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tmoravec | 2 months ago

Exactly. You might also enjoy Bret Devereaux' recent series of how life was really like for pre-modern peasants. Also includes parts focusing on women in particular. https://acoup.blog/2025/07/11/collections-life-work-death-an...

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glaugh|2 months ago

That series of blog posts is incredible, as is all his work. One thing that stuck with me is that while our deep evolutionary past is very important, the majority of humans who have lived have been peasants in an agrarian society

Balgair|2 months ago

That stuck with me too.

The modal human experience was a farmer, far and away. Not the mean, not the median, but the mode. We have the numbers to easily back it up.

potato3732842|2 months ago

His blog posts are very high quality. It seems however that the average reader ignores his prolific disclaimers about how his work doesn't necessarily generalize and attempting to do so is fraught with peril and attempting to do so any later than the early modern period is laughable.

chrismatic|2 months ago

Came here to post the same resource and to point out that based on it it rarely was a "two person's job" only.