[Sca-cooks] oop - artichokes, well - maybe in period

[Philippa Alderton]

--- Chip <jallen at multipro.com> wrote:
> It's just a theory, but I'd say prepared food and
> restaurants are what
> enabled people to specialize and do something
> besides subsistence
> farming.  If your entire day isn't spent getting
> food to keep yourself
> alive, you can do a lot of other things like
> city-building and
> technological development.
>
> And if there are others willing to spend the day
> preparing food for
> you (farmers, bakers, butchers), careers start to
> develop for both
> the producers & the consumers.  Thus arises the need
> for a monetary
> system.  Because if you can give up small lumps of
> metal for your
> daily bread instead of half your day, you have Free
> Time for art and
> music and traditions and oops -- you just made a
> culture.

Well, it sounds good, on the face of it, except for
just one little thing....

If you check with anthropologists and people who study
hunter/gatherer societies, you rapidly discover that
they spend considerably less of their time in "work"
and considerably more of their time enjoying
themselves. Most hunter-gatherer societies spend maybe
10 hours per week earning their livings, and the rest
of it is spent doing whatever they like- liesure time,
if you will. Subsistance farmers and herders spend
only a couple more hours per week (granting, some
weeks are busier than others). It's only when you get
to "civilized" folk that you find most of a person's
waking hours devoted to maintaining their basics.

Think about it. What do you actually do, in a given
week?

Phlip

=====
Never a horse that cain't be rode,
And never a rider who cain't be throwed....

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