Were hunter gatherers happier than we are?

They are my Roman Empire.

Greetings, magical overthinkers. Here’s another Friday reading from a book that inspired The Age of Magical Overthinking, paired with a teaser line from the yet-to-be-released manuscript. 

Today’s excerpt is from John Green’s brain-tingling 2021 book, The Anthropocene Reviewed, inspired by the podcast of the same name. It’s a book of curious, open-hearted essays each of which explores some curious, awe-inspiring phenomenon, from Haley’s Comet to coffee mugs, and cheekily ranks it out of five stars, like an Amazon product. Earnest, humor-filled science writing is one of my favorite genres, and this book fits the bill precisely. 

My favorite chapter is the one that ranks the 17,000-year-old cave paintings that were discovered in Lascaux, France in the 1940s, and then closed to the public just 20 years later. Relics from the hunter-gatherer period are few and far between, and I am endlessly enchanted by them. One of the central themes in my new book is how technological progress has clashed so catastrophically with our adorably limited human brains—the same brains our hunter-gatherer ancestors had 12,000 years ago. Our minds are meant for making cave paintings, not answering Slacks by the dozen and confronting thousands of beautiful strangers every day on Instagram. I often ask myself, despite life being physically more perilous back then, were hunter-gatherers happier than we are?

It’s an impossible question, and not one that’s answered in this except, but I still love any window I can get into that era. So, without further ado, here is my storytime reading from John Green’s The Anthropocene Reviewed.