There are a few lessons to be learned from early nomads in regards to our health and happiness. Why they can provide lessons is they did not evolve over hundreds of thousands of years to be unhealthy and unhappy. For better or worse from our civilized perspective the attributes we acquired as we evolved are the ones that ultimately determine health and happiness.
There are four attributes in particular that have been eroded among civilized humanity. No one will argue that the average person gets too little exercise now for their own good, that’s one. A second is diet. While early nomads covered the globe and some had more nutritious diets than others, none faced the problems of a fast food society. One study revealed an early nomadic diet to far surpass the nutritional requirements of the famous food pyramid developed at Cornell, or recommended by the USDA.
The other two natural attributes for our health and happiness relate to work and community. We have more work and less community than our early nomadic ancestors. You are not to be blamed if this sounds false to you. Enlightenment philosophy and western colonialism has conditioned us to see the worst in our natural selves, and in “primitive cultures” that needed redemption. Even Rousseau, that champion of the “noble savage,” claimed us to be solitary. Basic common sense should have made that notion the clueless, even stupid claim that it was. We did not survive early on but through banding together and becoming a social, altruistic species.
I understand the misconceptions over work a little better. My God! Our early ancestors actually had to hunt and gather their own food! Yet hunting and gathering was the sum total of what they had to do for what could be considered “economic productivity.” They cooked, built simple shelters as needed and other forms of domestic work, just as civilized humans have domestic work that goes beyond what we do to bring home paychecks. Yet cultural anthropologists have estimated their hunting and gathering work day to be about 3 hours. As a nontenured teacher learning the ropes my standard work day was 10 hours …. before grading papers at home. If we are to believe the laments of some executives their work days are even longer, if one considers a business trip to an Orlando convention work.
That hints at another misconception about early nomadic work that bears examination. Perhaps they worked for only three hours a day, but what tedious work hunting and gathering must be! On the other hand, perhaps they enjoyed some aspects of that tedious work just as surely as an executive enjoys many aspects of his/her work. More on this in the next part.
