Expert: John J. Shea - 4/3/2010

Question
QUESTION: John, thanks for providing this free service. Quite nice of you. I am wondering at what point in history  / pre-history a certain lifestyle was the norm. I realize that the answer might vary widely across different regions, and will appreciate any comments on this aspect in your reply. If more than half the population lived in shelters made from scavenged materials and having thatched roofs, had a barely subsistence level diet also largely obtained from scavenging, mixed with some rudimentary form of agriculture and trading, were frequently crippled by or died from accidents, diseases, and age, what century would we be talking about?

ANSWER: Dear Bennett
Scavenging was probably never a major part of any recent human diet, but otherwise, what you describe sounds like an early phase
of the Neolithic, 10,000-8000 years ago in SW Asia, 5000-3000 years ago in Mesoamerica ("the Archaic" period).
Cheers,
John Shea

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Thanks, John. That's about what I was thinking. Like parts of the "third world" today, so little changed from those times.

ANSWER: Dear Bennett
I seem to have missed the cue to follow up on this.
Much depends on the phrasing of the question.  Your phrasing would not too poorly describe a refugee camp, like in Darfur, but it would be way off the mark
for most people in "Third World" countries who live in perfectly nice traditional houses, who have regular jobs, and who live quite well.
Some of the places I have stayed in Kenya, Ethiopia, and Eritrea were a heck of a lot nicer, and the people more hospitable, than in many parts of Europe and the USA that I have visited.
Cheers,
John Shea

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: I agree. I was thinking espeically of India, which I have visited several times. Even in the cities, many storefronts are no more than garages looking ready for collapse, many people live in ad hoc "lean to's" made from discarded corrugated sheet metal and fallen tree branches and perhaps the remains of a former building, and you are just kilometers away from areas where such "homes" are normative for vast numbers of people. A drive through the countryside finds sun-dried people enaged in primitive agriculture, small clusters of shops populated by as many beggars and scavengers as people engaged in sale and barter. It's quite depressing, and it made me think that their lives must not be so different from the time of Jesus, for example, or even thousands of years before that. I apologize if you feel I have misapplied your comments to an unintended context.

Answer
Dear Bennett
No problem, and certainly no apology necessary.
I have only a limited amount of time to do this Allexperts stuff (office hours, typically, when no students have dropped by), and my "answers" can be terse.
In a few cases, my short answers have been misconstrued by people who read them outside the context of the particular question to which I am replying.
As to life at the time of Jesus, I just took a new book out of our local library called "Year One".  It is about everyday life in the Holy Land in the first century AD.
Haven't read enough of it to pass judgment on it, but if the topic interests you, you might check it  out on Amazon.
Cheers,
John Shea