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The past was not that cute

(juliawise.net)
430 points mhb | 3 comments | 06 Dec 25 21:53 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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PeterHolzwarth ◴[07 Dec 25 04:48 UTC] No.46179223[source]▶
"A woman's work is never done."

In our agrarian past, the cultural division of labor at the time said that men worked the field, women ran the home. And that later job was brutal, never-ending, and consumed all waking hours until the day she died.

Men broke their backs in the field, women consumed their lives doing the ceaseless work that never ended, every waking moment. (And occasionally helped out in the field, too).

Running a family was a brutal two-person job -- and the kids had to dive in to help out the second they could lift something heavier than a couple pounds.

We forget so easily that for the entire history of our species - up until just recently - simply staying alive and somewhat warm and minimally fed was a hundred-hour-a-week job for mom and dad.

There are important downsides, but the Green Revolution - and dare I say it, the industrial revolution - was truly transformative for our species.

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nowittyusername ◴[07 Dec 25 05:40 UTC] No.46179422[source]▶
When humans domesticated animals and started tending to the fields is when IMO it all went down hill. That change brought in modern civilization with all its advantages but moreeso its disadvantages and maladaptive behaviors of the human mind. We shoulda stayed hunter gatherers, I am almost certain we would have been happier.
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PeterHolzwarth ◴[07 Dec 25 05:45 UTC] No.46179444[source]▶
You first.

And no cheating by bringing antibiotics with you.

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manmal ◴[07 Dec 25 06:31 UTC] No.46179640[source]▶
Hard to catch a disease when it’s always the same 15 people around you, with no communication to the outside world; and no factory farming that incubates most of these diseases.

Regarding your reference to how brutal and never-ending work was; As far as we know, many European medieval farmers had 1500-1800 working hours per year. It’s also a bit gloomy to assume the household was run by two parents and their kids - often, grandparents were colocated and helped until they couldn’t. What you‘ve described was certainly the case during famines and war, but not a permanent state.

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sarchertech ◴[07 Dec 25 06:52 UTC] No.46179744[source]▶
>Hard to catch a disease when it’s always the same 15 people around you, with no communication to the outside world.

There’s plenty of bacteria hanging out in the dirt, water, the animals you eat, and on your own skin. Add in the parasites, and zoonotic viruses and it’s not very hard at all to catch a disease even as a solitary hermit in the wild.

>factory farms

Didn’t need factory farms for smallpox. Many animals live in large herds, which were larger in the past. If you read accounts from the 18th and early 19th century there are many reports of squirrel migrations involving hundreds of millions of squirrels in relatively small areas.

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palmotea ◴[07 Dec 25 07:55 UTC] No.46180023[source]▶
> There’s plenty of bacteria hanging out in the dirt, water, the animals you eat, and on your own skin. Add in the parasites, and zoonotic viruses and it’s not very hard at all to catch a disease even as a solitary hermit in the wild.

An hunter-gathers were probably a lot more robust to that than modern people.

Think about it: if what you say were that big of an issue, hunter-gathers would have been sickly and died out before getting to us.

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1. sarchertech ◴[07 Dec 25 14:31 UTC] No.46181920{3}[source]▶
There’s no reason to assume that. Antibiotics and anti-parasitic drugs have only been around for a century or so. That’s not enough time for our immune systems to have lost the ability to fight them.

>Think about it: if what you say were that big of an issue, hunter-gathers would have been sickly and died out before getting to us.

Most wild animals are riddled with parasites and it’s common for for animals in captivity to have 2x the lifespan of their wild counterparts.

You don’t need to make it to 70 to raise children. If 50% of people make it to 30 and each person has an average of 5 kids the math works out fine for population growth.

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2. Konnstann ◴[07 Dec 25 15:19 UTC] No.46182310[source]▶
The immune response to diseases has to be developed over time, not to mention the fact that the introduction of those drugs drastically accelerated the evolution of the bacteria, viruses, etc. I can't speculate as to the health of hunter gatherer civilizations but modern diets and until recently the prevalence of antibacterial soaps and products in homes have definitely changed immune systems. Just look at covid, where in just a period of a few years the amount of infections due to other common diseases like influenza or strep have shot up due to kids not being exposed to germs during the lockdowns.
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3. sarchertech ◴[07 Dec 25 18:30 UTC] No.46183847[source]▶
> The immune response to diseases has to be developed over time

The human immune system has both innate and acquired components. The innate systems are functionally the same between you and I or a hunter gatherer.

A hunter gatherer may have acquired immunity to viruses and bacteria that you or I haven’t been exposed to, but in most cases they would have become sick in the first place before they got that immunity. The majority of diseases don’t produce long lasting immunity. There’s a reason you get tetanus vaccines every 5-10 years.

We are also exposed to more pathogens than hunter gatherers not fewer because of the way we live. Plus we have vaccines, so if anything we have a more robust acquired immune system.

> introduction of those drugs drastically accelerated the evolution of the bacteria, viruses, etc.

Antibiotics accelerated the evolution of bacteria towards antibiotic resistance. Not towards greater virulence. Antibiotic resistance generally has a fitness penalty as well, so if anything modern bacteria would tend to be slightly less dangerous.

>antibacterial soap

Antibacterial soap can result in resistant bacteria and it also alters your bodies microbiome. Theres some evidence that it can make you more prone to autoimmune diseases, but no good evidence of a strong impact on your bodies ability to fight off diseases.

Certainly not to a level noticeable by an individual.

>look at Covid

The reason influenza infections went up was because people weren’t exposed to influenza, not because of lack of exposure to generic germs.

There weren’t more overall infections, they were just concentrated in time. If Covid hadn’t happened, those extra people who got the flu would have just gotten the flu earlier.