Sounds like my last camping trip.

+1

I dunno about that.. Aren't we forgetting some differences in cognitive abilities, ie: homosapien v. homosapien sapien? I'd rather retain a greater degree of my cognitive abilities regardless of the living conditions..

This assumption fails to take into consideration the cultural economy of fertility. It isn't a simpler answer because it relies on an assumption the disregards a feature in every observed human society.

For instance, there are a few aspects of the Kahlahari Bushmen that offer us insight into this. The women do not start bearing children until they are 18 or 19 years old because their diet is very lean and not as rich in fat as others. This also means breast milk is scarce and causes births to be spaced further apart. Sure, these specifics are not necessarily applicable to all H-G societies of the past, but they provide us with insights into how fertility is affected by the realities and necessities of the cultural economy.

As Marshall Sahlins pointed out many years ago, there are two ways to happiness. Want a lot and get a lot; or want little and be satisfied with little. Not sure if either Sahlins' Stone Age Economics or Limited Wants, Unlimited Means edited by John Gowdy are still in print, but they're stimulating reads.

Not sure, google Tribe and Bruce Parry.

There was one episode that would provoke some interesting discussion.

He visited a tribe that lives on a very remote Pacific Island. They have communal property.

However one of their primary food sources (and sources of other useful materials) is Shark. Chinese traders were visiting Islands to trade stuff for parts of the Sharks anatomy, that is valuable in Chinese medicine.

Frictions were rising because some of the Islanders were keeping the proceeds of this trade privately.

LETTUCE discuss huntering and gathering imo

Vix hunting and gathering up old threads today.

A lot of disease comes from living in close proximity with a lot of humans and domesticated animals.

Some of the "twist your knee and you're dead" thinking comes from imagining hunter gatherers as individualists when they were really socialists.

Heh, the TV show I mention above has been repeated fairly recently.

Its hard to describe the massive lottery in conditions for the Tribes he stayed with.

Some are like totally Manyana guys, yea at some point we will go stare at a fat pig and catch a fruit as it falls from a tree, till then party time, and others are like skinny 1000 yard stare guys who are like yea we need to go on 60KM round trip hunt and maybe catch something once in 10 trips, till then we got these worms to eat.

Thing is even the latter tribe come across as way happier than large parts of industrial civilisation cohorts. They have an identity, a group function, shared values and a highly supportive communal structure.

The huge diversity of angst that westerners/developed world people have is not really present.

Also,narcotics: