This is not an absurd myth. This notion that life was always wretched back in the old hunter-gatherer days is bogus. People DID work less. Marshall Sahlins and others came to this conclusion after direct observation of hunter-gatherer societies. Why can't we extrapolate their research back to prehistoric hunter-gatherer societies?
Secondly, although Carrol would have trouble if thrown in the rainforest right now, if he had been born into a native group which lived in the rainforest he would be able to support himself without difficulty. Human societies adapted themselves quite nicely to a wide range of different environments. But you wouldn't have the necessary skills unless you grew up in that society and acquired them. I'm sure if you teleported someone from 10,000 BC to the present they wouldn't get on very well in modern society either.
Nobody seriously claims this was a golden age of plenty for everyone that we must try to emulate (or at least I don't). People didn't live nearly as long due to nonexistant medical treatment, neighboring tribes still fought each other and so forth.
But it should be considered an embarrassment that we work longer hours, and in many cases in much more stultifying and sometimes dangerous conditions, than our ancestors did, considering the extraordinary improvements in our knowledge and technical capabilities. Its hard to imagine people living in huts on the hillside outside Mexico City are leading better lives than their hunter-gatherer ancestors did. You could make the same argument for a large fraction of the world's population.
Also, you need to be careful about making statements like "'free time' was just idle hunger and anxiety" for the ancients. How do you know this? It sounds like this is how YOU would feel if forced to live in such a situation. But that is not how those people would describe their own lives.
Brett
At 06:09 PM 9/30/99 +0100, you wrote:
>In message <37F3649A.474838B1 at mail.ilstu.edu>, Carrol Cox
><cbcox at ilstu.edu> writes
>>Re productivity as "saving time." Then the clock has been running backwards
>>for about 12000 years. Hunter-gatherers seldom labor over 15-20 hrs
>>per week. Capitalism also eliminated scores of xtian holidays in order
>>to increase hours of work. And if one includes commute time in the
>>work week (as one should), then the work week in the u.s. has been
>>increasing for decades -- perhaps for over half a century.
>>
>>Progress. It's wonderful.
>>
>>Carrol
>
>This absurd myth comes courtesy of Marshall Sahlins.
>
>Who was doing the time and motion study on these prehistoric hunter
>gatherers, one wonders? And since when did people who lived in such
>societies have even a concept of free time. The whole methodology is
>just childish fantasy dressed up as mock profundity. It is what Brecht
>parodied as the imaginary land of Cockayne, where ready-roasted chickens
>fly into your mouth. That 'free time' was just idle hunger and anxiety.
>
>Carroll should be released in the rain forest to make his own way in
>life.
>--
>Jim heartfield