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Hunter gatherer’s had a lot of free time. Based on studies of the last hunter gather groups, in reasonably fertile area they can spend ~15 hours per week on food and ~15-20 hours per week on domestic chores. That seems similar to us except we exclude tasks like commuting, grocery shopping, cooking, working out, cleaning dishes etc from what we consider ‘work’. Thus resulting in a lot more time for hobbies and socializing.

They move around, but would return to the same locations regularly thus potentially spending years in one location over their lifetime. Plenty of time to make dozens of life sized statues.



> In reasonably fertile area they can spend ~15 hours per week on food and ~15-20 hours per week on domestic chores.

on what you base this one? (from what I remember this time would not be even to even produce clothes - unless it is for area of world where no clothing is needed?)


1960’s studies of the Bushmen one of the last remaining hunter gatherer groups had roughly that much time spent working. They really spent quite a lot of time working on hobbies and socializing.

Processing animal skins is also a lot faster than weaving. Clothing is ~170,000 years old, weaving is very recent by comparison.


There are rock art painting depicting details on ceremonial costumes that date back 18,000 years BP, so clothing goes back at least that far.

See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37733157


There is a very large difference not being able to produce clothes and not finding clothing that happens to be preserved.

Currently the guesses are 40,000 to 3 million years ago.

These people in this article are just as intelligent as modern humans.




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