There was a time, about 1.6 million years, when you could bring your axe into the woods, maybe with a friend or two, cut a clearing, and build a whole house with wood furniture that your great great grandchildren would use.
You could eat the abundant animals, drink the clean water, and enjoy an entire life without ever once imbibing microplastics and PFAS.
It might have been a lot of work - but it was completely free. Those times are long gone, and it doesn't seem likely they'll ever return -- but that is how we lived for the vast majority of our time as human beings.
But then you died from a minor cut you got while building that house, and before that you buried most of your young children. A life spent assembling IKEA may not be the best life, but it sure beats that.
I suggest you go visit an exhibition on how people in the dark ages or in the middle ages lived.
YOu probably live with hot and cold water, that you can drink... and pretty much everyone in the developed world can afford a banana... that kind of "luxury" wasn't available to kings just 200 years ago.
The statement I was responding to claimed that humans could never afford nice furniture. But we've had axes for 1.6 million years, and abundant old-growth forests for 1.6 million years, and so, for the vast, vast, vast majority of human history we have in fact had the ability to make sturdy, beautiful, long lasting furniture completely for free.
The middle ages and the "dark" ages weren't even all that bad. They had more free time than we did. They had far more birds and beasts. They paid less taxes. They didn't have a multi-billion dollar ad industry telling them they're not good enough. They lived with nature, a nature we'll never know.
Yes, there was the war and the religious craziness and the fear of apocalypse - wait a minute, we still have all of that stuff except the fear of apocalypse is way more legit now.
I love modern plumbing, and many aspects of the internet. I love the access to culture and knowledge. Antibiotics are cool. I'd rather live now than then. But the idea that people 500; 5,000; or 500,000 years ago had nasty lives far inferior to our own is not entirely justified.
Again though - that's all off topic. Those guys 500,000 years ago had free housing, free wood to burn, and incredible biodiversity which we'll never be able to appreciate in our world of modern anthropocene extinction. And, probably, really nice furniture; if they wanted to make it.
> vast, vast, vast majority of human history we have in fact had the ability to make sturdy, beautiful, long lasting furniture completely for free
Again... Go visit and Egyptological museum. Go see how rough, compared to modern furniture, the royal masterpiece chairs were.
For the 1599950 out of 1600000 years humans definitely could not afford or had any nice furniture. Absolute majority couldn't afford even rough sturdy, unnice furniture. And your comment about "free housing" is naive... It wasn't free and desirable places had their own issues.
Taking a dump on companies like IKEA is very much the most condescending thing we could do. I certainly have experienced the inability to purchase even the most basic necessities, where IKEA would have provided some relief.
... I didn't dump on Ikea anywhere. Not remotely. Neither did GP.
Nor did I speak of comfort. Nor did GP.
Perhaps you are taking context from elsewhere in the comments and misapplying it to this little thread?
I spoke of beauty and sturdiness and longevity; nature, biodiversity.
I've been to many museums; I've seen the thrones. Roughness doesn't matter when you're putting cushions on, or when your buns are tough from years without sitting on padded chairs.
Your definition of nice furniture is very different from mine, clearly. I suggest that you might try to see things from a broader perspective.
On your other points:
Egypt wasn't known for its abundant forests - I don't know why you would expect great carpentry. Their cushions won't be in the museum, for what I hope are obvious reasons.
You cannot seriously claim only the furniture of the last 50 years is nice, while excoriating me for my lack of knowledge of how ancient people lived. Go read some descriptions of Sumerian furniture.
And yes, if you take your stone axe in 1.5 million BC, and clear a space, and build a house, it's free. Hard work - as I said - but free. No property taxes, no mortgage. Free. No HOA, no building standards... Free. There's nothing "naive" about that. What's patently naive is this insistence that only modern people have any sense of craftsmanship or comfort or quality - I say that because it's true, and you need to hear it; not to flame.
> There are vast swathes of land on this planet, where you can go and do exactly what our great ancestors did 1mil years ago.
You'll be eating microplastics, drinking polluted water, and enjoying a far smaller spread of biodiversity. As I said.
There is nowhere on Earth that you can escape those facts any more. Microplastics and PFAs are on Mt Everest, and the Mariana Trench, and everywhere in between; and the Anthropocene Extinction is a real thing.
I also explicitly pointed out the labor involved, so I don't understand why you keep calling that out like some sort of gotcha.
Any luck researching Sumerian furniture? Nice, innit?
> Those guys 500,000 years ago had free housing, free wood to burn, and incredible biodiversity which we'll never be able to appreciate in our world of modern anthropocene extinction. And, probably, really nice furniture; if they wanted to make it.
Step one: invent iron tools roughly 500,000 years early.
"Really nice furniture" involves a lot more than the easy availability of big chunks of wood. Paying a skilled craftsman to spend time to work on something is fundamentally expensive. That expense speaks to what the person you initially replied to was talking about vis a vis mass manufacturing.
Really nice furniture can also be defined as solid, old-growth wood furniture, designed and made to your own specifications, that will last for hundreds of years.
Holding up an unfinished piece of (really nice, apparently) wood, worked by an amateur (to his own specifications!) with primitive tools as equal to what sane people refer to as "furniture" is a blatant misunderstanding of craftsmanship, and much more importantly the whole discussion very deliberately misses the economic point of the person you originally responded to. It's weird that you're so insistent about it.
"Sane people" - really? That's not polite, but anyway...
There are a looooot of people, especially craftsmen, who can appreciate heavy and well built, if rough, furniture. Even if it's worked with primitive tools, that stuff looks and smells and lasts better than anything - anything from IKEA. Especially when it's made with not just nice but gorgeous wood - mahogony, rosewood, oak, teak, etc. The stuff you can hardly buy for any money these days.
And no, I'm not "deliberately missing the economic point" - I'm adding the perspective of a wider range of human history than the last 50 years. The perspective of >99.99% of human history. For all that time, such furniture was not just cheap but free + labour. The trees were abundant, and we used them.
As for being insistent, I'm not - you can believe whatever you like - but it would be cool if you stopped trying to put the worst possible take on my words.
> it would be cool if you stopped trying to put the worst possible take on my words.
Your words are... really something. I feel like as an exercise, you should go try to make something useful out of a downed tree (find a good one!) with chips of flint and obsidian and at the end of the process show people the beautiful thing you made. Let them know how long it took, and how that time and effort ought to be considered "inexpensive."
I have carved stuff - it's fun, and doesn't require a huge amount of strength. With a little guidance you can make lovely stuff, really quickly.
You don't carve it with "chips" you know - you use a knife... Or an axe. Such as the one I mentioned, explicitly. Multiple times now.
But those trees are extremely hard to find now; illegal to chop down, in most parts of the west. We already cut down the vast, vast, vast majority of them. I've said that at least 3 times.
Yes, my words are something - maybe you could read them? You never know, you might learn something.
...
Do you think people didn't use furniture until we had cities? Spoiler: We sure did.
Do you think the only reason neolithic people spent hours knapping knives and axes was for fun / murder? It wasn't. They made stuff.
You think those people sat on the dirt their whole lives? Nope. We know this, because we have surviving examples of stone furniture - usually where wood was scarce...
Do you still think craftspeople don't appreciate solid wood furniture? ... They do. Ask them.
Or that all craftspeople would prefer the composite pine of an IKEA piece? Or that the IKEA piece would last longer? Nah. Not even close.
...
For well over a million years of our history, we had plenty of time to sit by the roaring fire, carving things and telling stories, singing songs. It wasn't all ooga-booga in caves you know.
And while we did this, making things, we got real good at it. We had damn near the exact same brain. It's rather arrogant, and ignorant, to think that those things they made were garbage compared to an IKEA POANG... You don't really think that, do you?
We have pictures, carved in stone, of furniture from 2500 years ago. It kicks ass - it's gorgeous. Nothing in IKEA compares, either in ornamentation or build quality.
> Let them know how long it took, and how that time and effort ought to be considered "inexpensive."
My brother in crust, I've explained at least 4 times now, including in the original comment, that I was using the word free as in free + labour. You can't keep trying to beat me with that stick; it's silly.
You're arguing for "how great it was a million years go". And I can place a good bet, that you had zero experience with woodworking... let alone green woodworking.
You could eat the abundant animals, drink the clean water, and enjoy an entire life without ever once imbibing microplastics and PFAS.
It might have been a lot of work - but it was completely free. Those times are long gone, and it doesn't seem likely they'll ever return -- but that is how we lived for the vast majority of our time as human beings.