Did Ancient Humans Work Less Than You? (What They Actually Did All Day)

In the 1960s, an anthropologist went to the Kalahari Desert with a notebook and a stopwatch, and counted how many hours people spent finding food. The answer was about 15 a week. But that was only half the story. So who worked more: ancient humans or you? The real answer is less "paradise" and less "endless struggle" than you've been told. It involves a famous number that traveled too far, a study of farming that went the other way than expected, and a very strange Christmas ox. In this video: • The Kalahari study that counted every hour • Why "the original affluent society" is only part of the truth • What a normal day in camp looked like • Why 15 hours turned into 40 • What happened to the Agta when they started farming • Why this still wasn't paradise • The ox that was "too skinny" • What their day had that yours might not Sources and further reading: • Lee (1979), The !Kung San: Men, Women and Work in a Foraging Society, Cambridge University Press • Lee & DeVore (eds., 1968), Man the Hunter • Sahlins (1972), "The Original Affluent Society," in Stone Age Economics • Dyble et al. (2019), "Engagement in agricultural work is associated with reduced leisure time among Agta hunter-gatherers," Nature Human Behaviour • Pontzer et al. (2012), "Hunter-gatherer energetics and human obesity," PLoS ONE • Lee, "Eating Christmas in the Kalahari," Natural History Note: modern hunter-gatherers are not copies of ancient humans, and researchers disagree on how much their lives tell us about prehistory. The numbers in this video come from specific groups and specific studies, not from all of the past. #anthropology #history #evolution #psychology #documentary