Hunter-gatherers in the Philippines who adopt farming work around ten hours a week longer than their forager neighbours, a new study suggests, complicating the idea that agriculture represents progress. The research also shows that a shift to agriculture impacts most on the lives of women.
[...] Every day, at regular intervals between 6am and 6pm, the researchers recorded what their hosts were doing and by repeating this in ten different communities, they calculated how 359 people divided their time between leisure, childcare, domestic chores and out-of-camp work. While some Agta communities engage exclusively in hunting and gathering, others divide their time between foraging and rice farming.
The study, published today in Nature Human Behaviour, reveals that increased engagement in farming and other non-foraging work resulted in the Agta working harder and losing leisure time. On average, the team estimate that Agta engaged primarily in farming work around 30 hours per week while foragers only do so for 20 hours. They found that this dramatic difference was largely due to women being drawn away from domestic activities to working in the fields. The study found that women living in the communities most involved in farming had half as much leisure time as those in communities which only foraged.
Also, hunting comes with beer.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 22 2019, @08:34AM (5 children)
but given the surprised reactions, I guess it bears repeating for the new generation. Yes, farming had made people's lives worse. But it also made people much less capable of surviving on their own. Sharp-eyed hunters with sharp spears and wicked arrows roaming the wilderness, or unarmed and untrained half-starved peasants crowded inside village's fence; which are easier to rule?
What is "progress" for the chiefs, is what improves their lot in life. For those below, it is a toss-up if they get some crumbs, or become collateral damage. You'll do fine to always keep that in mind.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by khallow on Wednesday May 22 2019, @12:42PM (3 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 22 2019, @12:59PM (2 children)
but for it herding works loads better, as demonstrated pretty much every time. Peasants without training are useless as fighters, and no one really wants many of his peasants trained with weapons, now does he? Even with mongols at the gates he doesn't.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday May 22 2019, @11:00PM
There's plenty of counterexamples. China usually succeeds over its herding neighbors, for example, despite spectacular examples like the Mongolians.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Thursday May 23 2019, @02:46AM
Actually, in feudal Europe, the average peasant was required to give his lord military service NN-many days per year, and might also be required to provide his own arms (and armor, if any).
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by dry on Thursday May 23 2019, @04:04AM
Many Hunter-Gatherer societies were pretty communistic, no rulers. You had the elders whose advice was listened to closely and thought about before perhaps ignoring and people who were good at stuff and led in that stuff. The guy with the most experience hunting big game leading the hunters, the guy who is known for his fishing leading the fishing party kind of thing. If someone took too much or didn't pull their weight, they were shunned, which would result in them smarting up or leaving.