What Would Actually Kill You in the Stone Age

Right now, you're holding a phone that knows the way home, what's for dinner, and when to wake you up. So could you survive one day without it, as a caveman? No map. No fridge. No alarm. Most people think the danger would be a lion. It wouldn't. We spend one Stone Age day with a hunter-gatherer band: finding water in a dry riverbed, walking about eleven kilometres before dinner, gathering hundreds of kinds of plants, and sharing food around the fire. Along the way, we meet the scientists who actually measured this life, and find out what really killed people. (Hint: it was much smaller than a lion.) Your body could probably survive the day. Your knowledge couldn't. They didn't survive because they were strong. They survived because nobody had to know everything alone. Hand-drawn history, real science, no filler. CHAPTERS 0:00 Could you survive without your phone? 0:20 Rewind 30,000 years 0:31 The cartoon caveman is wrong 0:41 The closest window we have 0:59 Your first job: water 1:12 Eleven kilometres before dinner 1:21 Do they burn more energy than you? 1:44 Where you'd start to fail 2:00 The real danger 2:32 The hunt 2:39 Around the fire 3:10 Back on your sofa Sources: Pontzer et al. (2012, PLoS ONE), "Hunter-Gatherer Energetics and Human Obesity" — Hadza daily energy expenditure; Raichlen et al. (2017, American Journal of Human Biology), Hadza physical activity; Gurven & Kaplan (2007, Population and Development Review), "Longevity Among Hunter-Gatherers" — causes of death. The Hadza of Tanzania are modern people; their way of life is studied as the closest window onto how our ancestors lived, not as a time machine. #history #prehistory #survival #history #prehistory #survival #stoneage #caveman #huntergatherers #anthropology #historyfacts