Eva Durant wrote:
>
> OK, I haven't the concrete sources, but the
> claim, that hunter-gatherers had a healthy,
> starvation free existence sounds
> extraordinary.
My source is Jared Diamond's book "The Third chimpanzee".
He writes that the average new born child would live until it was about
60 years old before agriculture was developed, and that is quite a lot
without the help of scince and medicine. In Norway that average age was
reached between 1920 and 1930.
I read a study about average duration of life last century in the
municipality where I live. There were years when the average age of
people who died were less than 15 years. That is almost incredibily, but
it was years when most of the children died. Before 1850 the average age
by death was between 20 and 30 years, and by 1900 people were living on
average until they were about 40 years old.
I guess it was not very different in other European conutries.
What is extraordinary is the short lives of people in agricultural
societies. Of course one important reason to their short lives was the
deadly combination of diseases and hunger.
> Agriculture provided extraordinary surplusses,
> kept a fair-sized minority - the ruling class
> and it's administrative/military personel,
> in relative well-being even through
> "bad years" when others starved. You cannot
> ignore the different sizes of populations involved.
The part of the ruling class that was well off was only the top of the
pyramide. Most of the personell was badly paid. So badly that they could
not live from their wages. They either had to be corrupt or have some
business/farm in addition to their job to keep alive.
The good old days were in 1955, not one hundred or three hundred years
ago, but maybe 20.000-30.000 years ago as well.
> Anyway, even if it was so, which it wasn't,
> we cannot go back to that "golden age" of
> pre-civilisation with our x billion of today,
> but we still - just about - could make it
> if we get to the democratic, conscious
> social intervertion stage, before total
> disintegration.
Of course we can not and will not return to the stoneage, but the
stoneage was a much better time to live for the common man than the
renaissance.
> > --
> > All the best
> > Tor Førde
> > visit our homepage: URL::http://home.sol.no/~toforde/
> > email:
> > [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> >
--
All the best
Tor Førde
visit our homepage: URL::http://home.sol.no/~toforde/
email:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
