The Pre-Agricultural Period Was NOT Better

In this episode, Malcolm and Simone Collins dive deep into one of the most pervasive myths of our time — the idea popularized by Yuval Noah Harari’s bestselling book Sapiens that the Agricultural Revolution was “history’s biggest fraud” and that life was better for pre-agricultural hunter-gatherers.

From the viral Primitive Technology videos to nostalgic comments romanticizing mud huts and “living off the land,” this meme just won’t die. But was life really better before farming? Shorter work hours? Healthier diets? No diseases or violence?

We break down Harari’s claims with historical evidence, anthropology, and skeletal data — showing why early agriculture had growing pains, but civilization quickly made life vastly better in nearly every metric: health, lifespan, safety, leisure quality, and human flourishing.

We also explore why this myth appeals to both far-left anti-GMO types and far-right “Bronze Age” nostalgists, and why romanticizing pre-agricultural life ignores the brutal reality of violence, disease, boredom, and early death.

Episode Outline with Links

Let me set the scene:

* It’s 2015 and you know what people can’t stop watching? You know what the hot video is???

* Not some viral dance

* Not some celebrity scandal

* No, it was a pale dude in the woods silently banging on sticks with a sharpened rock to make a mud hut

* “Primitive Technology: Wattle and Daub Hut”, the first video published on the YouTube channel Primitive Technology, now has over 32 million views.

* For scale:

* Charlie bit my finger has 888 million views

* Bed Intruder song has 158M views

* So obviously it didn’t take over the world, but it’s still HUGE for an eleven-minute, no words, no music video of a man building a mud hut

* The channel has 11 million subscribers (note that Asmongold has 4.21M subscribers)

* What’s going on here? Who might we have to blame for this?

* I’m going to argue it was the Admiral Akbar of agriculture himself, Yuval Noah Harari, author of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind.

* In 2014, the book Sapiens was published in English (had first been published in Hebrew) and it took the world by storm.

* It quickly became one of the top‑performing narrative nonfiction titles of the past decade, with tens of millions of copies sold worldwide and a very long run on major bestseller lists.

* Estimates from publishers and industry analyses put Sapiens’ total worldwide sales at around 40–45 million copies across all formats and languages.​

* The book has been translated into roughly 60–65 languages, indicating very broad international penetration for a serious nonfiction title.

* It repeatedly appeared in the NYT top 10 and has been described as a New York Times “top 10 bestseller” over a multi‑year period

* And importantly, what did that book do?

* More than others in the past (such as Guns, Germs, and Steel), it radicalized people against modernity and the agricultural revolution

Some choice quotes:

* “We did not domesticate wheat. It domesticated us.”

* “The Agricultural Revolution was history’s biggest fraud.”

* “Who was responsible? Neither kings, nor priests, nor merchants. The culprits were a handful of plant species… These plants domesticated Homo sapiens, rather than vice versa.”

* “This is the essence of the Agricultural Revolution: the ability to keep more people alive under worse conditions.”

* “Rather than heralding a new era of easy living, the Agricultural Revolution left farmers with more difficult lives and a less nutritious diet than hunter-gatherers… The Agricultural Revolution was a trap.”

But are we really worse off because of agriculture?

Let’s take a good faith look at the issue.

Sapiens

Overarching Thesis: Human history is fundamentally the history of imagined realities (fictions) that enable massive cooperation. Almost everything we value—nations, money, human rights, corporations, gods—exists only in our collective imagination. These fictions have been extraordinarily useful, but they have also caused immense suffering and now threaten our future. The next stage of history will likely see us abandon the last remnants of biological humanity altogether.

Harari argues:

* The Agricultural Revolution (c. 10,000 BCE) is widely considered humanity’s “biggest mistake.”

* Harari characterizes the Agricultural Revolution as “history’s biggest fraud,” arguing that it trapped humans in more difficult, labor-intensive, and less healthy lives than those of hunter-gatherers. He suggests that the extra food from farming led to population growth and class divisions, not a better quality of life for most people

* Harari’s analysis is related to, but distinct from, the idea popularized by others—such as Jared Diamond, who called agriculture “the worst mistake in the history of the human race.”

* Farming allowed population explosion but dramatically worsened the quality of life for individual humans: harder work, poorer nutrition, crowded conditions, new diseases, social hierarchy, and inequality.

* It was a trap: once populations grew, there was no way back to hunter-gatherer life. From the perspective of the human species it was a success; from the perspective of individual happiness it was a disaster.

Specific ways Harari argues pre-agricultural life was better and post-agricultural life was worse:

1. Working Hours

* Hunter-gatherers: ~20–35 hours per week spent obtaining food and basic needs (citing modern studies of the !Kung, Hadza, etc.).

* Early farmers: 50–60+ hours of back-breaking labor (plowing, weeding, harvesting, grinding grain, carrying water, tending animals).

2. Diet and Nutrition

* Hunter-gatherers: Extremely varied diet (dozens of plant species, nuts, fruits, game, fish, honey). High in protein, vitamins, minerals; low in starch.

* Farmers: Became heavily dependent on one or two staple crops (wheat, rice, maize, potatoes). Led to nutritional deficiencies (iron-deficiency anemia, protein shortages, dental caries from high-starch diets). Archaeological evidence shows shorter stature, worse teeth, and more signs of malnutrition in early farming populations.

3. Health and Disease

* Hunter-gatherers: Few epidemic diseases because of small, mobile bands and diverse diets. Parasites existed, but not on the scale of settled communities.

* Farmers: Lived in crowded, permanent settlements surrounded by human and animal waste → explosion of infectious diseases (smallpox, tuberculosis, measles, plague). Close contact with domesticated animals introduced zoonotic diseases. Skeletons from the Neolithic show dramatically higher rates of disease markers.

4. Physical Toll and Injuries

* Hunter-gatherers: More accidents (falls, animal attacks), but generally robust, well-exercised bodies.

* Farmers: Repetitive stress injuries (arthritis in spine and knees from grinding grain and hoeing), higher rates of osteoporosis, herniated discs, and skeletal deformities from constant heavy labor.

5. Child Mortality vs. Overall Population

* Farmers had higher fertility (women could wean earlier because of soft porridge), but much higher child mortality from disease and malnutrition. Net result: population exploded, but most individuals still died young.

* Hunter-gatherers had lower birth rates but higher survival rates for those born → fewer starving or sick children per family.

6. Social Equality

* Hunter-gatherers: Relatively egalitarian (food sharing norms, no way to store surplus for long, little private property).

* Farmers: Surplus → private property → inherited wealth → sharp class divisions, patriarchy, slavery, and warfare over land.

* First off, it is bizarre to bemoan better resources on average just because some outliers have far more resources

* Excuse me, pre-agricultural societies absolutely had slaves (e.g. captives from war)—and let’s be clear, you are LUCKY to become a captive slave in pre-agricultural society, because most men were just killed

* Complex, delayed-return hunter-gatherers of the Pacific Northwest (e.g., Kwakiutl, Haida, Tlingit) and a few other resource-rich coastal or riverine groups even practiced what anthropologists consider to be “true slavery”—raiding neighbors specifically to capture slaves for labor and prestige.

7. Psychological and Existential Quality of Life

* Hunter-gatherers: More leisure time, more varied and stimulating daily activities (tracking animals, storytelling, dancing), stronger community bonds in small bands.

* Farmers: Monotonous, exhausting labor from dawn to dusk; lives dominated by the crop cycle and fear of drought, flood, or locusts.

8. Life Expectancy (at birth vs. if you survived childhood)

Harari repeatedly stresses that average life expectancy at birth dropped after agriculture because of skyrocketing infant mortality. An individual who reached adulthood might live about as long as a hunter-gatherer, but far more children died before age five.

Harari’s own blunt summaries (direct quotes)

* “The average farmer worked harder than the average forager, and got a worse diet in return.”

* “Luxury trap”: Farmers could now have storable food → more babies → larger population → even harder work to feed everyone → no escape.

* “From the viewpoint of individual suffering, the Agricultural Revolution was probably the worst thing that ever happened to Homo sapiens.”

He does concede that agriculture was a stunning success for the species (billions of humans instead of a few million) and for wheat (which spread across the planet), but insists that for the individual human being, it was a dramatic deterioration in almost every measurable aspect of life. That is the core of his “biggest fraud” argument.

Pre-Agricultural Life vs. Modern Life

Where it clearly sucked:

Based on paleopathology, modern hunter-gatherer studies, and ethnographic records. Life expectancy at birth was low (∼30–35 years), but if you survived childhood, reaching 60–70 was not rare. Death was usually brutal and/or lingering rather than quick.

Traumatic & Violent Deaths (very common)

* Interpersonal violence: skull fractures, parry fractures on forearms, embedded projectile points (arrow/spear wounds). Many forager skeletons show healed and unhealed weapon injuries.

* Hunting accidents: falls from trees/cliffs while pursuing game, goring by large animals (aurochs, mammoth, bison), trampling.

* Accidental trauma: broken necks from falling out of trees, drowning while fishing or crossing rivers.

Infectious Diseases & Parasites (far fewer than later, but still nasty)

Crowd diseases (measles, smallpox, influenza, plague) essentially didn’t exist yet because populations were too small and mobile. But you still had:

* Wound infections & sepsis: any deep cut or compound fracture from hunting/fighting often led to Staphylococcus/Streptococcus infections, gas gangrene (Clostridium perfringens), or tetanus (Clostridium tetani — lockjaw and violent spasms, ∼50–80% fatal).

* Chronic osteomyelitis: bone infections that ate away limbs over years.

* Tuberculosis: present in pre-agricultural humans (DNA found in 9,000-year-old skeletons), probably from eating infected game. Slow wasting, coughing blood, death over years.

* Treponematoses (non-venereal syphilis-like diseases: yaws, bejel, pinta): disfiguring skin and bone lesions, common in tropical foragers.

* Parasites galore:

* Tapeworms (Diphyllobothrium from raw fish, Taenia from undercooked meat) — could grow >10 meters in your gut.

* Hookworm & other intestinal worms → chronic anemia, stunted growth.

* Malaria (already present in Africa before agriculture; Plasmodium falciparum DNA found in 5,000+ year-old skeletons).

* Leishmaniasis (protozoan parasite from sandflies) → cutaneous ulcers or visceral form that destroys liver/spleen (“kala-azar,” 95% fatal untreated).

* Hydatid disease (Echinococcus cysts from dog/wolf feces) → huge cysts in liver/lungs that eventually rupture and kill.

Dental Horrors

* Abscesses: no dentistry → an infected tooth often became a fatal brain or neck abscess.

* Extreme wear from grit in food → exposed pulp → constant pain and infection.

Starvation & Nutritional Diseases (especially seasonal)

* Winter or dry-season famine: many modern foragers experience “hungry seasons.” Sudden starvation or slow marasmus/kwashiorkor in children.

* Vitamin C deficiency (scurvy) during long periods without fruit.

* Rickets from low vitamin D in high-latitude foragers.

Childbirth Deaths

* Extremely high maternal mortality: obstructed labor (no cesarean), postpartum hemorrhage, puerperal fever from Streptococcus (childbed fever). Probably 5–15% lifetime risk per birth.

Slow, Ugly Deaths from Chronic Conditions

* Osteoarthritis and spinal degeneration from carrying heavy loads all life → eventually immobilized people who then starved or were abandoned.

* Brucellosis (from raw milk/meat of wild goats, cattle) → years of undulating fever, joint destruction, heart valve failure.

* Chronic zoonotic infections like Q fever, tularemia, anthrax.

Miscellaneous Nasty Ones

* Snakebite & insect envenomation (no antivenom).

* Botulism from poorly cached meat in warm climates.

* Trichinella spiralis cysts from bear or boar meat → weeks of muscle pain, heart failure.

* Rabies (extremely rare but 100% fatal and terrifying).

In short: before agriculture, you were far less likely to die of plague or cholera, but if you got a compound fracture on Tuesday, you were probably screaming in agony with a high fever by Thursday and dead (or wishing you were) by Sunday. Violence, trauma, and zoonotic/parasitic infections were the main killers—slow, painful, and very personal.

Where it’s mixed:

Aspect

Hunter-Gatherers (pre-agriculture)

Early Farmers (Neolithic/Chalcolithic)

Average adult height

Tall (men often 170–180 cm in favorable areas)

Dropped 5–15 cm (men often 155–165 cm)

Life expectancy at birth

30–40 years (high infant mortality)

Similar or slightly lower

Life expectancy at age 15

Often 50–70+ years (many lived into 60s–70s)

Dropped; fewer people reached old age

Dental health

Excellent; very low caries, moderate wear

Dramatic increase in cavities (20–300% higher)

Skeletal signs of anemia

Rare (porotic hyperostosis, cribra orbitalia)

Very common (iron-deficiency anemia from grain-heavy diets)

Infectious disease

Low (small, mobile groups)

Much higher (permanent settlements, animal domestication, density)

Skeletal stress markers

Low to moderate

High (periostitis, osteoarthritis from repetitive labor)

Nutritional diversity

100–300+ species per year

3–10 staple crops (often just 1–3 dominated calories)

Workload

15–30 hours/week (ethnographic average)

50–70+ hours/week of hard physical labor

Violence/interpersonal trauma

Moderate to high in some groups

Often decreased (more centralized authority)

When and Where Things Eventually Improved

* Bronze Age onward (after ~3000 BCE in the Near East, later elsewhere): Better storage, plows, irrigation, and dietary supplementation (e.g., legumes, dairy in some areas) began reversing some trends.

* Iron Age and Classical periods: Heights and health partially recovered in many regions.

* Full recovery to (and surpassing) hunter-gatherer health markers only occurred in the last 100–150 years with modern sanitation, medicine, and dietary abundance.

Non-Agricultural Life Today

Aspect

Non-Agricultural Societies (e.g., Hadza, Tsimané)

Average U.S. Resident (2025)

Key Differences/Substantiation

Life Expectancy at Birth

21–37 years (avg. ~30–33); high infant/juvenile mortality (20–40%) drags down average

78.4 years (slight rebound from COVID lows; varies by state: 80.7 in HI, 71.9 in MS)

U.S. ~2x longer due to vaccines, sanitation, and infant care; hunter-gatherers lose ~30% to childhood diseases

Life Expectancy at Age 15

50–60 years (many reach 60s–70s+; modal age ~68–78)

~63–65 years remaining (total ~78–80)

Comparable adult spans, but U.S. edges out via chronic disease management; Hadza/Tsimané adults often outlive U.S. peers without medicine

Infant Mortality

15–25% (infections, accidents)

<0.6%

U.S. vastly superior; hunter-gatherers lack neonatal tech

Chronic Diseases

Rare: No obesity, diabetes, hypertension, or heart disease; low cancer rates; diverse microbiomes from wild diet

High: 42% obese; 13% diabetic; 50%+ with CVD risk; leading causes of death

Hunter-gatherers’ active lifestyle (8–12 km/day walking) and plant-rich diet (~100g fiber/day) prevent “affluence diseases”; U.S. diet/sedentary life drives epidemics

Physical Function & Aging

High lifelong: Maintain speed/strength into 70s; exceed WHO activity guidelines (173+ min MVPA/day); minimal sarcopenia

Declines post-50: 25%+ inactive; rising falls/arthritis in elderly

Hunter-gatherers age “healthier” (e.g., Hadza grip strength rivals young U.S. adults); U.S. gains years but with more disability

Mental Health & Stress

Low depression/anxiety; egalitarian (no wealth gaps); popularity tied to low cortisol, not status

20%+ with anxiety/depression; high stress from inequality/work

Hadza report high satisfaction; U.S. has therapy but epidemic isolation/suicide

Quality of Life (Subjective)

High: 70–80% rate life “good/very good”; joys in community/nature; but risks (hunger, violence ~19% deaths)

Moderate: Gallup ~6.9/10 satisfaction; conveniences (tech, travel) but inequality, overwork

Hunter-gatherers happier per surveys (e.g., Hadza > U.S. in some metrics); uncontacted tribes avoid modern ills but face extinction threats; U.S. QoL uneven (higher for wealthy)

Workload & Leisure

15–20 hrs/week foraging; seasonal abundance

40+ hrs/week; chronic stress

More “leisure” in hunter-gatherers, but physically demanding; U.S. has automation but burnout

Overall Health Burden

Infectious/parasitic diseases dominant; excellent oral health, anemia low

Non-communicable diseases (70% deaths); opioid crisis, mental health epidemic

U.S. healthier in youth/old age survival; hunter-gatherers win on vitality/prevention

For the Butthurt Idiots who Stan Pre-Agricultural Life

First off, NOBODY IS FORCING YOU TO LIVE WITH AGRICULTURE

You, too, can go out like John Plant and make wattle and daub huts

Plenty even of this podcast’s listeners live to varying degrees off the grid, without water, etc.

More broadly, Harari argues that:

* There is no clear evidence that humans today are happier than hunter-gatherers or medieval peasants.

* But define happier; we also aren’t living with bone infections that are eating away at us slowly and excruciatingly…..

* Evolution shaped us to seek survival and reproduction, not lasting happiness. Biochemical happiness (serotonin, dopamine) has narrow limits.

* FOR A REASON

* Most ideologies and religions throughout history have failed to deliver on their promises of happiness or meaning.

* We would argue they do not make these promises

Noah misses what I would see as “the point” of being human and what distinguishes humans from animals in that, in the end of Sapiens, he argues:

* We are on the verge of breaking out of natural selection and becoming something new.

* 21st-century technologies (genetic engineering, AI, cyborg tech) will allow us to redesign life itself and create inorganic life forms.

* This will be the ultimate disruption: Homo sapiens as we have known ourselves for 70,000 years is about to be replaced by something different—possibly gods, possibly irrelevant.

Episode Transcript

Simone Collins: Hello Malcolm. I’m excited to be speaking with you today because there’s been this thing that’s bothering me and I just need to get it off my chest.

We need to talk about it. And I, I just, first, I wanna set the scene ‘cause people need to understand how profound and widespread this scourge of a problem is. Or scourge, scourge. So let me, let me just set the scene. Okay. It’s 2015. And you know what? People can’t stop watching. It’s like what the hot video is.

Do you, can you guess like, what, what, what is a hot 20? I dunno. No idea. It’s not, it’s not some stupid viral dance or like a, a, a celebrity scandal. No, it, it’s, it’s a dude. A pale dude in the woods, silently creating. Oh, I watched a lot of those. A hut. Yes. I yes, you, you, you were one of them. Malcolm, you, you watched and, and this was the primitive technology, wattle and DOB hut.

This was the first video published by the YouTube channel, primitive Technology. [00:01:00] Technology. The video now has over 32 million views. So one of those was yours. That’s a lot of views. I mean, and it’s obviously not like dumb viral video views like Charlie, but my finger has 888 million views. The bed intruder song has 158 million views, but 32 million for an 11 minute video with no music, no words, no historical explanation.

It’s pretty cool.

Malcolm Collins: It

Simone Collins: was

Malcolm Collins: a pretty cool video.

Simone Collins: Yeah. You, you may say that, but. Yeah, I don’t, I, I, I don’t, it’s, I, freedom of Technology has 11 million subscribers. Asman Gold has 4.21. Okay? I don’t, I don’t know. Like for me, I think it’s a little bit [00:02:00] suspicious. And here’s the thing. I’m going to argue that it was the Admiral Act Bar of Agriculture himself.

Yuval Noah Harri, the author of Sapiens, a brief history of humankind who’s responsible. For the little subconscious obsession that made primitive technology big, and that has ever since led people in comments on our videos and randomly online to be like, oh, if only we could go back to when we made mud huts in the woods, because that was so much better.

Okay, so

Malcolm Collins: Simone, you’ve, you’ve introduced us in a rather convoluted way. The point that she’s making is she once read, because what she often does for our family is she’ll read whatever books are popular at the time or whatever. Yes. And then she summarizes them and she basically gives me a summary.

She was like GPT before GPT, and when she did that for Sapiens, she was fuming. The entire few days she was reading this, she was like, this is just like, the science [00:03:00] in it is so bad. It’s such a misrepresentation of history and w. We did a video not too long ago about Thanksgiving where we were going over all of the ways that modern civilization and modern life is better than life historically.

And one of the types of comments we saw in that, which is based on this common myth that she is outlining, is that things were better in the pre agricultural world. Like life on average was better. Mm-hmm. You had more free time and less diseases and was less likely to be able to be killed and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Yep. The reality is this is not remotely the case. Before we go into the details, basically the gist of the story is in the first cities, in many ways, things were worse than the agricultural period.

Simone Collins: Absolutely.

Malcolm Collins: In the first cities, by the time you enter the [00:04:00] classical era or the Bronze Age not, not even modern times, that trend had been easily reversed along almost every single important metric.

But when you get to the Roman period absolutely reversed by every meaningful metric. And when you get to modern times, and this is the thing, it gets you, because there are a lot of people who live under this myth that their life, and I mean, if you are living in poverty in the United States and you are an incel and you were born ugly, and you were born, you know, like every bad trade possible for our society.

Simone Collins: Yes. Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Literally a hundred to one. You would prefer this life if you knew what your life would actually be like in the pre agricultural period.

Simone Collins: Except you’ve been lied to. You’ve been lied to because this book Sapiens became so freaking big. I mean, just anecdotally I, I was reading it because your, your dad and Michael, if you’re watching, thank [00:05:00] you so much, would not stop talking about it.

Even your mom read it and she always read things for cultural literacy, so I knew everyone else was reading it, but just objectively, this is one of the top performing narrative nonfiction books in, in the past decade, tens of millions of copies have been published in its total worldwide sales are around 40 to 45 million copies in an age when nobody reads anymore.

The book has been translated to about 65 different languages, and it repeatedly appeared at the New York Times Top 10. This, this, this book was so pervasive also, it wasn’t originally published in English. Do you know whether it was originally published in 2011?

Malcolm Collins: No. Fringe Hebrew. Hebrew Hebrew. Oh, interesting.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Also, so for our audience, just you guys know this is, this is Hebrew propaganda here. Yeah. Just in

Simone Collins: case you know, all the It was the Jews.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So when you, when you go out there and, and, and you say, life was better in a pre agricultural period, that is Jewish prophets nature.

Simone Collins: It’s Jewish [00:06:00] propaganda.

Yeah. Guys, you’re gonna think that’s the only thing I had to say. The rest of the rest of it doesn’t matter anymore because honestly, there’s a huge overlap between the commenters who are like. They use the juice box emoji and they hate Jews, but also they’re like, ugh, agriculture. And

Malcolm Collins: they don’t realize it.

The whole like, like the, the pre agricultural period was great thing. This is, this is no, it is funny that that group that actually buys that is actually really heavily overlapped. It’s a group that actually thinks that like Jews are out to get them.

Simone Collins: No, but, but actually actually, but anyway, lemme, lemme give you some choice quotes from the book to get to, here’s the propaganda that they’re, you know, that’s being drummed into people.

We did not domesticate wheat. It domesticated us and the agricultural revolution was history’s biggest fraud and who was responsible. Neither kings nor priests nor merchants, the culprits were a handful of plant species. These plants [00:07:00] domesticated homosapiens rather than vice versa. Oh, whipping me, Mr.

Corn. Oh my gosh. He is coming to get me this ears. Oh my God. No, no, but it’s,

Malcolm Collins: it’s the, the what’s funny is, is the way that it has been co-opted by parts of boast, the far left and the far right to bolster their narratives. Yeah. I remember when I was younger, this was an ideology that was only had on the far left, where you’d have these like anti GMO type people to be like, if we could go back to living off of the land.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And any sane person would immediately be like, you know, like the carrying capacity. Like even if that was possible, even if everything you said was true, we could support like 1% of Earth’s existing population if we went back to living off the land. But out outside of that, now there’s this new thing like liver king and, and it sort of aesthetically like Bronze Age pervert ist an idiot.

He obviously doesn’t believe this stuff, but

Simone Collins: also Bronze Age. Per [00:08:00] Okay. He leaves a civilized man.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But there’s this element of the right that’s like there is a miss and they recognize correctly this miss of a progression through history in which things always get better. Well wait, is

Simone Collins: this like, is this the rights version of a oppression Olympics, but it’s just nostalgia Olympics or we’ll say conservatives version of it.

So like you, your very surface level conservatives is like, oh, everything was better in the fifties. And then you’ve got like the Edge Lords who are like, nah, man, bronze Age. And then you’ve got like the intellectuals who think that they’re like the hyper geniuses who are like pre agriculture. Well,

Malcolm Collins: so here’s why it works.

Yeah. And I think you’re absolutely right. Is because they. They, one, they recognize a lie of constant progression. And, and, and, and then two, they sort of are, while, while competing on, you know, nostalgia points, they’re also competing on masculinity points. And there’s this perception of the further back in Timeing you go, the more [00:09:00] masculine man was,

Simone Collins: nothing says masculine like bacteria eating away at your face while you live years of your life out in the exposure.

So fungus

Malcolm Collins: by the way, is the famous case of that, that we’ll go over. I can,

Simone Collins: Yeah, but yeah. Yeah. I’m gonna, I I’m gonna, I’m gonna go through some examples. I, I do wanna give Sapiens credit. There are some really interesting thesis in it that we might even wanna do an episode at, at some point, because the larger argument he’s, he’s making is that what per his view, differentiated homo sapiens from say Neanderthals, is that not only did they develop languages, but they developed the ability.

To create basically shared fictions or imagined realities, you know, like myths and religions and origin stories. But then he also talks about sort of the fictions of like capitalism and, and cities and stuff. No, but hold on,

Malcolm Collins: hold on. I, I, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll explain his, like core analogy of the book in dumber terms.

So if you have a broad understanding of American history and American’s economic history, yeah. You would be very [00:10:00] well aware that the south due to slavery did not economically develop like the north, the slavery made the south. Poorer. The slaves didn’t build America. They economically trapped the south in a cycle of, of poverty basically.

And, and it’s actually somewhat humorous to me when people come out and they try to make the counter argument, they’re like, slavery was actually economically good and useful. And I’m like, that’s a, that’s nots not the argument you think it is, but, but the reality is, and this is very, very easy to see in the data, is that is why this house never industrialized.

Now it would be like somebody seeing that data and then saying, so what that really means is the slaves enslaved their masters. Oh God, the masters were the core victims of slavery. It was the southern plantation owners anyway, continues to vote.

Simone Collins: He more, more than that. I mean, it’s, it, this is like the American God’s version of, of Midwood historians where it’s like, well, no, [00:11:00] what, what makes, and I, I still think this is interesting though that.

Basically, almost everything we value from nations to money, to human rights is in our collective imagination. This sort of shared fantasy, and that these fictions have been really useful, but they’ve also caused immense suffering per his view, and now they threaten our future. And I mean, he also sort of argues at the end of the book that like, we’re gonna not become human anymore anyway.

So kind of like, what does it matter per his view? It, it, it gets all really crazy. Yeah. So like, there are some interesting things about the book. Like I really like those ideas, but I just couldn’t get over. His arguments about agriculture, they made me so angry. But, and is it

Malcolm Collins: something that would make you a, this is the thing, if you’re like reading this book or you hear somebody explain this to you, it all sounds very plausible.

Yeah. Like, yeah,

Simone Collins: actually, let me do this ‘cause I, we need to give a good faith. Like, here’s what he argues. And when you actually hear it laid out, you’re like, oh man. Like [00:12:00] I can understand why someone who’s not putting a lot of thought into this is told these things or they read this book or they hear someone talking about this and they’re like, oh yeah man, like agriculture did make everything worse.

‘cause there are lots of factual and true things that when well, and it’s not, you could say taken outta context or, or interpreted from a certain perspective, like a purely present focused to don perspective. Are compelling, shall we go forward?

Malcolm Collins: No. Before you go into this, I’d say the core reason why his argument works so well is because the early agricultural period and pre classical civilization is a giant hole in the American education system.

That, that’s

Simone Collins: a great point. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Education typically starts with Egypt or Greece. And so a lot of, if you’re

Simone Collins: lucky, Mr. Private School, if

Malcolm Collins: you’re lucky. So somebody can just come in and say a bunch of things about this transition. And if you are not an anthropology or you [00:13:00] know, histor, you know, historical anthropology Yeah.

You’re like, oh dude, that

Simone Collins: sucks. Also, even if you are taught about pre agricultural societies, which I was through all of our Native American education in California. When you go to like the local tribe sites and like you do all this stuff to like learn about local historical Native American tribes, you’re only hearing about the cool stuff.

You don’t hear about, like, it’s like, oh, they grand, they ground down acorns to make, you know, like acorn meal and, and it’s like, oh, this is so cool. That sounds tasty. You don’t hear anything that’s like, here are the practicalities of life.

Malcolm Collins: Continue. So make the argument. Make the argument. So yeah,

Simone Collins: here’s, here is his argument as to why things got worse with agriculture.

So working hours got worse. Hunter gatherers, he says, works 20 to 35 hours per week, and, and they spent that time just getting their basic needs in order. Said like he, he’s citing modern studies of the Kang and the haah. I’m, I’m mispronouncing that, but we don’t [00:14:00] actually know that. I just wanna point out No,

Malcolm Collins: no, I actually, if, if you’re gonna make the, what he does not address here and is something that you’re likely not thinking about as like a modern human uhhuh is leisure time in a hunter-gatherer tribe is not as valuable as a leisure time.

Today?

Simone Collins: Yeah, maybe they were just trying to keep warm in a cave and you’re like scrolling YouTube.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, they’re, they’re literally like staring at a wall in a cave. And

Simone Collins: their cave paintings,

Malcolm Collins: you’re, you’re imagining them like I, I don’t know, like going on their daily jog or something. I’m confused.

They don’t even think about like what leisure time means, what are doing,

Simone Collins: what

Malcolm Collins: they doing. They, they imagine a lot of these tribes, and I kid you not, they do not even have games. No. They may have stories, but it’s the same stories their ancestors told for x many generations. It’s just about telling something you memorized once.

Yeah. It, it [00:15:00] is the, the level of existential boredom you would be facing, I think would horrify a modern person. Well, no, I

Simone Collins: think more than that, and this is one of the arguments that I, I make, I wanna make is that they weren’t as online as. They weren’t as human as we are today. You know, they’re prefrontal cortices.

I, I don’t

Malcolm Collins: think were, so the studies that he’s referencing were done on an anatomically modern human groups. Anatomically modern groups.

Simone Collins: Yeah. But

Malcolm Collins: like, maybe don’t, maybe don’t mention this too much. I think a part of our audience knows what you’re talking about, but I think maybe not the

Simone Collins: okay. I’m, well, okay.

Even, even, okay. I’m not saying anatomically they, they weren’t that different. I’m just saying like, if you do not cultivate your prefrontal cortex throughout your life, the way our entire bodies work, including our minds, is use it or lose it. Okay. Yeah. So I, if you spend your life supercharging and stimulating various parts of your prefrontal cortex in your imagination and your language centers and all this, you’re gonna have hyperactive language and you’re gonna experience boredom.

But like. A dog [00:16:00] that can’t talk. This

Malcolm Collins: is like a more existential issue than I think people realize when they talk about the leisure time people used to have, they’re like, oh, come on, I could make that time more interesting. I’d talk with like my friends and it’s like, no, you don’t understand like what conversations are like in these societies.

And, and you can listen to like recordings of them and stuff like that. They are either talking about stuff that’s just objectively not true, like about like spirits and nonsense. Well, that’s

Simone Collins: fine. And a again, like, I don’t, like you can, you can watch a cat or a monkey like chilling and you’re like, man, that looks good.

Like, they’re lying in the sun. They’re happy. Like, I’m what? I’m looking as a professor, like chilling. And she’s happy. And I think people are like, I wanna do that. So I don’t think your argument that like, oh, they must be so bored is their argument. No, no. Hold on, hold on. Chilling. All

Malcolm Collins: our audience gets this.

If you have ever been unemployed for X amount of time or something like that, you know, this idea of like, oh, life would be so much better. I just didn’t know work at all. Is BS like your life becomes existentially like. Horrifying. When you literally do like that [00:17:00] little work, right? But it’s not just that, the point I’m making is you don’t have many games.

When you’re talking to people, their view of the world is incredibly myopic. So you don’t have much in terms of conversation. You do, you can’t even really gossip that much because it’s a danger to the tribe and will just get you killed. Like not really. I mean,

Simone Collins: gossip is, I mean there, there’s this, all these arguments of developmentally that women make about gossip.

About how important it is and stuff like that.

Malcolm Collins: I, again, I, I don’t know. Like I basically living often in a somewhat authoritarian regime, many of these tribes are set up not dissimilarly to like, chimpanzee tribes. Right. Where you have Yeah, no, and that’s

Simone Collins: the thing, yeah. Is like, don’t, don’t compare it to human life.

Compare compared to animal life, because that’s what it was. And like, you have to choose a team. Like if you wanna be an animal, I respect that. If you wanna be a human, what makes us human?

But

continue your argument. Continue anyway. Yeah. So like early farmers went from the 20 to 35 hours of work. [00:18:00] To 50 to 60 plus hours of work that that, that he categorizes as back breaking.

You know, you’re plowing and you’re weeding and your harvest things. Highly seasonal work and grinding grain. Yes. Highly seasonal, but he doesn’t like to talk about that because that’s not as convenient for his argument. So shut up. Right. And then diet and nutrition. Hunter gatherers had an extremely varied diet.

Right. Dozens of plants and nuts and fruits and game and fish and honey. Of course, he doesn’t point out necessarily that it might be like three days where you eat nothing but honey. Like, yeah, no, it’s, it’s not a, it’s

Malcolm Collins: not a, it’s a diverse diet, but

Simone Collins: not by choice. Yeah. It reminds me of some friends that I had in college where like, they would just eat like a bag of peas and that was it for the day.

You know, like,

Malcolm Collins: well, I, I pointed out here that the, the labor was very different. Yeah. So he hits you with comparisons that make sense to a modern person, Uhhuh, where he says. Oh. You know, no, he makes it sound like

Simone Collins: they, like have Whole Foods food deliveries, like every day. No, no, no, no, no.

Malcolm Collins: But, but he, [00:19:00] that’s not the argument I’m making here.

So he’ll say something like, oh, you know, they’re working four times as much, but it wasn’t even four times as much. I think it was like twice as much in his book when they’re doing agricultural labor, right? Mm-hmm. And it is backbreaking and it’s very physically demanding compared to the hunter-gatherers.

And it’s like, that is true. Yeah. But what is the negatives to the hunter gatherer work that he’s leaving out? Oh, it’s often incredibly dangerous. Yeah. You

Simone Collins: gord by the moose, you get, you know. Yeah. It’s like you get killed. You, you break your neck running and falling off a cliff. And

Malcolm Collins: I know that people can say now when they don’t actually have to deal with charging a mammoth or something like that.

Right. Or a herd of buffalo Right on foot. Because keep in mind, these people work on foot, not on like horses or something. And, and they can hear. Oh yeah. I would rather charge a mammoth.

Simone Collins: Well, come on. We, we clearly enjoyed it because we hunted them to extinction, so. Right, right.

Malcolm Collins: No, but then, then spend four x that time [00:20:00] cultivating a field and it’s like.

You, you actually probably wouldn’t. Because you haven’t actually dealt with the injuries regularly of charging mammoths and large game, which we know a lot of males in these societies had. Mm-hmm. Like the horrifying injuries. So no, you, you wouldn’t have loved it. The, the labor was not actually better.

Mm-hmm. Anyone who had actually done both of these tasks would prefer the the, the agricultural task to the charging the mammoth at one fourth a time. Well, yeah,

Simone Collins: and this is the second big argument I wanna make, which is like, if you just let look at, look at the market choices being made, right? At any point, unless you’re a slave or like, you’re literally forced to not leave, you have always had the option to leave.

Okay. No one is keeping you, so

Malcolm Collins: you’re actually wrong on this point. Okay. So there were two lifestyles that were strictly better than the, than the hunter-gatherer lifestyle. Okay. Are you familiar with the two lifestyles? Did they jump to your head off [00:21:00] the top of your head?

Simone Collins: You mean agricultural lifestyle?

‘cause my argument is you can always leave an a post agricultural world and go live in the wilderness if you want to.

Malcolm Collins: No, there were two core types of societies that developed. Okay. And they hated each other. Okay. And most of history is about these two societies wanting to kill each other. Okay. So like

Simone Collins: Mongols, like the roving bands of sea people was Agriculturalist,

Malcolm Collins: one was agriculturalist.

Mm-hmm. What was the other? They were our ancestors. Simone. Other than the alcohol, like the

Simone Collins: Vikings and see people’s Simon. No, no.

Malcolm Collins: What do you eat? What do our kids eat? What is literally dairy? 80% of our calories. Dairy. Dairy and meat. Okay. They were. Herding Society. Society.

Simone Collins: Oh, okay. I th They’re all grouped together, aren’t they?

Hurting societies? No. Hurting

Malcolm Collins: societies and agriculturalist societies generally hated each other. He

Simone Collins: doesn’t differentiate between the two in this. He just assumes they’re the same of life

Malcolm Collins: herding societies can’t stay in the same place. Herding societies, basically? Well, sort

Simone Collins: of. I [00:22:00] mean, you obviously need a lot of acreage, but, well, not

Malcolm Collins: really.

And their lifestyles are actually directly in opposition to each other. Mm-hmm. The herding lifestyle needs to move from place to place. Often eating the food of agricultural societies. Also because they don’t stay in locations, they often develop. Side hobby of raiding agriculturalist societies. So most Raider societies came from herding societies.

Hmm. And even in modern times, and I know this because I lived for a period in the Panal region in Brazil, and my brother lived down there and he actually had this more in his thing. And so that’s still a, a more primitive society to get this until fairly recently. And he remembers that the groups would at bars one instance in which they all pulled guns on each other, the, the herders versus the agriculturalist at the bar.

Simone Collins: Oh, wow. And

Malcolm Collins: the panton out region, if you’re not familiar, it’s deep in the Amazon. You know, so we, we, well off any, like on the other side of the Amazon is basically where it was not like deep in, it’s sort of like on the other side of where the mouth water that the [00:23:00] Amazon River are. Anyway, the point is, is this still happens around the world, is these two groups conflicting each other.

And so painting it as an agricultural revolution is disingenuous. There were multiple revolutions happening simultaneously. Mm. And they led to very different lifestyles. But continue, Simone,

Simone Collins: the point I wanted to make about diet and nutrition is that it makes it seem as a diet is very varied.

And it was for pre agricultural, but it was also like, you get what you can get. Like, and, and there were many pre agricultural societies that only ate like whale love and seal meat and stuff.

Malcolm Collins: Oh yeah. That’s, so I wanna get to that in a second. But the other thing I wanted to mention about the the two society types is you’re like, you could choose not to join them.

You really couldn’t. If you didn’t join one of them, they’d just kill you and take your women. Th th this is okay. They, they were, that’s fair enough.

They were more powerful. They had structures that other groups didn’t have. And so you can’t opt out like inside. It reminds me of the, the, the welcome to bronze period.

Like, well what if we don’t [00:24:00] adopt bronze? And it’s like, well then the people who do will kill you and take your women and things.

Speaker: , I just say as a tribe, why don’t we leave the bronze to the smart Alex and the Wiz kids and we’ll just carry on using stone axes like we always do, because if you do, the tribes with the bronze axes will kill you. And then take your stone axes and then throw them away because they’re rubbish.

,

Malcolm Collins: And I sometimes feel when people are like, well, what if I don’t engage with genetic augmentation technology or ai? I mean, it’s like, well, huh, I’ll tell you what will happen.

But the, the point here, ma, I’m making That’s a good point actually. It wasn’t actually a choice and it’s not actually that much of a choice today. The people who still live that way, basically live in human created zoos where we like rope off parts of the world and say, okay, no one’s allowed to go here.

Simone Collins: Yeah, I guess it’s, it’s, or, and, or the same kind of argument that you make about the Amish, which is like, you are still living at the, at the pleasure of the larger.

Malcolm Collins: Governments more technologically advanced group. Yes. Yeah.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And, and if they change their minds health and disease, and, [00:25:00] and this is a a totally fair point, is that hunter gatherers didn’t have a lot of epidemic diseases because they lived in really small mobile bands and they had really diverse diets.

They, but they had diseases and bacteria don’t have injuries. Yeah. To,

Malcolm Collins: to, to go over an example of one of these diseases because you, you brought it up here. There’s a disease that is quite common on paleo, like chro, Magine skeletons and stuff like that. And I know because I used to work in the field at the Smithsonian and I’ve helped one.

Yeah. And it always sticks with me.

This, this bubbling skull. And so specifically it’s called Crow Magnan One Skull. So that’s from the. Abre Day CAG site in France dated 28,000 years ago. So this is a, a good representation of what it would’ve been like to live in this period. The, the, the male facial bones show extensive pitting and erosion consistent with a fungal affection.

Mm-hmm. Likely antimortem while alive, since bone remodeling takes time. [00:26:00] The bubbly foam look, or the pitted texture was the fungus eroding the bone tissue. This, this fungus was a type likely aspira gillis or muus, I think, which would’ve been treatable even in the, the classical period, right?

Like this was a type of like so easy to treat fungus, that it really is not relevant in most of human history. So

Simone Collins: when, and even some diseases that I as. I, I associated more with like the Victorian era that like, I would’ve if, if trying to argue in favor of sapiens actually did still exist in pre agricultural times.

Like did you know tuberculosis was an issue in pre agricultural?

Malcolm Collins: Oh. And it was such an issue that we have giant bone piles where like 40% or 60% of them died. Are we gonna get to that? Yeah. Because if you, if

Simone Collins: you ate infected game, you, you could get tuberculosis. Yeah. It’s like you just

Malcolm Collins: eat the wrong meat one day and then, and and you could be like, [00:27:00] oh, they knew better than to eat infected game.

Keep in mind an animal can be sick, right? Yeah. Like, you don’t know, it’s not just rotted game or something like that.

Simone Collins: And then there’s also, I’m not familiar with this. I mean, I guess maybe ‘cause it’s more of a per agricultural condition, but. Treponin masts which is a non venereal syphilis like disease.

Jaws, vegal penta, it disfigures skin and bone and it it causes bone lesions and it, it’s common in tropical forages, so that sounded terrible. Then of course there’s a tape worms, there’s a hook hookworm, there’s malaria. There, there are various ti sites, but can also get

Malcolm Collins: things from soil when you interact with them.

So, well, I

Simone Collins: mean, well, and obviously too, if any wound got infected,

Malcolm Collins: I, if you’re looking at the Los Mortis site, this was Arizona AD 1,100 to 1450 the, they had a infection from K. Godes ETE spores inhaled from soil damage included lidic destructive lesions with [00:28:00] central cavity in the skull vault.

And vertebral bros. Essentially holes hint in into the bone making it look like Swiss cheese. We know this happened while the person was alive and healed over because of the healing patterns around the bones. This was happening in their spine and skull. Yeah. Anyway, continue.

Simone Collins: Obviously people talk a lot about how the higher sugar diets or like carb diets from agricultural periods cause dental problems, but they also totally existed before agriculture, especially extreme wear from grit in food because you’re just kind getting what you, oh, oh actually,

Malcolm Collins: sorry, I need to talk about this.

‘cause this is a different thing. And it’s not just grit and food. It has to do with cooking techniques that are important if you study this period. So, what she’s saying, and this is true, you had much more tooth wrought in the agricultural period. Mm-hmm. But before the agricultural period, you had much more tooth lith or serious tooth damage.

Mm-hmm. And this was caused because a lot of the cooking [00:29:00] techniques involved the meat being in sand and dirt. And then you would cook it and you would be eating cooked sand and dirt, which acted like sandpaper on your teeth. Yeah. Now this damage actually went into the agricultural period leading to a unique teeth nuking during the early agricultural period where you had boast the sand and the dirt problem and the o carbohydrates problem.

Yeah. But by the classical period you were dealing with largely better dentition than you were in the pre cultural period.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Continue.

Simone Collins: And I just, I wanna obviously, like, I, I wanna point out that there’s. You, you got botulism. Especially if, if you, you know, caught meat in a warm client, a climate you, you, you could get rabies.

You could get any sort of snake bite or bug bite that could kill you. And, you know, those are a little more common when you’re kind of out in the jungle covering a lot of ground every single day or forest. But most of the deaths also in this period were really, really [00:30:00] slow and long. If you didn’t immediately like slap your snap your neck and because you weren’t living in a city and you weren’t surrounded by like a supportive family and you didn’t exactly have a base, you were often just left behind because everyone else was gonna die if they hung around to like be there for you.

And they couldn’t really afford to keep you with them. So. Yeah. In many cases you would just be sort of exposed and left to slowly die. And I think when, when you watch how animals die in nature documentaries like when they’re being eaten alive and you know, like that, you’re like, man, that

Malcolm Collins: it’s

Simone Collins: more eaten alive,

Malcolm Collins: type, die.

Yeah. Even when other human groups are doing this. So I point out it’s at the low range. 10% of humans were killed in homicide during this period. So way more than today. Mm-hmm. And it, and I’ve seen higher ranges that could go up to, I think it was like 30 to 60% from something that I’ve seen, like really high ranges.

Mm-hmm. To give some examples of like what we’re looking at here, if you look at NATA Kenya 10,000 years ago there’s a Lakeside Hunter camp where 27 [00:31:00] unburied skeletons scattered as if left to rot. They provide evidence of a premeditated massacre. 10 of the 12 articulated adults show violent lesions from clubs, arrows, and close range stabbings.

And we’re also dealing with, I’m not gonna go into detail here, lots of kids and babies. Thank you for not going

Simone Collins: into

Malcolm Collins: detail. Not going into detail. Goes Cave England 14,700 years ago. Here you have the remains of five to seven individuals, including a, we’re not gonna go into detail. Bears the mark of systematic def fleshing and cannibalism.

God bowls were fractured and modified into cups and bowls with cut marks from stone tools matching those of animals nearby. Not, not great. Yeah, I’m not gonna go into, oh, we have another one. The o off that caves in Germany, 9,007,000 years ago. 33. 33 decapitated heads mostly women and children arranged west and adorned with wet ochre and deer teeth.

So their teeth were repla. We’re not even gonna go into this. Here’s the,

Simone Collins: and here’s the thing. Okay, here’s, ‘cause I’m, I’m just going to jump. ‘cause I mean, [00:32:00] obviously he also talks about physical toll and injuries. He talks about child mortality in the overall population, but he also, biggest thing is he talks about the social inequality and that when you had farmers, you finally got a surplus and then you had private property, and then you had inherited wealth, and then you had sharp class divisions and then patriarchy and then slavery and then warfare over land.

But look at those examples you just cited. And first off, like honestly, you’re kind of lucky to become a slave because if you’re a slave, you haven’t been tortured and, and skinned, alive and killed or just generally killed. And, and in pre agricultural societies when they it like, so a lot of first off there totally was.

Slavery in pre agricultural societies. It was many, it was probably

Malcolm Collins: common in pre agricultural societies. Many don’t like

Simone Collins: to call them that, they like to call them captives from war. Although I will point out the complex delayed return hunter gatherers in the Pacific Northwest, for example did fight over like EE [00:33:00] each other.

And actually I, in the classical or like academic definition of true slavery, indeed have slaves because they rated neighbors specifically to capture slaves for labor and prestige. So it’s not even like, yeah, well it

Malcolm Collins: wasn’t just for slavery. If you study the, the surviving tribes and like the, amazonian region, teach America, oh, a number of them have rituals where like they, they can’t mate or take a wife until they’ve killed someone from another tribe. So that’s like really common. But they one of the ones that always reminded me. And so I think that what happened, and I, I can tell you how people get this rather dumb belief

Simone Collins: mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Is. They say, okay, pre agricultural humans, we’re probably like hunter gatherer tribes today, which I do not disagree with. Right. And then what they do is they go, oh, let’s read anthropological literature on hunter gatherers today to try to understand what, what they then forget is, oh, if these tribes were incredibly barbaric and lived horrible lives mm-hmm.

Would a woke researcher, which anyone writing these likely [00:34:00] is write about how horrible and evil these minority communities that they want to protect actually are in real life. Mm-hmm. If you actually read the, the like if you’re actually like into anthropology research and not like anthropology highlights, you know, that life in these tribes is horrifying.

So a great one that I read about, I wanna say it was the ari and this was a the South American group. I’m trying to remember this from, from memory. But one of the events that always really stuck with me. As he was talking to a woman and one of the dominant males from the tribes, if you wonder what it’s like to live in a tribe with a few dominant males, which is actually the way most of these tribes are structured, they are not egalitarian.

Even though anthropologists sometimes straight to ra them is egalitarian. Mm-hmm. The dominant male they were, they were talking with a woman and she was talking about how. Her kid was crying one day. This was like a 4-year-old kid or something, and it annoyed the dominant male. So he just slammed the kid’s head against a tree until they died.

And there was just [00:35:00] nothing she could do. Nothing she could, she just had to live in that tribe, move on. Her partner just had to deal with it and move on. Because that was a normal thing for dominant males in that tribe to do, to kill children that mildly annoyed them. That is not the egalitarian world that you believe that you are living in.

Okay. That is. And, and, and if you did that in many. Agricultural societies. The, the good thing about agricultural societies, oh, I mean, keep

Simone Collins: in mind, just remember in the Bible there are all these rules about like, well, if you do this to a slave or I can’t remember if it’s, it’s that, or like some other ancient text.

Malcolm Collins: The important thing about, and we have a whole video where we go over all ancient rules and everything like that about slaves. Yeah. Right. About like, well if you

Simone Collins: do this to a slave, you have to pay this penalty. Like you’re not allowed to do that. There are rules. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: The point I’m making here is there are actually advantages to living in a society with less equality when you live in these structures and you can be like, wait, explain that to [00:36:00] me.

Okay, so suppose you have a collection of tribes like the, the one I just laid out, like this re tribe, right? Mm-hmm. And they have practices like this with a few dominant males. Okay? So you might have one male dominant over a small group of like 17. Other individuals, right? And they can basically like one group of three males and they can basically do whatever they want to the rest of those individuals whenever they feel like it.

Mm-hmm. Okay. Now move to a city, you have less equality, but it’s one or a group of like three or four males for like a thousand people or something like that. Okay? The chance that your child draws the anger of this three males for this thousand population, or your daughter catches their eyes is dramatically lower than the chance that this happens in Ari population.

Right? This means that if you are not one of the dominant males in this tribe and one of the dominant males takes a liking to your wife or girlfriend, too bad you’re having his kids. That’s just the way the tribe works. [00:37:00] Whereas in other tribes, you just keep ‘em hidden. You know, it’s, it’s, it’s there, there are advantages when you’re dealing with this degree of despotism for inequality, ironically speaking, but continue.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. And, and again, I wanna like a lot of what happened here and what was being misrepresented, which I just wanna highlight ‘cause you pointed it out earlier. Was it sort of like, you could argue from a just pure happening in the moment, hedonic perspective, there was a local maximum perhaps with some pre agricultural societies where it did absolutely get worse for a little bit.

When agriculture was introduced, like nutrition got a little worse, dentition was a little worse. Or sorry, like dental health was a little worse. Child mortality went up mostly because people were having more kids ‘cause they could, ‘cause they weren’t starving and they didn’t have a amenorrhea. You know, they were working more, et cetera.

But then. From Broad’s age onward, like from [00:38:00] 3000 BCE in the Near East and a little later elsewhere there, there were better storage, there were better plows, there was better irrigation, there was better dietary supplementation. So nutrition got better, life got better from the iron aging, classical periods onward, absolutely.

Things got so much better. Like you can see in, in skeletons, heights go up. And in health, pretty much recovered back to like what you saw in, in pre agricultural skeletons at that region. ‘cause people did get shorter initially when, when agriculture was introduced. And then of course we saw a full recovery and then some, as soon as, you know, we, we have modern sanitation and medicine and, and dietary abundance. And, and that’s the, the big thing is if you, if you compare non-agricultural life today to agricultural life, there’s just no comparison. And that’s where I get super annoyed with people to today who are like, man things like, it just, it’s better because like.

No. Right now there are people who live in [00:39:00] non-agricultural societies. What is their life expectancy at birth 21 to 37 years? What is the average sick fat American’s life expectancy, and I’m not saying we’re super healthy, right? Like we have problems is 74 years,

Malcolm Collins: I point out 21 to 31. Mm-hmm. If somebody today died within that range, like at 31, you’d be like, wow, they died shockingly young.

Mm-hmm. Like, you’re like, this is a shockingly young death. That was the average upper end life expectancy even today for these sorts of societies.

Simone Collins: Yeah. So it, I mean like the actual average is, is 30 to 33 years. It, it’s kind of messed up by the high infant mortality, which again, really bad, 15 to 25%.

In the non today non-agricultural societies. So once you reach, I wanna, I

Malcolm Collins: wanna, I wanna pull on this a little bit because I wanna talk about like, this, like based framing, right? Where people think I’m based, because I’m talking about how great it would be if I lived like an African [00:40:00] tribalist mm-hmm.

If I lived like you know, a a, the, the Na Native Americans did when the European colonialists reached, there’s a reason why they lost, right? Like even before the diseases had started spreading. Yeah. There was a reason why the conquistadors was significantly less technology than we have today. You are ensuring, and this is the, the truth of it, the people who do this sort of like bronze age fronting none of them have kids.

And if they do their below repopulation rate, like, like bro, like, like the, the liver king guy, I think he has like. Two. I thought he like three or four kids. Right? He’s completely faking. I thought he had two kids. Let’s see. How many kids does Liver King have?

Simone Collins: Well, maybe it was just two

Malcolm Collins: bronze Age.

Perfect. Certainly has no kinks.

Simone Collins: Okay. I mean, here’s the other problem though is, is there are. I think people look to, even, even contemporary,

Malcolm Collins: it’s got two kids. Oh, two. Oh, so below replacement? Yeah. No, they’re never above replacement. It’s not an above replacement strategy. It’s, it’s [00:41:00] about it, it, it’s literally, to me, it is the worst of male strategies.

It is the male equivalent to the woman who dresses in all like. Prada and Gucci stuff to show off to other women and wears all the extra makeup and everything to show how I tie status. She’s dedicated her entire life to intrasexual status signaling. And, and for this, it’s males who have dedicated their entire life to intrasexual status signaling to other males in populations that they think that they can flex with.

And to me and to anybody who’s actually interested in actually winning the genetic game that we’re playing in the civilizational game, they look like buffoons. Yeah.

Simone Collins: Well, and, and so many of the things that people complain about where they’re like, well, these non-agricultural societies are healthier in this way, like, lower levels of chronic disease, lower, like, okay then like, eat a, eat better food.

Like, you can, you can choose to do that at any level. Like if you, you can choose to eat whole foods. You can choose to eat, you know, a, a more varied diet. You can choose [00:42:00] to walk more or move more. Even if you’re a desk. What I’m.

Malcolm Collins: You arrive at, at the shore, you encounter these people for the first time and it’s like, Ugh, you, you’re gonna kill us with guns.

That’s so soy. What? How soy, you’re gonna kill us with guns. You don’t even work out. Bam. It’s like, well, I did kill you. Yeah.

Simone Collins: It’s like that famous Indiana Jones scene.

Heh,

Simone Collins: Yeah. I, I love the backstory of that too. That scene. He got

Malcolm Collins: sick that day. Yeah. He was supposed to have, yeah. And he was like, they had

Simone Collins: this whole elaborate fight scene and he was sick and they’re just like, just take gun.

That’s just such good, good film lore. But yeah, I, I like, they’re also like, well, they don’t get, they don’t get cancer, the rates of cancer because they die because they’re dead. They die.

Malcolm Collins: That’s why they’re not getting cancer. Okay. Ca

Simone Collins: cancer is a privilege. Friends, it’s what [00:43:00] happens. No, no, no. Actually, I,

Malcolm Collins: I wanna point this out.

If you are 31 to 33 and you’re a group that has a life expectancy of like 31 to 33. How, how many people do you know who have cancer before 31? Right? Like,

Simone Collins: what are you, whatcha talking

Malcolm Collins: about?

Simone Collins: But also like who’s going out into the woods and like who’s the mortician? Who’s like, ah, yes, this appears to have been, no, no, but I study this in

Malcolm Collins: skeletons and mummies and stuff like that.

And they did have lower rates of cancer. I’m referring

Simone Collins: to people to, to people who are pre agricultural today who are like, you know. Remote tribes, you know? Yeah. There’s not some guy going in and being like, I wouldn’t exactly say lower

Malcolm Collins: rates of cancer is the flex you think it is. Mm. Cancer is you know, not awesome in society today, but like we’ve largely found a way to deal with cancer in younger individuals.

Mm-hmm. Outside if people could be like, I know x person who died of cancer or whatever, it’s like, yeah, you can know somebody who’s died of cancer. We know people who have died of cancer. But the reality is, is that dying of cancer these days is you, we, we have in [00:44:00] and increasingly have solutions to it.

Yeah.

Simone Collins: It’s an increasingly preventable disease, which is great, especially with early screening, which is crucial as we’ve learned the hard way from losses in our families. So, yeah. I mean, I’m with you on that. And, and here’s the other thing too, ultimately is these tribes that live pre agricultural lives, like they’re going through a crisis of.

Disappearing because people are voting with their feet and leaving when they have a choice to go, they’re going, they’re moving to cities and they’re living lives in the modern world because you know what? Antibiotics, they’re pretty freaking great. So I just, I to, to wrap this up ‘cause I don’t want this to be too long.

It, it’s that, yeah. I mean, there’s

Malcolm Collins: lots of evidence we could cite that. I don’t even think it’s worth citing. I think it’s no

Simone Collins: like this, it’s, it’s like I, I just, but I also just feel like there’s like this, this book and this overall meme is, it’s this, it’s this deep undercurrent. [00:45:00] It’s a cooked meme through the internet and it’s not dying.

And, and it’s been 10 years since this book came out in English and it’s still not dying. And listen, it, I think it’s great to integrate elements that are, you know, like our, our, like we should have more varied diets. Absolutely. We should be more physically active. I agree with you. I work from a treadmill desk.

I walk about 15 miles every damn day, right? Like, I love this stuff, but you can do this. With modern life. And so Harari, the, the, again, the, the author of Sapiens, he argues that there’s no clear evidence that humans today are happier than hunter gatherers. But like, define happy because like how happy is, is Greg who’s, whose skull is being eaten away, like he’s waking up in pain every single day.

Is we happier

Malcolm Collins: even compare apple to oranges. Everyone sort of has a happiness set point where they, you know, get to a set happiness level with whatever their life is. Yeah. Which is

Simone Collins: probably largely genetic.

Malcolm Collins: What is [00:46:00] true is if you took somebody from one of these cultures and you put them in our culture, they would generally be happier.

If you took someone from our culture and put them in one of their cultures, they would generally probably unlive themselves outta Yeah. They wouldn’t be feeling anything. So I guess. No, no. What I’m saying is they would hate their lives so much. They would. No, they’d be

Simone Collins: dead. I’m saying they wouldn’t be feeling anything ‘cause they would die immediately.

Malcolm Collins: No, but even if they did, even if they survived, they integrated with the tribe. Mm-hmm. They would, they would hate you take a kid who grew up with cell phones and computers and philosophical conversations and an understanding of reality, and you put him in one of these primitive tribes, he’s gonna hate his life.

Right? Mm-hmm. Like mm-hmm. There is no reverse integration, right? Like,

Simone Collins: yeah. Yeah. Well, and here’s what also really annoys me though. Like, and, and this is an argument, and this is very similar to the American dream, but hurt that you hear like, we’ve been robbed of the American dream. And very similarly, RA’s like, well, most ideologies and religions throughout history have failed to [00:47:00] deliver on their promises of happiness and meaning.

And I’m like, sir, they never promised happiness. And they never promised. They promised. Meaning,

you’re, you’re, they’re, I’m a jealous God.

I’m gonna, I’m gonna kill you. If you don’t listen to me or you know, like, this is capitalism. If you wanna live, play the game. Yeah. Or we’ll kill you. That’s the real, like, kill the other

Malcolm Collins: groups.

Simone Collins: Better.

Malcolm Collins: The ones who spread their ideology Historically,

Simone Collins: we, we never promised happiness, have happiness, was never promised. Same with the American dream, the American dream. You know, this is about life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, which you may never get. Like, hold on. What I wanna

Malcolm Collins: point out here is there is an alternate, there is an actual saying, and not stupid way to make an argument like this.

Okay? But the people who make this argument wouldn’t make it because the moment they make this argument is that, go do it, then do it. And the answer is, is to say well. The Amish have uniquely low rates of cancer. Yeah. The Amish have uniquely low rates of [00:48:00] transmissible diseases. The Amish genuinely do seem happier than most people do.

Yeah. They’re in their base. They’re so

Simone Collins: cool. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: There is a way you can go back to an earlier time that might be as civilizational optimum. There are absolutely people who convert into Amish

Simone Collins: communities

Malcolm Collins: and Mennonite communities, everything like that. Mm-hmm. And it’s called being a Mennonite or being Amish.

Yeah. Go. It’s cool if you want to do that, you can just go do it, my friend. You can just go to the Amish or the Mennonites and show them that you’ll work hard and do the labor and marry into one of the families. Mm-hmm. And become one of them. But you don’t actually wanna make those sacrifices. And being an Amish doesn’t make you look cool and buff and status signal to other men.

So you’re like, oh, that it does, that didn’t, there’s

Simone Collins: whole like. Amish romance novel genre. There

Malcolm Collins: is, yes. Like, but for people who know this, they’re called Rivers hot. Yeah. And they’re really popular among women who like wanna have Amish fantasies. Oh. So again, this is, this is the, the tough guys not knowing what girls [00:49:00] want.

There are not, they know. No, they don’t know. They don’t know. No. They know that They don’t know the type of masculinity that the girls want. There is not a big category of a female romance about living in a, in a tribal society other than like, Gorian, which isn’t that popular anymore. Yeah, there is a lot.

And that, no, that

Simone Collins: wasn’t, no, that wasn’t a tribal society. It was like super regimented, full of tradition and like inter fake. Anyway, it was clearly an imperialistic, like complex civilization. So that doesn’t count at all.

Malcolm Collins: Anyway, love you Simone. No, no, no. I

Simone Collins: wanna one, one final point. Is it sort of the way that Sapiens ends, this is kind of like.

Well, it, it almost doesn’t even matter because we’re, we’re on the verge of breaking out of natural selection and we’re becoming something utterly unhuman. And that that basically like 2020 first century technologies like genetic engineering and ai are gonna turn us into cyborgs and we can redesign life itself and create inorganic life forms.

And that [00:50:00] this is the ultimate disruption of all the disruptions he talks about in his book, of which the agricultural revolution was just one. I mean, he also said talks about like various forms of capitalism and imperialism anyway, but he’s like, well, it doesn’t even matter because like we’re sort of becoming gods.

I’m like, I think he’s missing more largely. The point is that. To me at least, and sue me if this isn’t your thing and if you wanna go back to living like an animal, be my guess. We just talked about, I mean, and the Amish are not animals, they’re like super cool. But I mean, like, you can go even further back.

Like if you wanna make your mudstone hunts, you can do that. You know, preventive technology. He, he goes off into the, into the woods and, and he makes his huts and he gets tons of views and it’s great. He’s happy. Right. But like, per my view, what makes humans human is that we. Do these weird things that we have this prefrontal cortex and we use it and that we are, we are our, our ideas.

Like [00:51:00] we are not our meat puppet bodies that still have like all the old instincts that you see and like mammals and other animals. Like we, what makes us different in what makes us human is all that stuff that he decries so much. It is that shared delusion that he talks about. Well, I’m gonna, I’m gonna push back to refute that is to refute humanity and what is humanity in my view, what is ho’s hyper human is ai.

And, and so I just get really miffed when he

Malcolm Collins: No, I’m, I’m gonna push back on this a bit. I’m gonna say from a different perspective, just from a, a practical perspective. It’s not that I disagree with what you’re saying, but I would say this.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: The reason why people have this dumb belief that they can just go back to nature and that’s one of the path forwards for humanity or disengaged from technology.

And that’s one of the path forwards. Yeah. Is because they live under the p de Roman of the urban monoculture. They live in this unique period of history where groups aren’t killing each other because they can and forcing their ways of life on other groups and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so they have [00:52:00] forgotten that that was ever a possibility or is even a real threat to them.

Yeah. But the reality is, is that the people who are playing for keeps for the future of human civilization, they understand that this is a. The eye of the storm. Okay. It’s coming back, right? Everyone can see this when we go out there and we’re like, Hmm. What cultural groups do we want to ally with?

Well, Jews look broadly powerful and technologically competent, and they’ll ally with people who are different from them. You know, like the, when we, when we talk about things like that, right? Like, who, who else will we argue? Well, you know, the, the Calvinist groups, they largely seem theologically aligned with us, and we could probably ally with them in a number of areas and would bring them on our show, and we talked with them, but, but.

The people who are like, I’m going to go and live in the woods and do whatever win groups and whatever groups do this. Obviously we are one group that is moving in this direction, but other groups will, the Chinese will, they already have you are actually talking one of your kid groups.

Apparently the Chinese are already regularly wealthy Chinese doing human augmentation, like genetic augmentation. Do their [00:53:00] embryos. Yeah. Which is great for our kids because now they’ll be able to look at that to understand what works and what doesn’t work with this stuff. Exactly. Yeah. But anyway, so, you know, the groups that do not engage with this technology, that do not engage with ai.

Are just really placing themselves at the benevolence of groups like us that do engage with that stuff and see it as our partial duty to protect them so long as they don’t annoy us enough. Yeah. But at the end of the day, I’m not gonna put my own, and my family and culture wouldn’t put itself at risk to protect you.

So if you annoy some other group with technology they’re just, you’re on your own. Erase you. Yeah. You know, you are going to be the tribal, I don’t wanna say savage, the tribal savage when, when the group with guns, cubs. Mm-hmm. Okay. You, you, you, you will. Likely not even be enslaved because you as a slave would be worth less to them than ai.

Simone Collins: Yeah. But again, that’s like, that is exactly how it was in pre agricultural times. Like again, you’re, if, if you like [00:54:00] survival, you were lucky to be a slave because it meant that you weren’t killed often in a very terrible way. You know, like, yeah.

Malcolm Collins: But the thing about AI is it means that it is no longer even worth it for a group that is being practical to keep these sorts of individuals who have optimized themselves for this traditional concept of masculinity and, and pre culturalism.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: They are strictly less useful to me than an ai. They, they, like if, if you conquer their land and their stuff there, there is no reason to keep them around outside of pure benevolence.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Ugh, I shutter anyway, which we have of course. I’m just saying don’t go you, you require the benevolence of the technologically capable groups in advancing groups to protect you from the other technologically capable and advancing groups that are not benevolent and will just take your stuff.

Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah. Thank you for humor. Anyway. Have a great day, AIO. [00:55:00] You too. Good day sir. Just, I wanna like also see what’s like, I don’t know, considered standard, but Oh my. Okay. I was while out owning this episode watching like the 30th recap of season one of Sex in the City on YouTube by some YouTuber because like that’s a genre on YouTube is just talking about Sex in the city and the episodes.

And I don’t

Malcolm Collins: think Gen Z is watching a lot of like old shows like that instead of Yeah. Like in Clueless

Simone Collins: and they’re like, oh my gosh, it’s, this is amazing. And there was this, she was talking about this one episode where someone was trying to do a threesome or there was a threesome and I had this realization that someone had targeted me for threesome when I was like before, right before I met you.

Really? And I didn’t realize it. Yeah. I met this really nice nerdy guy who like worked at a tech company while commuting in San [00:56:00] Francisco. And. He was like, oh yeah, like my wife and I like, you know, blah, blah, blah. And I can’t remember the circumstances. We were like, do you wanna like come over to our house and watch a movie?

And I’m like, yeah, I need to make some friends. That sounds great. And I go over and we’re like watching a movie. And then like, at one point, the wife and I don’t know why, well I guess now I know why she, she like, brings out her vibrator and she’s like, this is my vibrator. And I’m like, oh, good for you. And like, I just keep watching them.

I

Malcolm Collins: love it Wasn’t even awkward for you. No. Socially retarded to know what happening. Oh, that’s

Simone Collins: so good. I’m so happy for you. Like I just had a great time. I had a fantastic time and I, I rode my little bike home and yeah, that was, that was it. Thought they were great people. However many years later, what that was, that was probably early 2012 or late 2011.

So [00:57:00] like more than 10 years later, I’m like, oh.

Oops.

Malcolm Collins: I’m

Simone Collins: sorry guys.

Malcolm Collins: You’re socially empower. I wasted your,

Simone Collins: I feel so now I feel bad ‘cause like I wasted their time and I should have been like, yeah, that’s not me.

Malcolm Collins: I’m like, you put yourself in so many dangerous situations being a sex, like, like oblivious to people hitting on you. You have

Simone Collins: no idea.

Malcolm Collins: You must have been hit on it so hard all the time.

Simone Collins: I’m pretty

Malcolm Collins: sure. I’m pretty sure I was. And then I was the first person who pulled the, the cyber jiu-jitsu move of like sitting down and being like, okay, here’s what I want.

Simone Collins: But you act, you like artistically were like. I’m not looking to date. I’m looking to find a wife and like, and you’re like, well,

Malcolm Collins: I’m not looking for that.

And then I’m like, oh, so no hold sex. Yeah, that works. All right. Bye.

Simone Collins: Yeah, and it was, it was great. I mean, like, and you were just so transparent with everything and it was kind of necessary [00:58:00] because if you weren’t, I would’ve been like, what a nice guy, like Benny hates me and then go home.

Malcolm Collins: Anyway, I’ll, I’ll start.

Is this, by the way, are we starting with like the Sapiens intro?

Simone Collins: Well, we’re talking like Sapiens is the, the whole turning point of this entire thing,

Malcolm Collins: but I’m, I’m, I have a, I have an intro. Shall I kinda just Okay. Okay. Do the intro. I love it. I’m excited. Shocking. Okay.

Simone Collins: All

Malcolm Collins: right.

Speaker 6: Octavian, where are you going with Indie? I’m trying to, um, I’m going, I’m, I’m trying to wait. I’m trying to find, trying to find a Christmas mama. This is baby powers. Oh, so baby young people have powers and they can see magic. Yeah. So you’re walking her around until she sees it? Oh no. She got sad. We gotta keep her happy.

Or the Christmas mama will run away. Here we go. Here we go. Dad. No, I’m, I’m done with her for now. Hey, do you know where Toasty is? Oh, I don’t [00:59:00] put her down. Maybe

Speaker 7: this is.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe