The past was not that cute

I have read that hunter-gatherers generally had an easier life than peasants in agricultural societies. But the hunter gatherer lifestyle can only support small groups with a low overall population density. So the hunter-gatherers always lost out to agricultural societies, when they came into contact/conflict. Not sure how prevalent this view is amongst professional anthropologists.

I wonder if the hunter gather societies could have grown larger if they put in the same level of work as the agricultural societies?

One could debate what leads to a better quality of life. Is it more downtime and community, like we see with hunter gatherers. Is it the modern conveniences we end up with through larger societies and more work effort?

I watched a video of a polyglot who learned the language of a hunter gatherer tribe to spend some time with them. It was amazing to see how well adapted they were to the environment, both in terms of their bodies and skills. The outsider was getting eaten up by bugs and cut by every little branch or thorn, while the locals had thicker skin and seemed completely unaffected by all of this. They were running through the forest at night and it seemed effortless. While hunting they needed a bag at one point, so someone grabbed some stuff off a tree and quickly wove one together like it was nothing. What ends up being a survival realty show for us ends up looking quite convenient for them. If I need a bag I need to work to earn money, then depend on a whole supply chain to grow/manufacture the raw materials, weave the fabric, cut and assemble the fabric into a bag, and a retailer to sell it to me, as well as all of the shipping on trucks, boats, and planes along the way. It’s actually pretty crazy how much work goes into everything we buy.

This is a concise description of the current understanding

Marshall Salhins Stone Age Economics is the most popular work that is academically serious on this topic

This is actually one of the key points Yuval Noah Harari made in his landmark book 'Sapiens' (a must-read, probably the book I've recommended more than any other)

I suggest reading The Dawn of Everything, by David Graeber and David Wengrow. They argue that there's not a true dichotomy between agricultural and hunter-gatherer societies. In fact, many societies practice(d) both.

A book for which literally zero professional archaeologists or anthropologists were consulted and which promulgated more noble savage bullshit as a result. That "life of leisure" picture was based off of the work of one guy who wrote the hours literally spent hunting and gathering and none of the time spent processing food or maintaining tools and clothes, nor the hours per day spent collecting fresh water.

If agricultural life and cities were such a raw deal: why would people all over the world adopt it against their own self interest when humans were basically as intelligent (if not at all educated) as we are today?

>why would people all over the world adopt it against their own self interest

There was no easy going back. Once agricultural societies had settled there would be little if any free land to hunt/gather on. Also, much of the traditional knowledge would be lost in a few generations. Plus, peasants were often kept on their land by force.

I've read it. There is some pretty dubious stuff in it. I think he is more interested in telling a good sounding story than looking at the research.

See also the 'If books could kill' podcast's take:

https://open.spotify.com/episode/1IeSWFtBEaYEIblkXTcuu2

>I wonder if the hunter gather societies could have grown larger if they put in the same level of work as the agricultural societies?

I think it is about organization and population density. A hunter gatherer society is not going to be able to field an army of tens of thousands of people, as an agricultural society can. Hunter gatherers are also limited in their technology by their continual movement.

The Mongols were a nomadic society and very successful militarily (for a while). But they kept large numbers of animals and weren't hunter gatherers.

Everything has tradeoffs and unforeseen effects and social structure is a slow moving ship. Food security is pretty obviously compelling, and creates a stability that allows a society to scale and grow more wealthy and powerful. The loss in autonomy and flexibility is part of the cost. Individuals see things different ways, but the only vote they get is within a social context that has its own momentum. What wins is not necessarily the society that the individual feels happiest in, but the one that is most evolutionarily fit over many generations and conflicts.