Stone-age hunter-gatherers spent an average of six hours per day hunting and gathering:
That 6 hour/day average belies a great variation in day to day routine. One to two hour naps or whole days spent sleeping were not uncommon. As one anthropologist noted, when foragers set out to work, “they certainly did not approach it as an unpleasant job to be got over as soon as possible, nor as necessary evil to be postponed as long as possible.” Outside observers almost universally noted the punctuated aspect of work among foragers. Gatherers may work very hard for several days in a row and then do nothing in terms of food getting for the rest of the week. This cycle is known among anthologists as the “paleolithic rhythm” — a day or two on, day or two off. An observer familiar with the Yamana tribe — but it could be almost any hunter tribe — wrote: “Their work is a more a matter of fits and starts, and in these occasional efforts they can develop considerable energy for a certain time. After that, however they show a desire for an incalculably long rest period during which they lie about doing nothing, without showing great fatigue.” The paleolithic rhythm actually reflects the “predator rhythm” since great hunters of the animal world, the lion and other large cats, exhibit the same style: hunting to exhaustion in a short burst and then lounging around days afterward. Hunters, almost by definition, seldom go out hunting, and they succeed in getting a meal even less often. The efficiency of primitive tribal hunting, measured in the yield of calories/hour invested, was only half that of gathering. Meat is thus a treat in almost every foraging culture.Then there are seasonal variations. Every ecosystem produces a “hungry season” for foragers. In higher cooler latitudes, this late-winter/early spring hungry season is more severe, but even in tropical latitudes, there are seasonal oscillations in the availability of favorite foods, supplemental fruits, or essential wild game. In addition, there are climatic variations: extended periods of droughts, floods, storms that can disrupt yearly patterns. This great punctuations over days, season, and years mean that while there are many times when hunter-gatherers are well-fed, they also can — and do — expect many periods when they are hungry, famished and undernourished. Time spent in this state along the edge of malnutrition is mortal for young children and dire for adults.
The result of all this variation in calories is the paleolithic rhythm at all scales of time. Importantly, this burstiness in “work” is not by choice. When you are primarily dependent of natural systems to provide you foodstuffs, working more does not tend to produce more. You can’t get twice as much food by working twice as hard. The hour which the figs ripen can neither be hurried, nor predicted exactly. Nor can the arrival of game herds. If you do not store surplus, nor cultivate in place, then motion must produce your food. Hunter-gatherers must be in ceaseless movement away from depleted sources in order to maintain production. But once you are committed to perpetual movement, surplus and its tools slow you down.
In many contemporary hunter-gatherer tribes, being unencumbered with things is considered a virtue, even a virtue of character. You carry nothing, but cleverly make or procure whatever you need when you need it. “The efficient hunter who would accumulate supplies succeeds at the cost of his own esteem”, says Robert Kelley. Additionally the surplus producer must share the extra food or goods with everyone, which reduces incentive to produce extra. For foragers food storage is therefore socially self-defeating. Instead your hunger must adapt to the movements of the wild. If a dry spell diminishes the yield of the sago, no amount of extra work time will advance the delivery of food. Therefore, foragers take a very accepting pace to eating. When food is there, all work very hard. When it is not, no problem; they will sit around and talk while they are hungry. This very reasonable approach is often misread as tribal laziness, but it is in fact a logical strategy if you rely on the environment to store your food.