The 4-Hour Workday We Completely Forgot

About two and a half hours of work, then the day was theirs. Right now, a hunter is already asleep in the shade. Most of us have done more work than that before lunch. How did ancient humans actually fill 24 hours without modern jobs, clocks, or schedules? All research, academic papers, and sources are detailed below. 00:00 The shade 00:45 The hours 01:05 Sunrise 01:35 The talk 03:11 The hunt 05:31 The share 06:02 The heat 07:21 Evening 08:31 The trade 🎬 WATCH MORE: • We Weren’t the Strongest. How Did We Survive?:    • We Weren’t the Strongest. How Did We Survive?   • We Couldn’t Make Fire. How Did We Survive?:    • We Couldn’t Make Fire. How Did We Survive?   • We Weren’t Built to Sleep 8 Hours:    • We Weren’t Built to Sleep 8 Hours   📚 RESEARCH & SOURCES: ▸ Work hours — Richard B. Lee, "What Hunters Do for a Living," in Man the Hunter (1968, Aldine). About fifteen hours a week. The video's two and a half hours a day is that week split across the days. ▸ The ox — Richard B. Lee, "Eating Christmas in the Kalahari" (1969, Natural History). The camp mocked the gift so the giver would not feel above them. ▸ Talk — Polly W. Wiessner, "Embers of Society: Firelight Talk among the Ju/'hoansi Bushmen" (2014, PNAS). The video reads the camp's daily talk as its order and its court. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1404212111 ▸ Hadza camp — Frank W. Marlowe, The Hadza: Hunter-Gatherers of Tanzania (2010, University of California Press). Camp size, failed hunts, and women's share of the food are the video's reading of that book. ▸ Grandmothers — Kristen Hawkes and others, studies of Hadza women after childbearing. The video says women in their fifties and sixties bring more food than mothers in their twenties, and many still walk into their seventies. ▸ Children — David F. Lancy, The Anthropology of Childhood (2008, Cambridge University Press). Mixed-age play, older children helping younger ones. ▸ Eight-year-olds — Alyssa N. Crittenden and others, "Juvenile foraging among the Hadza" (2013, Evolution and Human Behavior). The video says a boy of about eight can go out alone and bring back a bird. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbeha... ▸ Arrow poison — Brian M. Wood and others (2014) on the desert rose (panjube). ▸ Affluent society — Marshall Sahlins, "The Original Affluent Society," in Stone Age Economics (1972, Aldine). He meant time, not wealth. ▸ Three hundred thousand years — Jean-Jacques Hublin and others, "New fossils from Jebel Irhoud" (2017, Nature). That date is the fossils. The video uses it for how long people lived this way. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature22336 ▸ Leaving camp — Christopher Boehm, Hierarchy in the Forest (1999, Harvard University Press). The video calls it voting with your feet. ▸ General figures: About twenty miles in a day, a kill once every few days, more than half the calories from women, groups of three to eight, five to ten miles, twenty-five to thirty people, and about four children in ten dying before five. ———————————————————— PEOPLE & SITES MENTIONED IN THIS VIDEO: ▸ Hadza — northern Tanzania. One of the last hunting and gathering camps. ▸ Kung — the Kalahari people in Lee's time studies. ▸ Richard Lee — the fifteen-hour week and the ox. ▸ Polly Wiessner — the daily talk. ▸ Frank Marlowe — the Hadza hunts that often fail. ▸ David Lancy — children learning beside the work. ▸ Desert rose — the plant the video calls panjube, used on arrow tips. ———————————————————— Next week: another question. 🎨 Animation by WayBeforeFarms #ancienthumans #hadza #huntergatherers #kung #kalahari #anthropology #humanhistory #prehistory #stoneage #dailylife