Hunter-gatherers and subsistence farmers have pretty similar workloads - by many estimates, subsistence farming requires more labor, even. The advantage in subsistence farming is consistency and food preservation, allowing for larger populations, surplus, and specialization.
If you make a stone spearhead twice a month, you might not spend much time thinking of how to do it better - but if you do it for the whole village, 60 times per month, you might be spending some of that knapping time thinking about how to make it easier.
We didn’t have free time until agriculture and automation.
Hunter-gatherers and subsistence farmers have pretty similar workloads - by many estimates, subsistence farming requires more labor, even. The advantage in subsistence farming is consistency and food preservation, allowing for larger populations, surplus, and specialization.
If you make a stone spearhead twice a month, you might not spend much time thinking of how to do it better - but if you do it for the whole village, 60 times per month, you might be spending some of that knapping time thinking about how to make it easier.