What Did Ancient Humans Do All Day Without Jobs?

Before companies and monthly paychecks, what did ancient humans do all day? A day of finding food and then lying around does not cover it. This video follows the things people left behind, a mammoth ivory flute from Geißenklösterle Cave, a 300,000 year old hearth at Qesem Cave, engraved stones from Montastruc, and sets them next to what anthropologists have actually recorded among living hunter-gatherers: how many hours went into food at Dobe in 1964, how the Agta split housework, childcare and leisure, a mimed performance among the Mbendjele, and two Aka boys playing at collecting honey. Then it asks what those days would look like next to a Friday night text. The archaeology and the ethnography are two different kinds of evidence, and the video says which is which every time. Nothing here is a timesheet for all ancient humans. 0:00 Friday night and a flute 1:17 Qesem, groceries and a 1964 timesheet 3:10 Uneven weeks and the clock 4:04 Who fed the person resting 4:49 The Agta third and the couch 5:57 A night with friends 6:22 The Mbendjele performance 7:22 The group chat 8:11 Montastruc by firelight 9:21 The Aka honey game 10:13 Playing shop and a Sunday recipe 11:08 Back to the flute 11:45 So what did they do all day? 12:29 The Friday night text REFERENCES Potengowski AF, Dalferth G, Hein W, Spreer B, Wiedmann H, Malina M, Münzel SC (2023). On experimental reconstructions of the mammoth ivory flute from Geißenklösterle Cave (GK3) and other Palaeolithic wind instruments from South-West Germany. Journal of Music Archaeology 1:59-102. doi:10.1553/JMA-001-04 University of Tübingen (2012). Oldest art even older: new dates from Geißenklösterle Cave in Southwest Germany. Press release, 24 May 2012. Shahack-Gross R, Berna F, Karkanas P, Lemorini C, Gopher A, Barkai R (2014). Evidence for the repeated use of a central hearth at Middle Pleistocene (300 ky ago) Qesem Cave, Israel. Journal of Archaeological Science 44:12-21. doi:10.1016/j.jas.2013.11.015 Lee RB (1968). What hunters do for a living, or, how to make out on scarce resources. In: Lee RB, DeVore I (eds) Man the Hunter. Aldine, Chicago. Dyble M, Thorley J, Page AE, Smith D, Migliano AB (2019). Engagement in agricultural work is associated with reduced leisure time among Agta hunter-gatherers. Nature Human Behaviour 3:792-796. doi:10.1038/s41562-019-0614-6 Lewis J (2009). As well as words: Congo Pygmy hunting, mimicry, and play. In: Botha R, Knight C (eds) The Cradle of Language. Oxford University Press. Boyette AH (2016). Children's play and the integration of social and individual learning: a cultural niche construction perspective. In: Terashima H, Hewlett BS (eds) Social Learning and Innovation in Contemporary Hunter-Gatherers. Springer. doi:10.1007/978-4-431-55997-9_13 Needham A, Wisher I, Langley A, Amy M, Little A (2022). Art by firelight? The interaction of engraved plaquettes and firelight at Montastruc, France. PLOS ONE 17(4):e0266146. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0266146 DISCLAIMER The ancient scenes in this video are reconstructions drawn to illustrate the narration. The hours, the performance and the children's game come from living communities recorded in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, not from ancient people, and the video says so. The firelight effect at Montastruc is an experimental result and a hypothesis, not evidence of an ancient performance. Nobody knows who made or played the Geißenklösterle flute.