Is it a meme that hunter-gatherers were more healthier, happier, stronger, smarter...

I thought it continued in Scandinavia more or less among the Sami for up until very recently.

>who was Eskimos

And Neanderthals didn't have that lifestyle, dumdum.

Actually if agriculture and civilization was so bad why did people settle down?

Checkmate primitivist revisionist memers

Yes, it's a meme. Pretty much all animal societies have some sort of hierarchies and modern humans intuitively form then when they're building groups. Even within family there is hierarchy and certain laws upheld by the group. We're biologically inclined to look at what our peers are doing and we try to make them look favourably at us. A "free" society is a myth, since there are always implicit and explicit rules and guidelines that are forced upon us.

Anarchism in general is a meme. Even anarchic groups which are supposedly free from hierarchy will have certain people emerge as leaders that can force their will upon others. Maybe not through force of law but by being more respected by others and having them side with them in majority decisions.

Because it produced more people and states full of legions of stupid agriculturalist drones with sharp metal tipped sticks could kick hunter gatherers off their land.

Turns out connectivity is better than individual intelligence.

What? You said Neanderthals were light because they endured cold (ice age) and/or they were heavily clothed most of the time. Both hold exceedingly true for modern Inuit, Yupik, Aleut, etc, yet they are all fairly swarthy peoples.

Eskimos live a significant part of their time on ice. Ice reflects UV rays. Neanderthals were ambush predators. They largely lived in forests where they could hide along game trails. They only moved away from that lifestyle as the climate began to shift, pushing them to adapt to living without forests or coastal life.

I agree, but these aren't the same points broached earlier by the poster, whom you do not appear to be.

Anyway, it is worth mentioning that Neanderthal man did not subsist solely or even mostly on game, but consumed a good portion of native plants as well, as evidenced by fossil dentition.

Also Cro-Magnon refers to a large span of people during a general time frame of human cultural evolution, and they likely spanned all skin tones and complexions, although very light ones might have been a rarity, as especially light skin is a pretty recent development from my understanding, especially with people who spent a great deal of time outside.

I'm sorry for not laying it out for you, my dude. But when you came up with the Eskimos thing you should have given a second thought to the argument and realized what I just argued yourself. The clothing thing was at the end of the day the main reason they were likely white.

Also I've never seen someone with dark skin and red hair.

They weren't eager to start farming full time.

Brain size does not fucking matter.

the biggest brains in Europe are owned by Slavs and they're fucking stupid while Dolicocephalic Nordics have the most successful countries in the world.

>Actually if agriculture and civilization was so bad why did people settle down?

Most of them didn't. But those who did could sustain a higher birthrate because they didn't need to travel. Compound for 100 generations and 99.99% of the population is now descended from agriculturalists.

>more healthier, happier, stronger, smarter,

Probably, yeah, but only compared to pre-modern farmers.

>and lived in an equal society free of laws, hate, and hierarchy?

Definitely not. H-G societies were extremely violent.

I'm not sure why you bring up hair color; perhaps it's because Neanderthals are oft invoked in discussions of red hair? Anyway, I agree with your observation, but one should realize that genes for red hair are quite rare and that red hair frequently occurs alongside several other related traits; it stands to reason that one of those traits is a pale complexion.

Neanderthals were probably mostly a tan race of people, as they are most often depicted in reconstructions, especially in sculpture. Any people which spends all its time outside is bound to be one, some more than others, and again, at this time, I believe a particularly light tone was very rare among humans.

sperm whales are geniuses

Most people with a Nordid phenotype are brachycephalic, no? Also
>phrenology
all my keks

The hell? Are you implying pale skin cannot be tanned? No one said they were incapable of producing melanin. I'm telling you they were likely as pale as "white" humans.

No?

No.

>prenology

That's in OP's pic.

>I'm telling you they were likely as pale as "white" humans

Based on what?

Their lifestyle and the fact that red hair is likely indicative of not producing much melanin.

>Their lifestyle

What?

>and the fact that red hair is likely indicative of not producing much melanin.

Based on what?

Dude, why are you so sure they had dark skin?

I'm not him btw, I'm the guy who started the discourse with you, he's someone else but I agree with him, anyway I'm leaving the thread for now peace

I'm not. I have no idea what their skin looked like. But you seem pretty sure so I wanted to know why.

I've only ever said it was likely. The fact that you have been so adamant in arguing with me about the point implies you have evidence to the contrary.

I just want to know why you think it's likely.

Books such as 1491 by Charles Mann, among others, mention how natives looked healthier and more muscular (same was said about aboriginals).
But since many indians practiced agriculture (just different) it has more to do with the type of diet.

Bread or to be more precise, starch, is the reason.

Indigenious people still living the way they do are often also healthier. I got this from a book by a doctor, who says starch is unhealthy and increases aging.

I am not talking of the paleodiet which is pretty much a naturalistic fallacy. Paleodiet excludes foods that are good (mainly legumes) and focuses too much on meat. A heavy plant diet is the way to go according to the aging scientist.

Meat contains some good stuff but could be eaten much less as it is now. Red meat isn't as good as white.
_______________________________________

As for morality. Hunter-gatherers were violent (but this also depends on which tribe). Many did not reach adulthood, child morality was high, but those who survived could become very old.

I personally happen to think that a hybrid lifestyle is the best: taking the beneficial from both worlds.

>why did people who didn't hold territory end up without territory

How would a hybrid lifestyle look?

Also
>starch is bad
>meat is okay
Lol, not really though

And the OP doesn't refer to Neolithic hunter-gatherers specifically; just Cro-Magnon, which were remarkably peaceful people according to the dominant theories today. Even later humans weren't as violent as, say, the Ancient Greeks, with regard to regularity and severity of conflict.

As I have said multiple times. Their habitat, their lifestyle, and to a lesser extant their hair color. There is a reason darker skinned humans usually have black hair whereas fair skinned humans have a relatively wide range of hair colors.

If you want elaboration on some of those points then just read the thread.

Infant mortality was much more dangerous in early agricultural societies, just think about all that stagnant water sources, shitting were they drink and eat too, less healthy mothers also kill infants with lack of nutrients

Being a early agriculturalist must have been generally horrifying, not being able to properly digest the food you eat and almost no strength to wake up in the morning

Later they more than often also practiced sheep and cattle farming so a mix of both agricullture and cattle raising often resulted in a healthier life style

not enough resources in the wild to sustain the population, it was either starve to death or settle down

also look up Holocene extinction, the only reason humans in the wild become so numerous was because of the megafauna

This post is correct. From a pure health perspective, yeah they were healthier, probably tougher, taller, better teeth, etc. That stuff goes to shit once agriculture comes in. Yeah they sometimes died at 30 but that wasn't because of their personal diet or health, it's because they got fucking rekt by a wolf or had their head caved in with a rock by Grog from the neighboring tribe.

>hunter-gatherers
>healthier
No. Some many bones found dying of tooth decay don't give hints of health.

>happier
Subjective. Quadruple amputees serving life in prison can find moments of happiness. But I don't think starving, fearing murder and killing lead to much personal peace and joy.

>stronger
Maybe. I was watching a documentary on modern-day tribes with minimal contacts with society and the Amazon and Guinea dudes were fucking shredded, six packs and all that. But they are living an insane lifestyle that requires that much activity. We leave sedentary lifestyles but we get all the nutrients we need and know more about fitness. If we weren't so lazy we'd all be stronger.

>smarter
Subjective again. I mean hunter-gatherers were the first to see through the bullshit of life via base instincts. probably took genius levels of self-awareness, introspection and observation for men who were just apes to try to organize against their base instincts, even if the results were primitive and brutal.

>lived in an equal society free of laws, hate, and hierarchy
That's just plain fucking stupid. In the lushes environments where food was endless, we find constant unnecessary tribal warfare.

I heard a lot of egyptians died of tooth decay because they ate such refined grains and hadn't invented the tooth brush.

>Subjective again. I mean hunter-gatherers were the first to see through the bullshit of life via base instincts. probably took genius levels of self-awareness, introspection and observation for men who were just apes to try to organize against their base instincts, even if the results were primitive and brutal.
*tips*

>cro-magnon
>picture is reconstruction of Herto man face
Fucking infographic.

Dude we aren't comparing the hunter-gatherers to modern civilized people, we are comparing them to agricultural societies that followed them immediately and pretty much until the end of the feudal age

Well, based on research of hunter-gatherer-like societies, or societies that have been up until very recently, they were violent and rapey as fuck compared to the modern, industrialised world.

True there has been studies that suggest that early agricultural societies took a dip in health and wellbeing, but we've well and truly gotten past that, and if I recall that was based in the fertile crescent during a time when there was very little diversity in food, and even in the classical period, fruit and seasonal foods were fairly commonly available.

Brain size does not correlate very well with intelligence. Who cares about weaker physiques, bitch we have hydraulics.

Also, I dare say anyone who wants to eat chicken and eggs, then hit the gym is going to be able to build a stronger physique than our ancestors, because they wouldn't have been able to get the sorts of energy required to maintain that level of bulk. We were gatherers first and foremost, hunting for meat is a fuckload harder than hunting for berries, berries don't run as fast.

>*tips*
Why?

You are talking about something with more apparent reverence than it deserves. You make it sound like early humans were saying "In this moment, I am euphoric. Not because of any phony instincts. But because, I am enlightened by my intelligence".

Huntergathering fucking sucks, you spend all day just trying to stay alive.

No they were physically better than us in everyway infact according to science our level of intelligence is actually the same as them only they used their brains for analytical hunting strategies or planning for seasonal changes, our brains have shrunk over the last 10,000 years meaning agriculture may have made us stupid.

Despite this hunter gatherers were jerks they would rape women and the female hunter gatherers wouldnt even fight rape because they love rape because female hunter gatherers are women in their natural state just submissive fuck toys, there would be some dicks that kill people for no reason though.

Also in that picture thats Homo Sapiens Idaltu you stupid fuck.

Their skin color probably ranged from Nords to sandniggers in Iraq because the Neanderthals also lived in the middle east and Northern Africa, there could have been Neanderthal races for all we know.

>healthier
Probably.

>happier
We can't exactly ask them.

>stronger
Almost certainly

>smarter
IQ is pretty strongly correlated with literacy so probably not.
>muh brain volume
I guess elephants should be smarter than humans then.

>lived in an equal society free of laws, hate, and hierarchy
lolnope.

Oh okay I see. Probably wasn't a euphoric moment, probably a slow gradual change the individual didn't even understand. But the state of nature is fucked up and to try something else knowing nothing else is tip worthy.

San people in Namibia only work for about 4-6 hours when they hunt, they spend the rest either fucking or screwing around.

Hunting and gathering is instinctive to humans its why we get a thrill shooting deers or chasing people its that primal desire to dominate and bring an animal down to prepare for the tribe.

Farming happened because some humans eventually realized that mass producing food would help survival more but homo sapiens had already mastered hunting and gathering in their living areas since 16,000 years ago.

>San people in Namibia only work for about 4-6 hours when they hunt, they spend the rest either fucking or screwing around.

No shit, isn't namibia a desert?

Oh fuck off.

>healthier
nobody claims this

>happier
an animistic society, free of existential dread, with a place for you in society, is a happy place to be.

>stronger
on average yeah

>smarter
uhhhhhh no.

>equal society
sometimes but not usually

>free of laws
no lol, but enforcement of law is more like how families take care of things. people are going to try to help you first, and will ostracize you if you do not change.

>free of hate
what? no, everybody hates things they don't like

>free of hierarchy
sometimes. that has more to do with size than anything. hierarchies form in larger societies with more material wealth moving around.

The only part that's true and the only part that's largely claimed by anthropologists is that animists are generally happier than people in agricultural societies, which is thoroughly backed up by observation.

Then why did evolution favor the latter?

I don't necessarily agree with the whole thing but here is an explanation:

Lack of vitamins and minerals changes which genes are actually expressed in humans, and these are the ones most likely to get passed on to their offspring.

Genes can be basically turned on and off depending on environmental factors

>nobody claims this
Of course they do. The argument is that agriculture led to humans having a less varied diet and the concentration of people in cities led to the era of communicable disease that only sort of ended with the discovery of antibiotics.

Genes do this because every cell in your body holds your DNA, and the cells have to regulate your DNA so that each cell can do its individual job correctly so that a brain cell isn't trying to be a skin cell or something like that

Some modern scientists believe other environmental input to your brain can alter gene expression as well, and the expressed genes are more likely to get passed on for better survival/faster evolution purposes

2500 years ago Scandinavia was still hunter-gatherer.

No, it wasn't.

Nobody worth listening to claims this, then. People also claim the world is ran by lizard people, why not make a thread about that?

When comparing modern globalized capitalistic society to currently existing animistic hunter-gatherer societies, life expectancy, health and infant mortality all have better numbers outside of tribalism. The mistake people make is assuming that this makes it more miserable to be in an animistic society. Animistic societies by definition use their religion in place of science to understand reality. Bad health can be bad spirits, you "know" what happens to people when they die, dead infants will be reborn, etc. etc. The doubt cast by knowledge is the source of a lot of anxiety in global society.

I do want a hardcore Veeky Forums thread about reptilians.

I agree with your view on animistic societies, and I specially agree if we separate technology and belief, you don't have to believe in science to use it.

A modern version of a small nomadic tribe could prove to be extremely succesful and desirable, if it wasn't for our society repulsion from the "savage ways".

We don't even tolerate gypsies.

They are valid arguments though.

Also your original post was stupid for being overly dismissive of smarter bit as well. Humans previously had larger cranial capacity. Now MAYBE humans evolved more efficient brains that could do more with less, but we don't know.

Same with some upper class of South America eating corn. Archeologists sort out class by tooth decay. Better preserved teeth = more basic diet = poorer person.

Mohammad (PBUH) according to Aisha, considered white bread a rare luxury. He would mostly eat milk or dates, but never both.

A small nomadic tribe nowadays in the first world, with the use of modern medicine and shit, would be fun I guess if you really want to do it. I'm sure they'll make a documentary or even a tv show about you so people will get all sentimental about simpler times even more while living highly stressful and unhealthy lives and retiring at 80, shortly before kicking the bucket.

Go for it, good luck finding people fucking willing to do it and getting kicked off people's property (unless you want to do it somewhere like Alaska, I know you won't do it in africa or some other anarchistic shithole)

>invent better weapons
>bodies get weaker

Hmm... really makes you think.

That's not a cro-mag, that's a fucking Homo sapiens idaltu. Can't trick me!

Yep. He was to humans as American lions (now extinct) are to African lions.

>There is a reason darker skinned humans usually have black hair whereas fair skinned humans have a relatively wide range of hair colors.

Even though Cro Magnons are basically the earliest appearance of modern Homo Sapiens, weren't they on average somewhat taller and considerably more muscular then us?

get paid pupper

Not him, but he still said usually.

Early Agriculture: The worst bulk of selective breeding for the core plants is finished before Agriculture, so its fine.
The real advantage is that you don't go permanently hungry on Agriculture, while on Nomadic Hunter Gatherer you go permanently hungry between feasts.

Domestication of a kind of cattle != Hunter Gatherer.
Sami advanced to the Nomad stage.

Frodo, please. That wasn't the question.
The question was: If Agriculture was shitty, why would it lead to the dominant form of civilization?

The answer is that people look at Hunter Gatherer, and forget the really shitty parts.
I.E Migration. You harvest a area, and then move on. A few years down the line, you might want to visit said area again, and pray nobody arrived before you and did a harvest.
The HG might be taller, but thats only because their diet is more nutritious. Meanwhile: They are literally starving and always on the verge of malnutrition, and have very poor means of food preservation.

Image the horror of killing a Mastodon, and your tribe can't physically eat it all before it starts rotting.
Image the horror if its a collaborative hunt between a few tribes, and you still can't eat it all.
So you feasted, it has rotted, and now you are literally starving as you harvest the next bunch of half poison roots and plants.

Hair color has to do with very random keratin coloring mutations, thats why Melanesis can have blonde hair because they independently evolved a dominant blonde hair set of genes, Euros always had blonde hair you stupid fucks but its only the Nords that have blonde as their dominant genetic hair color. The dominant hair becomes more recessive the north you go in Europe with the Souths having black hair meaning they have the lowest incidence of blonde genes, the mids having brown hair and the north having blonde hair. The redheads however are the only hair color grouping that is not possible in every european group only the Scots and Potatos can have red hair and only them. If you got red hair you have an ancestor from one of these places.

A lot of Russian jews and very very rarely some Slavs have red hair as well. Also there are some redheaded Afghans. S

"White" doesn't mean anything.
It could be anything from pale as the Icelandic(literally blue), to Sami/Finland(very white) to the Slavic/Scandinavic colors(during summer might get minimal tan), to more central Europa(At best might be able to approuch Italian tan), to the Turk/Greece bronze skin.

By white do you mean:
-Blue pale
-Pale
-Pale White
-White
-Minimal Tan
-Some Tan
-Bronze
-Mud Bronze
-Mud
-Dark Mud
-Muh Negro
-Literally black

Because there is a lot of skin tones.

>Humans were dark
pff no humans were originally beige tan, blacks are the color of night because of all the UV radiation in the central African area they originally developed on, notice the San people have beige tan skin and live South in Africa yet arent as dark as the blacks. The sand people usually have orangish skin yet live in alot of heat and some like the Lebanese have pale skin.

Most people dont seem to notice that all Europeans have a very similar facial structure that indicates they can be grouped biologically.

There's no usually. We're talking about specific mutations. If they're not seen in the rest of humanity it's because they didn't spread. Skin is one thing, but a tropical habit never stopped other primates from having whatever fur colors.

>Scots and Potatos can have red hair and only them.
And Udmurtians. And Tocharians. And Uyghurs. And some middle easterners.

>Udmurtians

Mongorians?

i dunno. i prefer the modern dentistry that my smaller brain and frailer physique has given me access to.

better than being a burly, healthy, smart hunter gatherer with a festering root abcess and no treatment except yanking it out with stone tools or having the tribal shaman try to shoo the pain away by tripping on a disgusting concoction of liberty caps and his own piss.

this evolutionary compromise seems acceptable to me.

Oh then all of the hair color are possible but red is so rare that it barely ever appears.

French and London? Yes
France versus English Countryside? No.
Central European Slavs(i.e Poland) versus Danes? Not similar.
Germans versus Scandinavs? Its barely been 1-2 centuries, and its still different. So no.
South Europa is very different, especially Spain versus Italy versus Greece.
Russians, Fins and Sami isn't good for argument, when they are Asians interbreed with various ethnicities for 800-1300 years and more.

Then again, your argument is most likely built on that Black is Negroids, instead of the 8-13 subgroups that they generally are unless mixed.
Arabs are even better, because they have a bunch of tribes that is still Nomadic, which show cases some of their extreme differences in facial structure and build.

I get that Race science was this really cool thing after Darwin, but I don't get why they decided to go for Australoid · Capoid · Caucasoid · Mongoloid · Negroid.
Even with gradients on the Slav side, thats still very wrong when you can without effort divide the Causasoids into at the least 20 groups.

user taxonomy is about finding like traits and euros have the same kind of face just slight modifications so they can all be grouped.

If we took the time to actually group black tribes on DNA and not language we would learn something.

Not really

I said usually and you posted the few thousand inhabitants of one fucking island who are the only exception?

It's a meme. People were more fit on average of course but that's about it

"Sami" (if you could use this name for people not speaking Uralic languages, whose adaptation happened relatively recently) were still true hunter-gatherers during the Iron Age and maybe even the first few centuries of 1st millenium AD.

About as Mongolian as Finns and Russians are.

It's a matter of who gets to live, really. If some strange catastrophe happened and everyone but the people in the regions with fairer phenotypes died, then the porcentage would increase exponentially, and as they repopulated the planet more people would have this or that trait.

People forget evolution isn't a thing that happened ages ago then stopped. There's no end to it. Life is constantly changing according to its conditions and accidents. Talking of what's proper of this or that habitat is stupid because life spreads to wherever it can. Pale people living in the tropics nowadays due to history is no different from Eskimos living in the Arctic regions thanks animal furs--they'll keep having those traits unless a particular situation calls for them not to.

>one fucking island
All of Melanesia and Australia, and previously all of maritime Southeast Asia, isn't one island; unless you think a whole continet is one island, in which case the same applies to Eurasia. And that these people are nowadays marginal because they have been replaced by other groups does not invalidate the point.

That's false, the darkest people in Africa life close to the Sahara (Nilo-Saharans). Besides, the Pygmies life in Central Africa and are lighter than the Bantus who live there.

agriculture and civilization removed a filter. now idiots, the disabled, and other darwin award candidates can survive to reproduce.

>30,000 years ago

>early modern humans have brains bigger than modern humans

Holy shit, are they serious?
Are they really fucking serious?

Did they have bigger dicks?