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If only... Ancient History (~1200 BCE) (piefed.cdn.blahaj.zone)
submitted 10 months ago by to c/historymemes@piefed.social
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[–] 9 points 10 months ago (7 children)

Some costal hunter gatherer socities got so good at fishing then really only worked a few hours a day.

For food. Human labor for survival includes much more than food.

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago* (6 children)

    That's a very good caveat, but we still know that these socities had a lot of "free" time.

    Free time is of course hard to define. If you have time to build a mound you have time outside of survival, but that may still be a mandatory societal obligation

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  • [–] 5 points 10 months ago (5 children)

    That’d a bery good caveat, but we still know that these socities had a lot of “free” time.

    Except I'm discussing literal survival. Protection from the elements and cold, gathering potable water, gathering and working materials for cooking and tools that are essential to processing catches to safely edible forms, etc etc etc. Coastal hunter-gatherer societies in particular are not standing in the surf collecting fish which just wash up on the shore; generally, it involves going out on the coastal waters in a boat - something which requires production, maintenance, tools for propulsion (like oars), and tools for fishing (like bone harpoons and nets). On top of that, most hunter-gatherer societies are not sedentary, which adds substantial travel time to the average workday per year.

    The concept of hunter-gatherer societies having a lot of 'free' time springs from misconceptions like the above, confusing work for food with necessary work, in general. Hunter-gatherer societies have more free time than early sedentary subsistence farmers, but the difference is more 14 hour day vs. 10 hour day, not 14 hour day vs. 4 hour day.

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  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (4 children)

    Many of the costal socities of the southeastern united states became quite sedentary actually. All while still relying on wild food sources.

    Like I said we have ethnographic evidence for this.

    You are still making a good point in what these people needed for survival. Not quite sure why you felt the need to expand on the point I was agreeing with you on, but you are right those things take time.

    We are disagreeing on how much time these things take. The historic accounts, ethnographic accounts, and archaeological evidence points to them having what I would classify as "a lot" of free time. Or at least more than you are assuming.

    Of course these things are hard to directly quantify. We'll never truly know if these people had 2 or 6 free daylight hours a day to engage in non-survival related activities. We know they had time for arts and mound construction. Those aren't strictly survival, but human society likes to blend those lines. You don't have to build a mound or create a necklace for survival, but there may be societal obligation to do so

    Also to be clear from my first comment I was talking about certain societies not all hunter gatherers

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago (3 children)

    Many of the costal socities of the southeastern united states became quite sedentary actually. All while still relying on wild food sources.

    Of the Southeast? I thought you were talking about the Northwest. You can't be serious. The Southeast was overwhelmingly farmer-dominated, and there's only one set of mounds known to have been constructed in the area by hunter-gatherers.

    We are disagreeing on how much time these things take. The historic accounts, ethnographic accounts, and archaeological evidence points to them having what I would classify as “a lot” of free time. Or at least more than you are assuming.

    Curious, because it seems to me all the evidence points in the opposite direction - that hunter-gatherers did not have an overwhelming amount of free time when compared to subsistence farmers.

    We know they had time for arts and mound construction.

    Okay? So did sedentary farmers?

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago* (2 children)

    I did also specify coastal societies. Evidence suggests that while there was some light agriculture that was no where near the bulk of their calories. Those primarily came from marine sources.

    Florida and coastal Georgia are the best examples.

    You find mounds scattered throughout, but you are right the largest examples are typically connected to farming reliant groups. Except on the coast you'll see the opposite. However these do tend to be much smaller mound sites, and no I'm not speaking about the shell middens. You can argue if those were intentional or created as a result of natural refuse accumulation

    Also great point on the farmers having time for other activities too. That's a good point and I have no counter for it

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago* (1 child)

    I did also specify coastal societies. Evidence suggests that while there was some light agriculture that was no where near the bulk of their calories. Those primarily came from marine sources.

    Everything I know about Native American coastal societies in the southeast, which admittedly is nowhere near my specialization or main field of interest, refers to them in context as agricultural and maize-oriented. Only a few societies along the the Caribbean were both sedentary and predominantly dependent on the sea for their sustenance, and the largest I know of, the Calusa, practiced aquaculture, which is more comparable to pastoralists than hunter-gatherers.

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  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago

    Everything I know about Native American coastal societies in the southeast, which admittedly is nowhere near my specialization or main field of interest, refers to them in context as agricultural and maize-oriented.

    It's both the area I've attended university and worked in for several years. While not necessarily my specialty either, based on my limited coursework on the subject, proffessors, and colleagues there is a tendency to call the entire southeast maize-oriented but this is a generalization and dependent on specific regions.

    The largest inland population centers absolutely were maize dominated. Just costal groups had different foodways. You do find maize, but in much smaller amounts. Isotope analysis of remains also indicate a reliance on marine foods over maize. At least I know this is true with Florida through South Carolina

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