[throwaways885]

We lived in tribes, not pseudo-prison cells with just yourself or your family at best.

[ubercore]

How large do you think those tribes were?

[tokai]

1727.9 ± 620.6 persons.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5756541/

[throwaways885]

Probably more than 2.4 people, which is the average household size in the UK, for example.

[smorgusofborg]

In some places. But at any given time many people lived in relative isolations, i.e. Winters alone with family, while in most times no one could have been in a high enough density where you didn't know everyone. So this normal is imaginary while lockdown is like a normal lifestyle even if it wasn't the only lifestyle at all times.

[throwaways885]

I guarantee you that most people back then would've been hunting, farming, building huts or rearing children. There is no model of the past where this level of isolation was even maintainable. People simply depend on each other to live.

All that changed is that we've outsourced that direct dependence with indirect dependencies, like supermarkets.