alt Hacker News> Those human tribes who just chilled out after meeting the bare requirements of survival died off because some greedy assholes outcompeted them.
The idea of tribes just “chilling out” to survive is a modern anachronism projected on a romanticized past. We’re so disconnected from the realities of clothing, feeding and sheltering ourselves without modern amenities that it’s hard to imagine what pre-industrial like was like. Thinking that “chilling out” was a viable path to survival is a symptom of that disconnectedness.
If you look at a tiger, for instance, they sleep 16 hours a day (or a closer animal, take a look at the night monkey). I realize a human isn't as powerful or have the same needs as a tiger, but I don't see why a (pre-historic) humans have to work that much harder than a tiger merely to eat and reproduce and live long enough that enough survive to do that. A human can work smarter than a tiger, after all... surely we can "chill" as many hours a day as the tiger can.