Editing Working time (section)

== Hunter-gatherer ==
Since the 1960s, the consensus among anthropologists, historians, and sociologists has been that early [[hunter-gatherer]] societies enjoyed more leisure time than is permitted by [[Capitalism|capitalist]] and [[Agrarian society|agrarian societies]];<ref name="Voth2000">[[Hans-Joachim Voth]] (2000) ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=APYDRo_ATicC Time and work in England 1750–1830], Chapter 5, ''Comparisons and conclusions'' pp. 242–45</ref><ref name="Farb68">{{cite book |last=Farb |first=Peter |author-link=Peter Farb |title=Man's Rise to Civilization As Shown by the Indians of North America from Primeval Times to the Coming of the Industrial State |url=https://archive.org/details/mansrisetocivi00farb |url-access=registration |page=[https://archive.org/details/mansrisetocivi00farb/page/28 28] |year=1968 |publisher=[[E. P. Dutton]] |location=[[New York City]] |id={{LCC|E77.F36}}|quote= Most people assume that the members of the [[Shoshone people|Shoshone]] band worked ceaselessly in an unremitting search for sustenance. Such a dramatic picture might appear confirmed by an erroneous theory almost everyone recalls from schooldays: A high culture emerges only when the people have the leisure to build pyramids or to create art. The fact is that high civilization is hectic, and that primitive hunters and collectors of wild food, like the Shoshone, are among the most leisured people on earth.}}</ref> for instance, one camp of [[!Kung people|!Kung Bushmen]] was estimated to work two-and-a-half days per week, at around 6 hours a day.<ref>{{cite book|last=Cohen|first=Yehudi|author-link=Yehudi Cohen|title=Man in Adaptation: the cultural present|pages=[https://archive.org/details/maninadaptationc0000cohe/page/94 94–95]|year=1974|publisher=[[Aldine Transaction]]|isbn=0-202-01109-7|quote=In all, the adults of the Dobe camp worked about two and a half days a week. Because the average working day was about six hours long, the fact emerges that !Kung Bushmen of Dobe, despite their harsh environment, devote from twelve to nineteen hours a week to getting food. Even the hardest working individual in the camp, a man named =oma who went out hunting on sixteen of the 28 days, spent a maximum of 32 hours a week in the food quest.|url=https://archive.org/details/maninadaptationc0000cohe/page/94}}</ref> Aggregated comparisons show that on average the working day was less than five hours.<ref name="Voth2000"/>

Subsequent studies in the 1970s examined the [[Machiguenga people|Machiguenga]] of the Upper Amazon and the [[Kayapo people|Kayapo]] of northern Brazil. These studies expanded the definition of work beyond purely hunting-gathering activities, but the overall average across the hunter-gatherer societies he studied was still below 4.86 hours, while the maximum was below 8 hours.<ref name="Voth2000"/> Popular perception is still aligned with the old academic consensus that hunter-gatherers worked far in excess of modern humans' forty-hour week.<ref name="Farb68"/>