Micheal,

> This event [increased leisure time] has happened in the past few
> hundred years, at most, and only with the privileged.

On what basis do you claim it has happened only in the past few hundred
years? Looks to me like leisure time for the average person has been
increasing steadily for many thousands years, starting from the invention of
the wheel or thereabouts.

  Only for the privileged, the common man worked like, and most times was, a
slave. If I were King, a wheel would mean more productivity and profit, not
more leisure time for my slaves.

> Most people in the world
> still have to work their tails off(no pun intended) even today.

Exactly. And you are trying to say that with all our intelligence and
progress we have managed only to create a situation much worse than that of
our paleo ancestors. If what you are saying is true then we have not
evolved. We have DEvolved.

Looking at the larger picture, lets say most of the world, which is 3rd
world, you've hit the nail right on the head.

>> Did we spend a million years or more just
>> contemplating our navels? I doubt it.

> Singing and dancing sound fun to me, perhaps a drum circle.
> Can't wait for that gathering, just think, single paleo woman!

I think you have a naive and overly romanticized view of paleolithic life. I
think our paleo ancestors worked their tails off from dawn to dusk to hunt
and gather enough food to feed themselves and their families. It was for
this reason that they had no time to invent written language or to build
spaceships to the moon. They were too busy trying to scrounge a living.
Intellectual endeavours could not be pursued until our basic needs for food
and shelter were met and handled efficiently. This happened in the
neolithic, when we learned how to save ourselves *enormous* amounts of time
by growing our own food.

  Too many studies indicate otherwise. There was more food resources for the
paleo HG's than the Neolithic farmers. Bone studies of both groups show this
to be true. There are marine mammals as intelligent as we are. Why haven't
they come up with a language or made it to the moon? What animal would want
to go to some place with no food? If needs are meet in nature, why would you
need a written language or desire a trip to the moon?

Organic depression has probably always been with us but I suspect the modern
concept of situational depression became common only at the neolithic, as
the human mind had trouble adapting to its new role as something other than
a simple hunting and food gathering and mate finding tool. With the new free
leisure time of the neolithic period, the human mind became burdened with
abstract social problems and with considerations of ego and with obsessions
about sexual relations and "personality" and "demeanor" and "popularity" and
"conformity" and with all the rest of that dreg from the modern human social
drama that most of us probably despise. Depression would have been a natural
response. In these terms depression is probably just another modern "disease
of civilization", like diabetes.

I think you got it backwards. Situational depression was common in HG
groups. Organic depression was most likely to be rare until our poorer
eating habits of the Neolithic period. Situational depression is short
lived. If the brain is organically depressed, a bad situation can seem much
worse.