What Did Ancient Humans Actually Do All Day? — Transcript

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1. 0:00This morning, a machine screamed at you
2. 0:01until you woke up. You silenced it, and
3. 0:03from that second, your day was already
4. 0:05decided. Where you had to be, what you
5. 0:07had to finish, how many hours belong to
6. 0:09someone else. And tonight, before you
7. 0:11sleep, you'll set that same machine to
8. 0:12scream at you again. Now, rewind 50,000
9. 0:15years. A man wakes up in the morning
10. 0:16light with no alarm, no schedule, and
11. 0:18nowhere he has to be. He owns a spear,
12. 0:20two animal hides, and a fire. And he
13. 0:22sits up, stretches, and asks himself a
14. 0:24question you have never once been free
15. 0:26enough to ask. What should I do today?
16. 0:28Now, your brain is already fighting
17. 0:29this. It's telling you no, ancient life
18. 0:31was brutal, short, and desperate. Every
19. 0:33second was survival. That's what
20. 0:35everyone believed. For centuries, that
21. 0:37was the official story. But the proof
22. 0:38that it's wrong was lying buried in the
23. 0:40ground the entire time. And when
24. 0:41scientists finally dug it up, it flipped
25. 0:43everything upside down. And that opens
26. 0:45up a mystery. Because you live
27. 0:46surrounded by machines built to save
28. 0:48time. Washing machines, dishwashers,
29. 0:51microwaves, cars, every one of them was
30. 0:53invented to give you more free hours.
31. 0:55So, how does a man with none of that, no
32. 0:57technology at all, end up with more free
33. 0:59time than you? What did he actually do
34. 1:01all day that you can't? And where did
35. 1:02all of your time go? To answer that, we
36. 1:04have to start in the ground. Because
37. 1:05somewhere in the Middle East,
38. 1:06archaeologists are digging. And over the
39. 1:08years, from the same region, they pull
40. 1:10up two human skeletons. They lived a few
41. 1:12thousand years apart. That's close
42. 1:13enough to compare them, but far enough
43. 1:15that they come from two completely
44. 1:17different worlds. The first skeleton is
45. 1:19tall. The bones are thick and strong.
46. 1:20The teeth are worn, but healthy. Almost
47. 1:22no cavities. The joints are clean. This
48. 1:24was a body that ate well, moved in
49. 1:26varied ways, and never got ground down
50. 1:27by one repeated motion. The second
51. 1:29skeleton tells a harder story. The teeth
52. 1:31are full of cavities. The spine shows
53. 1:33arthritis. The specific damage you get
54. 1:35from bending and grinding through the
55. 1:36same motion thousands of times, year
56. 1:38after year. And this person died
57. 1:40younger. So, which one is which? Take a
58. 1:42guess. Most people point to the tall,
59. 1:44healthy skeleton and say that's the
60. 1:45modern one. The farmer with tools and
61. 1:47stored food and a roof over his head.
62. 1:49And the short, broken one, that must be
63. 1:51the caveman. The guy scraping by in the
64. 1:52wild with a spear. But it's the
65. 1:54opposite. The strong skeleton belonged
66. 1:55to the hunter-gatherer. The wrecked one
67. 1:57belonged to the farmer, the person from
68. 1:59the era we call progress. And this isn't
69. 2:01one weird pair of bones. Archaeologists
70. 2:03have run this comparison at sites all
71. 2:04over the world, and wherever farming
72. 2:06replaced hunting and gathering, the same
73. 2:08pattern shows up in the ground.
74. 2:09Generations got shorter than the ones
75. 2:11before them. Their teeth rotted, their
76. 2:13spines wore down, and their lives ended
77. 2:15earlier. Think about what that means.
78. 2:16Your skeleton is a diary. It records how
79. 2:18hard you worked, how well you ate, how
80. 2:20your body was used, and it holds that
81. 2:22record for thousands of years. And the
82. 2:23diaries say the people with nothing but
83. 2:25spears were living lives than the people
84. 2:27who came after them with farms, storage,
85. 2:29and villages. But bones can only tell
86. 2:32you so much. They can prove the work was
87. 2:33lighter. They can't show you how a
88. 2:35normal day actually went. So, let me
89. 2:37walk you through one. You wake up at
90. 2:38dawn on your own because your body got
91. 2:40the sleep it needed. The fire from last
92. 2:42night is still burning in the middle of
93. 2:43camp, and people are already sitting
94. 2:45around it eating leftover meat and nuts,
95. 2:47talking about where the water is good
96. 2:48and where the animal tracks were
97. 2:50spotted. That's the whole morning plan,
98. 2:52and when it's decided, it's decided by
99. 2:53everyone. And today, nobody needs to
100. 2:55hunt. The last hunt was 2 days ago, and
101. 2:57there's still plenty of food. So, a few
102. 2:59people go out to gather plants, and you
103. 3:01spend the morning on your tools. You
104. 3:02sharpen your spear, and you work a stiff
105. 3:04hide until it turns soft. You do this
106. 3:06because skill earns respect here, not
107. 3:08because someone told you to. And by
108. 3:10early afternoon, everything that needed
109. 3:12doing is already done. 2 days later, the
110. 3:14meat runs low, so today you hunt. And
111. 3:16real hunting looks nothing like the
112. 3:18movies. You never chase the animal
113. 3:19because it's faster than you, and it
114. 3:21always will be. Instead, you follow it
115. 3:23at a steady walking pace for hours. Your
116. 3:25body can sweat and cool itself while it
117. 3:27moves. The animal can't, so it keeps
118. 3:29sprinting, keeps overheating, and keeps
119. 3:31getting weaker until it finally
120. 3:32collapses, and you walk up to it. You
121. 3:34were never the fastest thing out there.
122. 3:35You were the only thing that never has
123. 3:37to stop. The hunt takes the whole day,
124. 3:39and it's the hardest work this life asks
125. 3:40of you. But one good hunt feeds the camp
126. 3:42for days. So, tomorrow the free time
127. 3:44starts again. And at this point, you're
128. 3:46probably thinking this sounds too good
129. 3:48to be real. It sounds like a fantasy
130. 3:50someone invented about the past. So,
131. 3:52let's deal with that because one man had
132. 3:54the exact same doubt and he did
133. 3:55something about it. In 1963, an
134. 3:57anthropologist named Richard Lee walked
135. 3:59into the Kalahari Desert on the edge of
136. 4:01Botswana. It's one of the harshest
137. 4:03places on Earth a human being can live.
138. 4:05He went there to study the Ju/'hoansi,
139. 4:07one of the last groups still living the
140. 4:08old way, hunting animals and gathering
141. 4:10plants with no farms and no stores. Lee
142. 4:12expected to find misery. That was the
143. 4:14official story in every textbook that
144. 4:16life before farming meant working every
145. 4:18daylight hour just to barely survive.
146. 4:20But instead of assuming it, he decided
147. 4:22to count it. He followed people around
148. 4:23with a notebook and a stopwatch and he
149. 4:25recorded how they spent every single
150. 4:27hour, day after day, for weeks. Lee came
151. 4:29back with a number that nobody believed.
152. 4:31These people were spending about 17
153. 4:33hours a week getting food and that's not
154. 4:3517 hours a day. That's 17 hours across
155. 4:37the entire week, which comes out to
156. 4:39about two and a half days of work. Every
157. 4:41hour after that belonged to them. For
158. 4:43comparison, you'll cross 17 hours of
159. 4:45work by Wednesday afternoon. Now, maybe
160. 4:47the Ju/'hoansi were just one lucky group
161. 4:49in one lucky spot. That's a fair doubt
162. 4:51and scientists had it, too. So, they
163. 4:53went and ran the same count on other
164. 4:54groups still living the old way. They
165. 4:56checked the Hadza in Tanzania, then the
166. 4:58Ache in Paraguay, then the Martu in
167. 5:00Australia. Three groups on three
168. 5:02different continents and every single
169. 5:04time, the answer came back between 15
170. 5:06and 20 hours a week. That was the full
171. 5:08cost of staying alive. But here's the
172. 5:10part nobody tells you. The most
173. 5:11important hours in that whole week were
174. 5:13not the hunting hours. They were the
175. 5:14lazy-looking hours that came after
176. 5:16because those hours were doing a bigger
177. 5:18job than food. It's afternoon and the
178. 5:20camp has slowed down. People sit in the
179. 5:21shade and talk. They play with the kids
180. 5:23and they groom each other, picking
181. 5:24through hair while the conversation
182. 5:26drifts. Next to you, someone is drilling
183. 5:28tiny holes through seashells to string
184. 5:30into a necklace. Someone else is carving
185. 5:32a design into a piece of bone and that
186. 5:34design has no purpose at all except to
187. 5:35look good. And this isn't a guess about
188. 5:37how they filled their time. At Blombos
189. 5:39Cave in South Africa, archaeologists
190. 5:40found shell beads that are over 70,000
191. 5:43years old, small sea snail shells with
192. 5:45holes carefully drilled through them
193. 5:46made to be worn. The coast was a long
194. 5:48walk from where these people lived. So,
195. 5:50someone made that trip, collected the
196. 5:51shells, carried them home, and then sat
197. 5:54for hours drilling holes with stone
198. 5:55tools, just to make something beautiful.
199. 5:57And in 2008, in a cave in Germany,
200. 6:00researchers dug up a flute carved from a
201. 6:02vulture's wing bone. It's 40,000 years
202. 6:04old, and it has five finger holes spaced
203. 6:06for actual musical notes. So, someone in
204. 6:08the Ice Age understood music well enough
205. 6:10to build an instrument, and someone had
206. 6:12enough free time to learn to play it.
207. 6:14But the beads and the flute point at
208. 6:15something bigger, because this world has
209. 6:17no money, no police, and no courts. So,
210. 6:19ask yourself, what actually keeps you
211. 6:21alive here when your hunt fails, or when
212. 6:23you get sick, or when you break your leg
213. 6:25and can't walk for a month? The answer
214. 6:26is other people. That's the entire
215. 6:28safety net. If people like you, they
216. 6:30feed you when you have nothing. But if
217. 6:32they don't like you, then nobody owes
218. 6:33you anything, and you starve. So, all
219. 6:35those lazy afternoon hours of talking
220. 6:37and joking and grooming were actually an
221. 6:39investment in the only insurance this
222. 6:41world has. The anthropologist James
223. 6:43Suzman found that Ju/'hoansi adults
224. 6:45spend around 6 hours every single day on
225. 6:47pure social time. Because in this world,
226. 6:49your relationships are your bank
227. 6:50account, your hospital, and your
228. 6:52pension, all at once. Then the sun goes
229. 6:54down. And here's where it gets really
230. 6:56interesting, because the best hours of
231. 6:57the day haven't even started yet. In
232. 6:592014, an anthropologist named Polly
233. 7:01Wiessner published a study that might
234. 7:03explain where human culture itself comes
235. 7:05from. She had recordings of Ju/'hoansi
236. 7:07conversations collected across decades,
237. 7:09and she sorted all of them by one simple
238. 7:11thing. Was it said during the day or at
239. 7:13night? The daytime talk turned out to be
240. 7:15practical. People discussed where the
241. 7:17animal tracks were, which plants were
242. 7:18ready to gather, and who wasn't sharing
243. 7:20fairly. It was basically logistics and
244. 7:22gossip. But at night, around the fire,
245. 7:24the talking changed completely. 81% of
246. 7:27the firelight conversation turned into
247. 7:29stories. People told myths about how the
248. 7:31world began, tales of ancestors who did
249. 7:33impossible things, and jokes that ran
250. 7:34long into the dark. And notice what kind
251. 7:36of stories these are. Gods and spirits,
252. 7:39the past and the future, none of that
253. 7:40comes out of a scared, hungry mind.
254. 7:43Those stories only show up when your
255. 7:44stomach is full and your body is safe.
256. 7:46So, the fire was doing more than cooking
257. 7:48food and keeping predators away. It
258. 7:50created the first hours in human history
259. 7:52where the mind was completely free. And
260. 7:54Weisner argued that this is exactly
261. 7:56where culture was born, not in the
262. 7:57middle of the work, but in the quiet
263. 7:59hours after it. And when the fire burned
264. 8:00low, even sleep worked differently.
265. 8:02Before artificial light existed, humans
266. 8:04didn't sleep in one long block.
267. 8:06Historical records and modern sleep
268. 8:07experiments both show the same pattern.
269. 8:09People slept about 4 hours, then woke up
270. 8:11for an hour or two in the middle of the
271. 8:12night. And they stayed calm in that
272. 8:14darkness, thinking or talking quietly
273. 8:16until sleep came back for another 4
274. 8:18hours. That quiet hour in the middle was
275. 8:20completely normal for thousands of
276. 8:21generations. Today, you wake up at 2:00
277. 8:23a.m. and call it insomnia. Your body
278. 8:25might just be doing the oldest thing it
279. 8:26knows. So, now you've seen the whole
280. 8:28picture. Food took a few hours, people
281. 8:30took the afternoon, stories took the
282. 8:32night, and sleep came in two calm
283. 8:33halves. That was the human schedule for
284. 8:35hundreds of thousands of years. Then,
285. 8:37about 10,000 years ago, somebody planted
286. 8:39a seed. And that's the moment your time
287. 8:41started disappearing. It happened in the
288. 8:43Middle East, in a region called the
289. 8:44Fertile Crescent, when humans started
290. 8:46planting grain and keeping animals
291. 8:48instead of hunting and gathering. And on
292. 8:49paper, farming sounds like a massive
293. 8:51upgrade. You get more food, you get
294. 8:53control, and you never have to follow an
295. 8:55antelope for 6 hours again. But farming
296. 8:58is a trap, and here's exactly how it
297. 9:00snapped shut. Farming produces more
298. 9:01food. More food means more babies
299. 9:03survive, so the population grows. A
300. 9:05bigger population needs more food, so
301. 9:07you plant more fields. More fields means
302. 9:10more work. And then the lock clicks.
303. 9:11Once your group is too big to feed by
304. 9:13hunting and gathering, the old life
305. 9:15can't carry you anymore. You can never
306. 9:16go back. You're in, permanently. And so
307. 9:19is every generation born after you. And
308. 9:20the workload explodes. Now, there's
309. 9:22plowing, planting, weeding, harvesting,
310. 9:25storing, and guarding it all, season
311. 9:27after season, forever. And remember the
312. 9:29second skeleton from the beginning, the
313. 9:31one with the rotten teeth and the
314. 9:32worn-out spine that died young? That
315. 9:34skeleton is what this new life did to
316. 9:36people. The first farmers worked harder
317. 9:38and lived worse than the
318. 9:39hunter-gatherers before them, and they
319. 9:40couldn't leave. And the trap kept
320. 9:42tightening. Big farming villages
321. 9:43produced specialists, potters, tool
322. 9:45makers, weavers. Specialists needed
323. 9:47trade, and trade built cities. Then
324. 9:49cities brought soldiers, priests, and
325. 9:51tax collectors. And eventually they
326. 9:53brought a brand new idea in human
327. 9:55history. For the first time ever, your
328. 9:56hours could belong to someone else, sold
329. 9:58off in exchange for food you no longer
330. 10:00knew how to find on your own. So nobody
331. 10:02stole your time in one dramatic night.
332. 10:04It was traded away slowly, one
333. 10:06generation at a time, in a deal that no
334. 10:07one alive today ever got the chance to
335. 10:09refuse. The alarm that screamed at you
336. 10:11this morning is just the latest payment.
337. 10:13For hundreds of thousands of years,
338. 10:15humans worked 15 to 20 hours a week, and
339. 10:17the skeletons in the ground prove it.
340. 10:19The afternoons went into craft and
341. 10:20beauty, and the relationships that kept
342. 10:22everyone alive. The nights went into
343. 10:24firelight stories, where culture itself
344. 10:26was born, and sleep came in two calm
345. 10:28halves. Then farming arrived, the
346. 10:30population trap locked behind us, and
347. 10:32step by step our hours stopped being
348. 10:34ours. Today, you'll spend about 90,000
349. 10:36hours of your life working. You make art
350. 10:38only if there's anything left of you
351. 10:39after your job. They made art in the
352. 10:41middle of an ordinary afternoon. You
353. 10:43network for career advantage. They spent
354. 10:446 hours a day with people they loved,
355. 10:46and it counted as survival. You chase
356. 10:48success, savings, retirement, some
357. 10:50finish line where you finally get your
358. 10:52time back. They were already standing on
359. 10:54that finish line. They were born on it.
360. 10:55Every morning, they woke up with no
361. 10:57alarm and no schedule. And they asked
362. 10:58themselves the one question you have
363. 11:00never been free enough to ask. You are
364. 11:02working your entire existence to someday
365. 11:04retire into that life. They lived it
366. 11:06from their first day to their last. And
367. 11:07they would find it very strange that you
368. 11:09traded it all away for a screaming alarm
369. 11:11and a promise.