Longer work weeks we’re mostly confined to Industrial Age city populations that didn’t have access to land to farm. Few laborers working in early industrial mills was doing so because it was easier then farming.

Agfa, Foraging and hunter-gatherer populations, work about 20 hours per week and transitioning to farming increased working hours.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/05/190520115646.h...

!Kung spend 40 to 45 hours on food gathering and prep between women and men.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/fistfulofscience.wordpress.com/...

And hunter gatherers lived to what age, 40?

And you’re skipping a few thousands of years of civilization between hunter gatherers and the industrial revolution. I can guarantee a Roman or medieval farmer worked pretty much every hour of sunlight

"Hunter-gatherers do not experience short, nasty, and brutish lives ... there appears to be a characteristic life span for Homo sapiens, in that on average, human bodies function well for about seven decades."

https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007%2F978-3...

Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science

> And hunter gatherers lived to what age, 40?

Transitioning to farming is what dropped lifespans.

https://theconversation.com/hunter-gatherers-live-nearly-as-...

It says in your article that life expectancy at birth was 25 years for hunter gatherers societies. Now that’s in great part due to infant mortality, but where does this lower infant mortality come from? Advanced civilization with doctors, medicines and machines that can keep mothers and babies alive,

Not really, it’s due to healthier moms and sanitation, as evidenced by socioeconomic disparities in infant mortality and higher infant mortality in the U.S. relative to other developed countries.

The U.S. example in particular refutes your “overwork = good” thesis

>I can guarantee a Roman or medieval farmer worked pretty much every hour of sunlight

The work was seasonal, though. They built up their reserves for winter, when I imagine they didn't have to work nearly as hard.

There's plenty of work around the farm to be done over winter (basically, all kinds of work that isn't strictly necessary around harvest season will be pushed out to whatever other time there is in the year). You still have farm animals to handle. There are repairs to be made. Trenches to dig. And as the winter comes full force, given how low-density an energy source firewood is, you at least needed to regularly get out to haul and process fuel for heating.

Etc. My life experience is only slightly farm-adjacent. I'm sure someone who grew up on a farm can contribute more examples of winter work.

You can't guarantee that. If that was the case the bourgeois revolution would have happened way before with all the surplus someone working every hour of sunlight would produce on a piece of land.

> The 40 hour work week is a rather recent development; in the past, people had to work a lot longer with no or only one day of.

At a point in time, hours worked where often lower in pre-industrial times.

http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_w...

Agreed. There’s quite a bit of evidence that the 40hr work week has a lot to do with our human tendency to compete.

Here’s a relevant 3min podcast on the topic (also transcribed).

https://www.npr.org/2015/08/13/432122637/keynes-predicted-we...

People worked fewer hours in preindustrial society[1], and people had more time off, as well.

[1] http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_w...