alt Hacker NewsBrett Devereaux's series of articles "Life, Work, Death and the Peasant" is a must read for anyone who benefits from modern technology, IMO: https://acoup.blog/2025/07/11/collections-life-work-death-an...
Pre-industrial life was dominated by labor, struggle and death. There was virtually no social, intellectual or economic mobility. It sucked!
Tribal hunter gatherers cultures (and not agrarian cultures) are very egalitarian. Social mobility is not relevant at all because there is no stratification. You are just you and I think this is some of the beauty we in modern world yearn for. Not only people today but also pre industrially. In Europe we left this hunter gatherer lifestyle several thousand years ago...