The good ol' days of hunting and gathering

Things were a whole lot better 12,000 years ago, at least according to historian Yuval Noah Harari. Back then you didn't have to worry about epidemics, mass famines or economic collapse. In his book, Sapiens: A brief history of humankind, Harari claims the good ol' days of hunting and gathering involved a four-day work week, a relatively healthy population and societal equality. Times were simple. You gathered, you hunted, you slept. Probably you even partied every now and then (wasn't beer discovered before bread?). Sure, there was the occasional run-in with a lion or a spat with a neighbouring tribe, but overall times were pretty good. 

Then along came agriculture. Boy did that ruin everything. Humans became tethered to the plow. Their diets went downhill - no more picking nutritious wild herbs; now it became a steady diet of carbs. A caste system developed, where most people toiled long hours on the fields while an elite few reaped the rewards. Wars erupted over food and new fortunes. Populations boomed and crashed through famine and disease. Harari calls the agriculture revolution "history's greatest fraud," where humans did not domesticate wheat, but rather wheat domesticated humans. 

Next, the industrial/scientific revolution. If toiling in the fields was back-breaking, work in the factories was mind-numbing. Crime, poverty and disease were rampant in newly industrialized cities. Sure, there were technological breakthroughs like trains and vaccines, but was it better than living peacefully in the jungle? 

Then came the 20th century, a revolutionary era of technological and economic progress. Humankind made strides like never before. It was like the fast-forward button was suddenly pushed on the human history PVR after thousands of years of the status quo. Once we get beyond the untold suffering caused by the Great Depression and two world wars, things really started to look up!

The world became electrified, literally. Humans left the earth for the moon. Powerful computers, that could store every word of the books and scrolls of every single medieval library, can now fit in your hand. Advances in medicine have tripled the human lifespan. 

Progress certainly has its drawbacks (worldwide climate change and the potential for nuclear annihilation, to name a couple), but the technological revolution of the last fifty years has certainly made life a lot more appealing than the last 10,000. Whether it's better today than the world before agriculture is difficult for us to evaluate, but interesting to ponder. 

If "better" can be equated with happiness, then it may be a close call. We have only to look at hunter/gatherers who still live today to see if they're enjoying life at least to the same extent as we are. By many accounts, traditional tribespeople in Africa and South America are quite content. Former missionary Daniel Everett considers the Amazon's Pirahas to be the happiest people on earth, even though their wealth is negligible. Other Amazonian groups are demonstrably less content, however, as they seek to acquire more and more goods from the "civilized" world. Like most humans, so long as we don't know there's something better out there, we're happy. Ignorance is bliss. 

Perhaps that speaks to much of our unhappiness today, despite the fact we live in a technological paradise. Unlike our hunting and gathering ancestors, we have much to desire, much to worry about, and less time to enjoy the moment. 

Plus the threat of nuclear annihilation. 

            But I don't see many of us venturing back into the jungle just yet.