Work: A Deep History, from the Stone Age to the Age of Robots

by James Suzman

In occasionally storing food and organizing their working year to accommodate intense seasonal variations, European and Asian foraging populations took an important step toward adopting a longer-term, more future-focused relationship with work. In doing so, they also developed a different relationship with scarcity, one that resembles that which shapes our economic life now in some important respects. But even if they needed to plan ahead more than foragers in warmer climates, they remained largely confident in the at least seasonal providence of their environments. Somewhat ironically, it was only when the earth began to warm 18,000 years ago that anyone would take the first fateful steps toward food production, and so lay the foundations of our species’ increasing energy footprint and obsession with work.