery is now illegal virtually everywhere.
Another data point that backs up these trends is the fall of the Western Roman Empire, and Europe’s subsequent Dark Age. Migration patterns changed, hierarchies were flattened, average quality of life and adult life expectancy went up.
Again, the ease of a life is a hard thing to judge. But many things that ail the common person to this day, did not exist prior to agriculture. I would say “the case can be made” that hunter/gatherer life was easier than agriculture, but I’m not sure how that would be established objectively (except through imperfect proxies such as adult life expectancy).
Do you have a good source for the life expected claim? That sounds interesting.
I do see some articles/blogs that claim that we’re just getting back to the same adult life expectancy, but the majority of sources that look like they’re actual studies or point to read data I can find don’t seem to match. Seems more like it was not totally uncommon to live to 70 or 80, but if you survived to 30 or so (which was a much bigger if, even excluding infant mortality), you were probably going to make it more to about 50 or so.
Studies of relatively modern hunter gatherers seem to be similar. And of course how hostile the environment was made a difference.
But would be interested in reading more on it if you have some good sources
Oh gosh, it’s been years, probably a decade or more. It looks like this study analyzes modern hunter-gatherers and some other data. It shows the similar lifespans between groups. The data is old, though - it includes US data from 2002, before recent drops in expectancy. For hunter gatherers it shows that the mortality is highest for infants and reduces until around age 15, after which mortality remains low and stable. That’s probably a similar adult age cut-off as what I had read previously.
Somebody worked out that hunter/gatherers only averaged 4-5 hrs of work a day. I think I’m pulling this from a recent episode of ‘No Such Thing as a Fish’