Fun History: Live Like a Caveman

Your nervous system remembers freedom
#fun_history#fun_philosophy

Falsehoods abound

Autonomy isn’t a political ideal. It’s encoded in your physiology. Being enslaved feels bad because it is bad for survival.

This history nerd who is obsessed with vikings doesn’t understand this.

Even this feminist who tries to debunk cavewoman myths doesn’t get it.

Bernard Cornwell writes his popular Viking novels as if women didn’t exist until someone needs to be raped.

Prehistoric societies were not patriarchal or matriarchal or egalitarian. Women did not have rights. Men also did not have rights. There were no rights. No lawyers to invent these fantasies.

Prehistoric people were AUTONOMOUS and FREE. (They weren’t free like modern libertarians fantasize. They were free because nobody could trap them.)1

How our ancestors married and raised children

“Durr men locked their women in caves to protect them durrr” I don’t have to tell you that living in damp darkness is a recipe for quick death, and you also can’t lock up a cave. The mother of the nuclear family raising kids alone in a house while the father is out bringing home the bacon is not normal. It’s an experiment, and the results are embarrassing as fuck.

Prehistoric people died, separated, remarried, cheated, did polygyny, ran away, were hermits, etc.2 Saying that one man and one woman should mate for life is pure nonsense. I cringe at the ignorance of calling this “traditional.” This is not a tradition in any culture anywhere. “Durr men are the leaders of the household” that doesn’t even make any sense.

Hunter-gatherer child-rearing was radically communal:

  • Newborns were passed hand-to-hand 8 times per hour (documented among Efe and Aka peoples)3
  • By 18 weeks old, Efe infants had interacted with up to 14 different caregivers in a single day3
  • From around age 2, children spent most of the day in mixed-age playgroups (ages 2-16) with minimal adult supervision3
  • Older children learned caregiving by actually doing it—supervising younger kids, teaching skills
  • Alloparents (non-parental caregivers) provided nearly half of all childcare3

Also there was no school. Kids just learned by copying adults. Gatekeeping knowledge is a joke.

How we were healthy

Allocating time, separate from our “productive” time to exercise as an end in itself sucks. No one likes the gym unless they’re insane or boring. Normal daily life made prehistoric women 11-16% stronger than today’s elite rowers.4 “Stayed home with the children” my ass. The fact that there is no sexual dimorphism in Vitamin D requirements is proof enough that this is bullshit.

Mental health (which is in no way separate from physical health) was ensured by giggling with your friends all day while you “work” (live life). Work did not separate you from loved ones. Work was not “work.” Loneliness was impossible. (So was privacy. So was “modesty.”) There was no money. No work was valued higher than other work. “I make the rules because I earn the money” no shut up that’s not real.

People’s diets were also SHARED. It wasn’t that each man brought home their own kill for their own family. If someone shot a bison, everyone ate.5 The whole group dug up tubers together. If a man broke his leg or went off to battle another tribe, his family didn’t suddenly become vegan. No one was getting morbidly obese while another struggled to feed their children. Children had their own weapons they could even hunt with themselves.6 Hoarding was impossible.7 Starving was done as a team! Have you ever wondered why it’s so interesting to know what other people are eating? It’s because of this.

How to live like a cave person

Have you ever read The Godfather by Mario Puzo? I’m not talking about the movie. The movie sucks. Fuck the movie. I’m talking about the BOOK where Don Vito does people favors, and then they owe him. That’s not corruption, it’s what people did before banks existed. It’s called “interdependence”.7 I’m dependent on you and you’re dependent on me, and we’re both dependent on Fred who is also dependent on us both. None of us are replaceable or interchangeable. We are not dragons. We are bees. We are all interdependent and autonomous.

Don’t tell me what to do. I don’t tell you what to do either. The law doesn’t tell us what to do. There is no law. If we want to do something anti-social, we probably die and win a Darwin award.

We be nice to each other and it rules. Freedom and fun. Feels good. Feels RIGHT.

Reject convenience. Take the stairs. Knead the bread. Lift the child. Ride a bike or walk to the location. Carry the basket of laundry on your hip to the clothes line across the field. Chop the wood. Craft the tool. Process the kill. Carry the backpack. Grind the grain.

Wear practical clothing. Match with your crew. Invent a silly hairstyle and rock it together. Invent a call you can recognize from 100 meters. Sing your tribal song in harmony. Beat the drums. Dance around the fire. Party all day, every day.

Fun is in your DNA (also in your mRNA). Those who rejected fun died, for most of human history. Have fun and be like a caveperson.

Footnotes

  1. Walker, R.S., Flinn, M.V., & Hill, K.R. (2010). “Evolutionary history of partible paternity in lowland South America.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107(45): 19195. Also: Deb, A. (2024). “Bargaining between the sexes: outside options and leisure time in hunter-gatherer households.” Evolution and Human Behavior. ↩

  2. Walker, R.S., Flinn, M.V., & Hill, K.R. (2010). “Evolutionary history of partible paternity in lowland South America.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107(45): 19195. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1002598107 ↩

  3. Chaudhary, N. & Swanepoel, A. (2023). “Hunter-gatherer childhoods may offer clues to improving education and wellbeing.” Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry. https://acamh.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jcpp.13773 ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  4. Macintosh, A.A., et al. (2017). “Prehistoric women’s manual labor exceeded that of athletes through the first 6,000 years of farming.” Science Advances, 3:e1700056. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.1700056 ↩

  5. Hawkes, K., O’Connell, J.F., & Blurton Jones, N.G. (2001). “Hadza meat sharing.” Evolution and Human Behavior, 22(2): 113-142. Also: Hill, K., et al. (1984). “Men’s hunting returns shown not to differentially go to their own wives and children.” Reviewed in: Hawkes, K. (1993). “Why hunter-gatherers work.” Current Anthropology, 34(4): 341-361. ↩

  6. Pretty Shield. (1932). Pretty Shield: Medicine Woman of the Crows (Frances Baldwin, ed.). University of Nebraska Press reprint. See: the passage where she describes receiving her first bow and arrow at age five and successfully hunting a baby bison. ↩

  7. Woodburn, J. (1982). “Egalitarian societies.” Man, 17(3): 431-451. Also: Cashdan, E. (1980). “Egalitarianism among hunters and gatherers.” American Anthropologist, 82: 116-120. ↩ ↩2