Day In The Life Of An Ancient Human

[00:00:00]And today, reacting to "What did ancient humans do all day before jobs existed?"

[00:00:05]Great question. Great question. And I've been wondering, you know, every now and then I ponder on ideas y'all wouldn't think I would ponder on, but trust me, I do ponder. I'm moving, by the way, y'all. I know I forgot to tell y'all.

[00:00:17]It's only people I can stream and [music] stuff be peeping, but I know y'all probably like, "Oh, he must be moving cuz he got a random Home Depot box in the corner." Let's get to the video. Let's do it.

[00:00:29]>> Body is ready. No alarm, no schedule, no place you need to be. You sit up, stretch, and ask yourself one question.

[00:00:35]What should I do today? For 99% of human history, this wasn't a hypothetical.

[00:00:40]This was every single morning for roughly 300,000 years. And the answer to that question looked nothing like the life you're living.

[00:00:47]>> Probably, my assumption before the video tells us is food, strengthening shelter, preparing for just different seasons, like winter or summer.

[00:01:02]That's what I think.

[00:01:04]>> Right now, modern humans spend about 90,000 hours of their lives working.

[00:01:08]That's roughly 1/3 of your waking existence dedicated to a job. But for the overwhelming majority of human history, jobs didn't exist. There was no employment, no wages, no boss, no career ladder to climb. So, what did people actually do all day? Let's start with what we know for certain. In 1963, archaeologist Richard Lee conducted a study that would change how we understand prehistoric life. He tracked the daily activities of the Dobe Ju/'hoansi people in Botswana, one of the few remaining groups still living in a way that resembles pre-agricultural >> Is something that live in the in the the US?

[00:01:42]Are these just random dots?

[00:01:43]>> human life. He found that adults spent about 2.5 days per week acquiring food.

[00:01:48]That's roughly 17 hours >> There we go. See what I'm saying?

[00:01:51]Acquiring nutrients and food.

[00:01:54]I I like that'd be one of the biggest things. Like, those are the main things, food consumption. Cuz you know how we go get food. We just go to grocery store, pick out your favorite dish, pick out that. Them, it's like this is this is going to take all day.

[00:02:09]We're going all day trying to figure out this food situation, whether we're bringing back big game, whether we're bringing back turtle meat, whatever it is, this is we're trying to figure it out. You know?

[00:02:23]>> hours. The rest of the time, they did whatever they wanted. And here's the important part. This pattern shows up everywhere anthropologists look. The Hadza in Tanzania, the Ache in Paraguay, the Martu in Australia. Completely different environments, different continents, same result. About 15 to 20 hours per week spent on survival activities. For context, you probably >> less than what I would think, though.

[00:02:44]I thought this would I guess once you have it down and you know what to do and how to hunt, it's like cut Oh, I won't say it's like cutting on a really action movie. But it's it's second nature, though.

[00:02:56]>> work twice that. Now, some of you are thinking, "But those are modern people.

[00:03:01]How do we know ancient humans lived the same way?" Fair question. And the answer comes from bones. When archaeologists compare skeletons of ancient humans to early agricultural populations, the difference is dramatic. Farmers were shorter. Their bones show signs of nutritional deficiency. Their teeth were riddled with cavities from grain-heavy diets. They had arthritis in their spines from repetitive labor. And they died younger. Ancient human skeletons, taller, stronger, healthier teeth, less joint damage. Their bones tell a clear story. They were doing less repetitive physical labor, not more. But the most fascinating evidence comes from something archaeologists found that shouldn't exist if survival was a constant struggle, art. In 1994, ex- Mhm.

[00:03:42]Okay.

[00:03:44]Okay. Okay. Okay. I didn't think about that.

[00:03:47]Spending spending time making art on cave walls. I guess when you're doing that, you really don't have much to do today.

[00:03:55]Uh all tasks are done cuz I'd imagine if I come back, right, and I'm a father in this time, and I'm out here hunting with my see my son Well, I guess me and my sons are doing that. But let's say I'm a father and I'm and we're having our chill day, and I walk into the cave and I see my son drawing something on the wall.

[00:04:13]If if he wasn't supposed to be doing that, I would have you would have seen streaks on the wall as if hands were coming down because I grabbed him up by the back of his neck and said, "Bro, come on, you supposed to be out here with me uh uh cutting uh hides and stuff."

[00:04:28]Makes sense.

[00:04:29]>> Bores discovered Chauvet Cave in southern France. Inside were paintings created roughly 30,000 years ago.

[00:04:34]Horses, lions, rhinoceroses rendered with perspective, shading, and movement.

[00:04:39]These weren't crude stick figures. This was sophisticated art that required skill, planning, and most importantly, time. Someone spent hours, maybe days, deep inside a cave by firelight painting animals on a wall. Not for survival, not for food, for beauty, for meaning, for something to do. In Blombos Cave in South Africa, archaeologists found 100,000 year-old perforated shell beads.

[00:05:01]Tiny holes drilled through seashells, clearly meant to be strung together as jewelry. The nearest coastline was 20 km away. Someone walked 40 km round trip just to collect shells, then spent hours carefully drilling holes with stone tools just to look good. In 2008, researchers found a 40,000 year-old flute carved from a vulture bone in Germany. Five finger holes, perfectly spaced. Whoever made this understood music. They understood pitch, and they spent significant time crafting it. Not for hunting, not for defense, for mu- >> music. So there's a lot of arts. That makes sense. This makes sense. I get it.

[00:05:35]Arts, arts and crafts, music, you know, it was a very still time where you're being still.

[00:05:42]>> music. These aren't isolated finds.

[00:05:44]Across Europe, Africa, and Asia, archaeological sites from 100,000 years ago onward are filled with evidence of decorative objects. Carefully crafted tools far more elaborate than necessary for survival, and items that required hours of focused work with no immediate practical benefit. This is what people did when they weren't securing food.

[00:06:02]They created. They decorated. They made things beautiful. So, let's reconstruct a day. You wake up around dawn. The fire from last night is still smoldering.

[00:06:10]Someone adds wood. You eat leftover meat or fish from yesterday. Maybe some nuts or berries collected the day before.

[00:06:15]Breakfast is social. People talk. They plan loosely for the day. Not because they have to, because that's what humans do. Around mid-morning, a small group might leave to hunt or gather. But, here's the key.

[00:06:25]>> That was probably the most like exciting part of the of the week is the hunt.

[00:06:35]You know?

[00:06:36]The hunt, and then the other most I don't know if exciting is the um maybe surprising, the most uh uh blood-inducing, or no, not blood-inducing, heart rate heart rate higher heart rate inducing moments would be pillaging.

[00:06:57]Whenever you are now fighting off another tribe from taking over your tribe and stealing your women and children and keep putting your men into slavery. Which, did they do that back then? Or did they just all come together and that's just what it was?

[00:07:12]They were okay.

[00:07:13]>> Don't go every day. If the hunt was successful 2 days ago and food is stored, you might not leave camp at all.

[00:07:19]You might spend the morning working on tools, sharpening a spear, weaving a basket, scraping an animal hide to make it soft and usable. This isn't work in the modern sense. There's no clock, no supervisor. You do it because competence matters, because being skilled earns respect, because making things well is part of being human. If hunting happens, it's not the frantic chase you see in movies. Humans are persistence hunters.

[00:07:40]We track animals at a steady jog for hours until they overheat and collapse.

[00:07:44]We're the only species that can do this effectively because we can sweat and regulate our body temperature while running. Most animals can't. So, we outlast them. The hunt might take 3 to 6 hours including travel. Then, the animal is carried back and butchered. Everyone eats. And by early afternoon, the productive part of the day is essentially over. What happens next is what modern people find hardest to understand. Nothing and everything.

[00:08:06]People rest. They sit in the shade and talk. They play with children. They groom each other picking through hair, reinforcing bonds. They make jewelry from shells or beads or animal teeth.

[00:08:15]They carve designs into bones or stones.

[00:08:17]They nap. Anthropologist James Suzman documented that among the Ju/'hoansi, adults spend roughly 6 hours per day in what he called social time. Not working, not sleeping, just being with other people, talking, laughing, telling jokes. Because in a world without money or police or written contracts, your survival depends entirely on your relationships. If people don't like you, they don't have to share food when you're hungry. So, you invest enormous amounts of time in those bonds. Not because it's productive, because it's how humans stay human. Then the sun sets and this is when something remarkable happens. In 2014, anthropologist Polly Wiessner analyzed hundreds of hours of conversation recordings from the Ju/'hoansi. During the day, conversations were practical. Who saw animal tracks where? Which plants were ready for harvest? Complaints about someone not sharing fairly. But at night, around the fire, 81% of conversations shifted to stories.

[00:09:09]>> Oh, stories and myths. Makes sense. Scary stories.

[00:09:15]>> Myths about how the world began, tales of ancestors who did impossible things, jokes that made everyone laugh, adventures from far away. Wiessner argued that this is >> So, basically, this is their Netflix.

[00:09:27]Yeah, this is their oh, y'all trying to customize y'all trying to watch TV.

[00:09:31]This is basically their their their situation that we're all the same guys, just with elevated technology and stuff.

[00:09:38]We all We all We are our ancestors just with TikTok brain.

[00:09:44]>> where human culture was actually born.

[00:09:46]Gods, spirits, the past, the future, things you can only think about when your stomach is full and you're safe.

[00:09:52]And people didn't go to sleep and stay asleep the way you do now. Historical records from medieval Europe and sleep studies from the 1990s confirm that before artificial light, humans slept in two phases. First sleep for about 4 hours, then a wakeful period of 1 to 2 hours in complete darkness. Then second sleep for another 4 hours.

[00:10:10]>> Why?

[00:10:11]That sounds brutal.

[00:10:14]Wake up at the middle of your deep REM sleep, sit up for a while, just chill.

[00:10:19]All right, I'm going to go back and get some more of that.

[00:10:22]Why we not just push all the way through?

[00:10:25]>> So, here's what a full day looked like.

[00:10:27]About 4 to 6 hours securing food or making tools. About 6 hours in social interaction, storytelling, grooming, playing, about 8 hours sleeping in two separate phases, and the rest, resting, sitting, watching clouds, doing nothing in particular, existing without needing to justify your existence through productivity. The >> Mhm.

[00:10:46]Yeah, for sure. Cuz that can't be me now today.

[00:10:51]That It is sad, bro, because I'll sit here and I'll be like just I have to be like, "Okay, what's the next scene?

[00:10:58]Okay, I got to go to the gym. Okay, after the gym, I'll come home. What do I have to do? Okay, well, I need to be packing because I need to move soon."

[00:11:04]Like I'm not just I don't just sit and just Yeah.

[00:11:10]And if I did that, my people would be looking at me like, "What's up, bro?

[00:11:14]What does he have going on?" Or say if we all were sitting chilling, we're watching something. Watching on the phone, but just sitting down being Like there's just nothing to do, but I was also raised there's always something to do, too.

[00:11:32]So, I mean, [ __ ] >> And about 10,000 years ago, something changed. Humans in the Fertile Crescent began planting seeds and domesticating animals. Agriculture. And agriculture is a trap. Once you start farming, you can feed more people. More people means you need more food. More food means more farming. Within a few generations, populations exploded and there was no going back. Because now there were too many mouths to survive by hunting and gathering. You were locked in. And farming required far more labor.

[00:12:02]Plowing, planting, weeding, harvesting, storing, defending crops from animals and raiders. The skeletal evidence is unambiguous. Early farmers worked harder, ate worse, and died younger than the hunter-gatherers who came before them. But the population kept growing.

[00:12:17]And with larger populations came specialists, tool makers, potters, weavers, inventors, then soldiers, priests, administrators, and eventually jobs, employment. The idea that your time belonged to someone else in exchange for resources. By the time we built cities, the original human lifestyle was gone, replaced by schedules, obligations, the need to work most of your waking hours just to survive in the system we created. Today, you spend 90,000 hours working. Your ancestors spent way less. You sleep in one block and call waking up at 2:00 a.m. insomnia. They slept in two phases and used the middle hours for reflection. You spend your life chasing an illusion of greatness, achievements, wealth, and success by standards society invented. They woke up every morning already free, already enough, and at peace with nothing to prove to anyone.

[00:13:03]They didn't need to become successful.

[00:13:05]They were already living the life you're working your entire existence to retire into.

[00:13:10]You make art if you can find time after your job.

[00:13:12]>> It sounds good. I It does sound good. It sounds like a good life and a good experience, right?

[00:13:19]But it's an impossible one at at the same time.

[00:13:24]It's impossible.

[00:13:26]You can't like I mean, you can live this way if you decide to go live in the mountains somewhere.

[00:13:32]Even then, you know, uh somebody might come through and say, "You got to pay some type of tax on living up here."

[00:13:40]Or you can be homeless, which also has its consequences as well if you wanted to just go out there and live on the street.

[00:13:49]Right? So, I mean it's [snorts] just safe to say that this was nice for a certain time period. And it's unfortunate that we've lost certain ways that were that once who were.

[00:14:04]But now you know, this could just only be a distant memory to reflect on and maybe take small things from, small ideas and small, you know, ideologies from.

[00:14:20]Maybe like maybe the biggest takeaway from this is to be still more often than not.

[00:14:27]But there's just we have to do the way the way it was set up now. And it's not our fault.

[00:14:36]The way it was this is this is from past things. We like we're just living how we were taught and how we know we have to live in order to survive.

[00:14:46]So it's like it this is just a reflection video. Like this is interesting to think about a time that that's how life once was.

[00:14:55]But that that's all it is though.

[00:14:59]>> [laughter] >> Cuz there's nothing else to do but sit and be I mean there's nothing else to do but what we're doing now. You have to survive or be on the ground outside.

[00:15:09]>> They made art because they had time, and that's what humans do. We're not a different species, but we live so differently from how humans lived for 99% of our existence that we might as well be. We traded freedom for food security, leisure for population growth, time for productivity, and most of us have no idea what we gave up because we never knew it was there.

[00:15:29]>> All right.

[00:15:30]Having said man, let me know what y'all think, bro. Like the video, sub up, comment, and visit the channel. And let y'all appreciate it, bro. We're gone. 88 light dog.