gordon <[log in to unmask]> writes:
> Michael,
> > I've been told that HG's spent only one hour a day, to hunt,
> > gather, and store food.

Gordon wrote:
> Really? I'm hardly an expert in these matters but I find that
> extremely difficult to believe. In general leisure time has been increasing
> rather than decreasing at least for the last few thousand years and yet the
> modern human still spends about 40 hours per week at work.

Ardeith writes:
I'm not an expert, either, but anthropology was my major interest
in college, and I've continued to read on the subject........HG's
spent a few hours, two or three days a week, to gather the plant
material that supplied much of their needs.....fruit, nuts, leaves
and stems, tubers.   They also gathered every source of protein
in the area.....snails, turtles, snakes, lizards, birds and eggs,
larvae of all sorts, fish where available, small animals such as
rabbits, guinea pigs, and seafood if they lived on a coast.
The childrens' contributions were welcome, and the children
practiced their hunting skills bring in this small game.  The
older people.....particularly the men.....did the hunting of
big game animals..................
When a big animal was killed, the people feasted on the
fresh meat, and preserved the rest however they could.
Native Americans hunted all the deer-types on foot....
and even drove buffalo into deadend canyons or
traps to kill them....in the days before they had
horses to chase buffalo from...........................
What we often forget is that HG's could follow the
herds, or migrate to new areas when the local food
sources were exhausted.   The people....particularly
the women....worked their butts off for a few days
getting the meat from a big kill dried before it spoiled....
........but the HG clans lived a leisurely live compared
to the lives we live today.........if a drought occurred,
the people and animals simply migrated....they weren't
tied down by a patch of land and some crop, or lines
on a map that said they couldn't move on....................

Gordon wrote:
> It has always been my assumption that the advent of modern
> civilization as we know it was due in large part to the additional free time we
> gained as a result of agriculture, animal husbandry and the subsequent organized
> distribution of labor. As a result of this free time we found
> ourselves with the time to develop intellectual skills like reading, writing,
> mathematics, architecture, etc. Am I wrong?

Ardeith writes:
Yeah, you're wrong......at least as far as leisure time goes.
Farmers don't have the leisure time to develop any of
the things you mention above.....reading, writing, etc.
Early farmers worked from can-see to can't-see......and
often had to guard their crops day and night.   They
didn't have time to waste on such non-essentials as
reading.
The folks who had the time for such "civilized" pursuits
were the upper classes....who exploited the labor of
the farmers and herders.........people didn't really need
writing until the "leaders" had to keep track of the
foods stored away and the taxes they charged to
"protect" the farmers from raiders.

Gordon wrote:
> If I am wrong then I must wonder why humans took a million+ years to
> get around to learning how to write. If we hunted and gathered only for
> one hour per day then on what pursuits were we wasting all our free time?

Ardeith writes:
"free time"????  "wasting all our free time"???? By whose
standards?   Modern people can't see any point in
spending hours listening to a tribal storyteller recite the
names of the heroes and ancestors.............modern people
spend hours watching TV!   HG's spent the hours when
they were not actively hunting and gathering telling
stories while they wove baskets to carry the booty in.....
or stitched leather garments.......or shaped points for
spears and such..........or gathered flowers for their
hair....or ground white clay for body paint....and
ground other stuff for colored body paint..........

Gordon wrote:
> What were we thinking about for the remaining hours of the day during which we
> were awake but not looking for food? Did we spend a million years or more
> just contemplating our navels? I doubt it.

Ardeith writes:
The HG's of the world, had a rich heritage of oral traditions......
their history, poems,heroic stories about ancestors, tales that taught
the
children what the clan felt was "correct and moral"
behavior.   Remember the Hawaiian people......they
chanted the stories of their ancestors back so many
generations that Eurpoean listeners didn't believe
it was really possible for them to remember all that.
The Europeans thought the Islanders were just
making it up.................until in this century some
enterprising soul tried to navigate the Pacific
Ocean using the information in the old Island
chants........and it worked.........................
HG's are much more attuned to the relationships
between members of the clan or tribe......all the
hours they spent together telling the stores and
arranging each others' hair were bonding hours....
hours together that increased the bonds between
them.............and HG's are much more attuned to
the world around them..........they spend hours
watching animals live their lives  so that they
will know where to find which animal and when.....
they hardly think of it as "wasting time"............
Many of the hours we might call "wasted" the
HG's of the world spent in talking with and to
children......teaching them in the form of telling
them stories, and also teaching them the skills
needed to chip stones to cutting edges and
weave baskets or such....................