One final post referencing Daniel Lieberman’s The Story of the Human Body, this one a brief passage that explains how farming was never truly drudgery until it became hierarchal:

“The very first farmers certainly had to work hard, but we know from archaeological sites that they still hunted animals, did some gathering and initially practiced cultivation on a modest scale. Farming pioneers certainly had challenging lives, but the popular image of the incessant drudgery, filth, and misery of being a farmer probably applies more to later peasants in feudal systems than to early Neolithic farmers. A girl born to a French farmer in 1789 had a life expectancy of just twenty-eight years, she probably suffered from frequent bouts of starvation, and she was more likely than not to die from diseases such as measles, smallpox, typhoid fever, and typhus. No wonder they had a revolution. The very first farmers of the Neolithic had demanding lives, but they were not yet beset by plagues, such as smallpox or the Black Death, and they were not oppressed by a heartless feudal system in which a handful of powerful aristocrats owned their land and appropriated a large percentage of their harvest.”