What Did Prehistoric Humans Actually Do All Day?

Before alarm clocks, farms and fixed schedules, hunter-gatherers spent their days in a mix of food-getting, toolmaking, long rests, social visits and firelight storytelling. This video looks at the real evidence, from ancient skeletons to time studies of living foragers, to show what an ancient day actually looked like and how farming slowly took our free time away. We start by testing two famous myths: Thomas Hobbes’s “nasty, brutish, and short” and Marshall Sahlins’s “original affluent society.” Skeletons from the Middle East show what the switch to farming did to human bodies, and mortality data explains why “everyone died at thirty” is a misunderstanding. Then we follow Richard Lee’s 1960s time study among the Ju/’hoansi of the Kalahari and look at the fine print behind the famous “15 hours a week” figure. Next, a 2019 study of the Agta of the Philippines compares foraging and farming within the same population, and activity trackers show how the Hadza of Tanzania actually rest. We also look at 75,000-year-old shell beads from Blombos Cave, a 40,000-year-old vulture-bone flute, hxaro gift networks that worked as insurance, Polly Wiessner’s research on firelight stories, and new sleep studies that challenge the popular “two sleeps” idea. Finally, we see how the population trap of early farming led to cities, taxes, and the alarm clock on your nightstand. This video is for educational and entertainment purposes only. It summarizes anthropological and archaeological research, but modern hunter-gatherers are not perfect windows into the deep past. Figures on work hours, lifespan, and sleep are approximate and still debated by scholars. Please consult the sources listed below for the full details. 1. Richard B. Lee, The !Kung San: Men, Women, and Work in a Foraging Society (Cambridge University Press, 1979) 2. Marshall Sahlins, Stone Age Economics (1972), “The Original Affluent Society” 3. Dyble, M. et al. (2019). “Engagement in agricultural work is associated with reduced leisure time among Agta hunter-gatherers.” Nature Human Behaviour 4. Wiessner, P. (2014). “Embers of society: Firelight talk among the Ju/’hoansi Bushmen.” PNAS 5. Yetish, G. et al. (2015). “Natural sleep and its seasonal variations in three pre-industrial societies.” Current Biology 6. Raichlen, D. A. et al. (2020). “Sitting, squatting, and the evolutionary biology of human inactivity.” PNAS 7. Gurven, M. and Kaplan, H. (2007). “Longevity among hunter-gatherers: A cross-cultural examination.” Population and Development Review #HumanHistory #HunterGatherers #Prehistory #Anthropology #HistoryDocumentary