What Did Ancient Humans Do Before Social Media?

What did people do 30,000 years ago when the work was done, the fire was burning, and there was nothing left to do? Nobody knows exactly. Boredom leaves no fossils, and no archaeologist has ever dug up a rock that says “I was extremely bored.” But that’s what made me want to make this video. I always pictured prehistoric life as nonstop survival: hunting, running, building, escaping predators. Then I started reading the research, and the picture got a lot more human. People had gaps between urgent tasks, just like we do. So what filled them? In this video, I start with the myth of the prehistoric 9-5 and a 2019 study of Agta hunter-gatherers in the Philippines, which found that more farming and other non-foraging work meant less leisure time. From there we look at camp life as a social world, and at what children did with their time. One dataset covers 434 toys and tools from 54 hunter-gatherer societies. Most of the objects were used in play, children made many of their own toys, and 89% were used socially. Then we get to the shell beads that tell us more about ancient people than a spear point ever could, the disputed Divje Babe bone “flute” (and why I won’t tell you Neanderthals played music), the Hadza and their nearly 10 hours a day of not walking, and the fire as the original social network. I can’t tell you what any single ancient person felt, so I’ve kept what archaeology can actually show separate from what’s inference. The Agta and Hadza appear here as comparisons only. They’re modern people with their own histories, not living fossils of the Ice Age. My biggest takeaway is that the “useless” hours may have been where humans played, copied, taught, decorated, joked, and invented. And maybe they got bored for the same reason we do: they were human. If you love prehistory, anthropology, and the strange gaps in the archaeological record, subscribe so you don’t miss what’s coming next. #AncientHumans #Prehistory #Anthropology #HumanEvolution #documentary #PastetFuture