memes

I just read the comic Sapiens, which argues that the agricultural revolution has been a horrible deal for humanity on the whole. We traded in a relatively chill, egalitarian, communal and unconstrained existence, for one of endless toil, exploitation and subjugation by elite classes.

The forbidden fruit was malt

Look how happy they are.

Hear me out, could still collect psychedelic mushrooms.

if anarcho-primitism was a beer

That is a downside, true. Alcohol production, while not impossible, is way more difficult for nomads than it is for sedentary people. But there are plenty of other mind altering substances that would be available to your average hunter-gatherer. Psychedelic mushrooms are an option like RFKjr mentioned, but there's also evidence of nomadic hunter-gatherers engaging in a low intensity farming of tobacco and cannabis (planting it, leaving it, and returning for the harvest).

One of the only constants in history is that people like mind altering substances and will go to great lengths to procure them. Including inventing agricultural society and all the ills that come with that

you can still make liquor out of shit

The Dawn of Everything,

Diseases at least, got 10x worse once we started doing sedentary animal agriculture, until very recently, other than a plague here and there

hopefully

follow your rulingclass

I think it varied quite a lot depending on the location and the time. We're talking really hard to comprehend lengths of pre-historic time. Like 300,000 years of what we consider a modern human.

And the differences between hunting and gathering, and agriculture as @xj9@hexbear.net says are not as clear cut. Many "Hunter-Gatherer" societies might be moving between semi-permanent seasonal camps (sometimes leaving behind structures and dwellings) where they had planted different crops along the routes and at the places, so they could change with the climate and animal migration

Other permanent "agricultural" settlements, might have been permanent communities with crops growing, livestock etc, but also significant portions of their population going on hunting trips that might take weeks or pasturing livestock in different regions. And almost certainly some amount of foraging local areas. We know even medieval peasants still did that.

At any rates both might have had periods of peace and abundance, versus scarcity and extreme violence. There's probably some hunter-gatherers whose lives were like the garden of Eden, others who it was like The Road. Likewise there's probably farming communites who were like "we've cracked the code free food forever" and others a constant life of paranoia peering over your hill fort's walls incase a neighboring tribes is going to attack, loot your granary and kill you.

My understanding of nomadic life is that (at least in my NA region historically) its more like you move between areas to stay in comfy weather. Each camp has its own jobs and crops and such that are taken care of during a season and left alone until the next time you come back around. I think hunting and gathering is often not represented in a sensible way.