After the cognitive leap, there was never a single “natural” way to be human. Foragers lived in many arrangements, and culture kept rewriting what felt normal.
Compared with later farmers, hunter gatherers often enjoyed variety: shifting diets, flexible schedules, broad skills, and intimate knowledge of landscapes. Their small bands were held together by trust and talk, not paperwork, and fewer chronic chores.
Yet the past cannot be romanticized into paradise. Life was still exposed to hunger, injury, and conflict, and knowledge died with elders. The point is sharper: there are no timeless human institutions waiting inside us. What seems inevitable in one century becomes unthinkable in another. Human life is a menu of cultural choices, not a single recipe.