What Did Ancient Humans Do When They Got Bored?

[00:00:00]Imagine, no phone, no Netflix, no internet, no books.

[00:00:04]You're sitting by a fire.

[00:00:06]The work for today is done, and what now?

[00:00:10]Do you just stare into the darkness?

[00:00:12]Here's the thing, ancient humans felt boredom exactly the same way you do right now.

[00:00:17]And the way they dealt with it completely changed the course of human civilization. For a long time, scientists assumed that hunter-gatherers had no time for boredom.

[00:00:27]Constant survival, constant danger, always moving, always working.

[00:00:33]Wrong. Anthropological studies of tribes still living the way our ancestors did, like the Kung people of the Kalahari, revealed something surprising. Adult hunter-gatherers worked an average of just 3 to 5 hours per day.

[00:00:47]3 to 5 hours.

[00:00:49]The rest of the time? Free.

[00:00:52]Lots and lots of free time. And that question, "Okay, so what do I do now?"

[00:00:58]hit them just as hard as it hits you on a Sunday evening.

[00:01:01]Boredom is not an invention of the 21st century.

[00:01:05]So, what did they actually do? Number one, they told stories. And not just to kill time. Stories were how they transferred knowledge, how they warned each other about dangers, how they kept collective memory alive across generations. Studies of cave paintings show that many of them aren't [music] just documentation.

[00:01:26]They're narratives, characters, events, entire stories painted onto rock walls.

[00:01:33]Someone sat down, picked up a piece of ochre, and decided, "I'm going to tell you something." Number two, they danced.

[00:01:41]They sang.

[00:01:42]Rhythmic movement to sound is one of the oldest coping mechanisms humans have ever used. Musical instruments found in caves in Germany date back 40,000 years.

[00:01:53]40,000.

[00:01:54]Someone carved a flute out of a vulture bone, not because they needed it to survive, but because they wanted to create something beautiful. Number three, they played games.

[00:02:06]Archaeologists keep finding animal bones with clear signs of use as game pieces.

[00:02:12]Games involving chance and strategy existed long before the invention of writing.

[00:02:17]Think about that for a second.

[00:02:19]Before anyone could read or write, people were already playing games and arguing about who cheated. Number four, they created shell jewelry, geometric patterns [music] carved into tools, body paint made from ochre. None of this had any practical necessity. Someone picked up a perfectly functional spear and spent three extra hours carving [music] a beautiful pattern into it. They were bored, and so they made something. Okay, here's where it gets really [music] interesting. Evolutionary scientists have proposed a fascinating hypothesis.

[00:02:52]Boredom was the engine of civilization.

[00:02:55]When the brain isn't occupied with survival, it starts to wander, and a wandering brain is a brain that invents.

[00:03:02]It was during moments of doing nothing that new ideas emerged. How to make a spear tip sharper? How to preserve meat longer?

[00:03:10]How to explain why the seasons change? A study from the University of California found that subjects who were intentionally made bored then showed significantly higher [music] scores on creative thinking tests. Significantly higher. The ancient human sitting by a fire staring into the flames thinking, "Now what?" That's not a lazy person.

[00:03:30]That's an inventor.

[00:03:31]Waiting for their idea. So, the next time you reach for your phone because you're bored, stop. Just for a second.

[00:03:37]That discomfort you feel, that emptiness you're trying to fill with another scroll through TikTok, that exact feeling is what created art, music, language, tools, cities, everything.

[00:03:52]Maybe sometimes it's worth just being bored. If you enjoyed this video, subscribe. Every week we explore things you never thought to ask about that turn out to be the most interesting things of all. Oh, and one more thing before you go.

[00:04:06]The oldest known doodle ever discovered, 73,000 years [music] old, found in a cave in South Africa.

[00:04:13]It's a simple crosshatch pattern.

[00:04:15]Basically, prehistoric tic-tac-toe.

[00:04:17]Someone was bored, picked up a rock, and started drawing.

[00:04:21]73,000 years later, you're watching a stick figure video about it. Some things never change.