For at least a generation or two? If we accept that myths are sometimes based on some dimly (or tribally) remembered event, like Noah’s flood may be based on the worst flood suffered by one’s great (times 100) grandparents, is it possible that the Eden story is based on a similar “memory” of a period when one’s g-g-g-g-etc grandparents had it unusually good—abundant food, no predators, no tribal warfare, good climate? Or is it just a writer’s imagination about the good old days? How close do you suppose that pre-historic humans ever got to a generation or two of an idyllic existence?
From what I’ve read, Polynesia was pretty idyllic all the way up to contact with Europeans.
California was wonderful for thousands of years, with multiple food sources so plentiful famine was essentially unknown. A lot of leisure time was spent gambling, and making the famous basketry which was some of the best ever made. Warfare was unknown in many parts.
Be on a river.
Food, water, trade.
Yes - I’ve often thought that a confluence of a river and coast in a moderate climate - like California - would offer the most available and varied diet. Plus access to the larger continent through trade routes.
Here in the midwest, I’ve often mused about the lifestyles of indigenous persons and the earliest European settlers. Such musings have always featured high ground near a reliable water source…
The region of the world where many of our legends and stories come from is the “fertile crescent” area of the Tigris-Euphrates valley. Before we overpopulated it and hunted down, scarfed up, chopped down, and otherwise wiped out a substantial chunk of the resources, it was a land of plenty. For hunter-gatherers like us, it eventually had trap-like features: all this bounty in a large but circumscribed region, surrounded by far less hospitable lands. That is thought to have made it unappealing to roam onwards in response to population growth and declines in abundance.
But while it lasted, the food grew on trees or was easy to stalk and kill.
Estimates of the work-week of the remaining hunter-gatherer folks — 21st century hunter-gatherers who don’t live in the Tigris-Euphrates utopian valley of these ancient times but instead in places like the Kalahari Desert that nobody else wanted badly enough to take away from them — still indicate that H/G life requires each person to do active work of 7-12 hours per week to sustain the lifestyle. Presumably it was easier in the Tigris-Euphrates valley of 10,000 years ago.
Eventually, population pressures and the declining availability of stuff that was just already growing or roaming wild pushed some groups to get proprietary about some places where the seeds tended to fall and germinate, and they’d tend them and protect them, and other groups collected flocks and herds and roamed with the critters and tended them, both strategies for having food on hand once you could no longer just wake up, walk forth, reach out, and grab it.
People with a proprietary investment in land or flock would have to defend against other bands who would not automatically understand this weird notion of “ownership” and things start to go unEdenly sour. Gets much worse the more people settle and build structures that allow for the accumulation of things above and beyond what a band of people can tote.
I’ve seen the question about why the civilizations of Central and South America emerged but those in the areas humans apparently passed thru (if you accept the theory that humans populated the Americas from the Bering land bridge) did not appear to develop that way, such as the California coast up into British Columbia. My guess is the reason is as you described - resources were plentiful, easily accessed and renewable, so there was no need to develop agriculture, architecture, writing, technology, etc. The climate is comfortable year-round. And there was no need to fight with the group in the next valley, so no arms race. It’s not like the people living there “couldn’t” develop those things, just there was no need, unlike the conditions farther south. Sounds pretty good, but that all ended with the arrival of the Europeans.
Total idyll, except perhaps for all those sanguinary clan wars…
Was there a time before those clan wars?
I expect not, but I have to be honest that I do not know much about early Polynesian expansion and history. Plenty of bloody battles mentioned in the oral history and legends when I visited the history museum on Tahiti, but what I read did not cover ancient times.
The best times were when a group of people ventured into a new land that was full of animals that weren’t accustomed to humans and didn’t have the instinct to run away.
New Zealand is a good example. It was settled around 1300 AD by Polynesian peoples. Several species of birds including the moa went extinct soon after. There are large deposits of moa bones found from that time, suggesting that people were feasting on birds. There is also a lack of weapons and fortifications. If there is plenty of meat to go around, why fight?
Of course, once the animals were hunted and people had to rely on agriculture, it got worse. And then the Europeans showed up…
The Southwestern Museum has a great collection of southern California Native basketry. A lot of them are very small pieces and are amazing to see. So intricate. Just gorgeous.
I would assume conflict was the main reason for each island hop they made.
Going back to the US PNW coast. I once read that the natives along that stretch of coast had the “easiest” existence. The highest return on work in getting food. Plus plentiful other resources.
Note that the early explorers into the Columbia River noticed the two story houses with balconies along the bluffs of the river and were reminded of European-style homes.
For example, a tribe would come down to a bay for the summer to eat all the various goodies found there and then go back up to the hills for the winter. With the otters wiped out, the kelp beds are gone, there’s too much silt from forestry runoff, etc. it’s all over now so people don’t see what used to be there.
Isn’t this the reason why the Pacific Northwest, along with prehistoric Japan, was one of the rare places on Earth where humans could lead a sedentary lifestyle without developing, or adopting, agriculture ?
IIRC The Dawn of Everything mentioned some civilizations in California that simply did think agriculture was cool, i.e., it was a cultural thing.
If that had been the case there would have been no incentive to embark on those risky voyages of explorations that settled the Pacific, with a high probability of not finding land and perishing.
Also generally people only tend to eat other people as meat (not magic) when scarcity is an issue.
The existence of early jumans on the southern coast of Africa must have been quite good. It has some of the best weather and a rich coastline (as attested by the giant shell middens)
I thought the Polynesian explorations of the Pacific were the result of crowding and overpopulation on some of the islands, and the development of oceangoing seacraft and navigation techniques (celestial and ocean currents). Those things would suggest a healthy lifestyle with plenty of time for problem-solving.