Many hunter-gatherers in East Asia will have had even more comfortable and leisure filled lives than those of the Kalahari Bushmen. Is there any data to support this? Evidence from southern Africa since the 1970s has shown that the Kalahari hunter-gatherers living in what is a comparatively harsh environment have/had a relatively easier life, with considerably more leisure time and a longer life expectancy than those living in early farmer groups (Lee and DeVore, 1976). Perhaps because most of us come from long-standing farmer ancestry, we tend to assume that farming is a superior and more secure way of life. The search has been for the oldest sedentary farming settlements, the processes of plant and animals domestication and the profound societal alterations that accompanied the choice to change lifeway. The transition to farming is often written in the language of progress.
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