Whatever work might have been associated with furnishing food in those bygone days when men were actually in a decision-making process between lifestyle choices, my own conjecture is that men compared the negativity of arduousness with another negativity–that of uncertainty as to where one’s next meal was coming from. I suspect that Mr. Clark might find such uncertainty every bit (and maybe quite a bit more) arduous than that developed and bequeathed to him by his less dream-disposed forbears.

The only clear conclusion we are left is that, when presented with a choice of behaviors, the one involving settled agriculture was made with such frequency and met with such success (at survival) of its practitioners, that the mode is nearly universal today. In the main, today’s hunter-gatherers survive primarily on the conscious forbearance of all us others, somewhat as might be preserved interesting relics in museums (and zoos).

It is vain (though interesting) to speculate on which lifestyle was more “arduous.” Men compare “better” and “more” with alternatives and have made the choices we call history. We are entitled to presume that, whatever we may surmise about comparative “arduousness,” things may have appeared differently to those actually making such choices along that way to the present.