Lucassen, a Dutch historian and author of a number of books on globalisation and migration, has set himself a task that makes stalking mammoths look quite simple. Writing this book certainly can’t have been. Work was never a picnic and it isn’t now. For 98% of human history, hunting and gathering has been our work. “With an AK47,” he says, quoting the influential archaeologist Lewis Binford, “you don’t have to know so much!” But most humans have had to.
The apprenticeship, says Jan Lucassen in The Story of Work, is long. You have to cooperate with your fellow hunters, because if you don’t, you won’t eat. You have to keep your eyes fixed firmly on your prey. You have to run fast, for miles, often in the heat of the day.
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