alt Hacker NewsThe big difference between agrarian and nomadic populations is that the latter is decentralized. The hunter-gatherer lifestyle is generally very leisurely, but it's strictly limited in population viability. A tribe of some tens of people? Sure, no problem. A city of 5,000 people? It just doesn't work, because you'd end up wiping out the resources in your region faster than nature could replenish them.
So you're never going to see a massive hunter-gatherer population, essentially by definition. It doesn't say anything at all about their standards of life, which by most accounts were (and are) exceptionally high. [1]
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_affluent_society
I mean, what exactly are phrases like "strictly limited in population viability" and "never going to see a massive population" euphemisms for, exactly? High mortality, intense resource competition and survival of the fittest. Not what we normally associate with "exceptionally high standards of life". The higher the standard of life, the more procreation happens, the more demand there is for a constant supply of resources, and then starvation and warfare turns that supposedly noble savage into quite a vicious competitor.