I would be cautious about drawing such a conclusion. I think if you were a typical neolithic farmer you would not be looking yearningly at the hunter-gatherers living in the mountains, wishing you could live like them. You'd probably feel that their life was pretty hard.
I suspect there would never be such a comparative perception. I doubt a neolithic farmer is tending a field and thinking "gosh, should I just give this up and head back into the mountains?" As little as they probably even considered hunter-gatherers, they probably considered them something "other".
I suspect there would never be such a comparative perception. I doubt a neolithic farmer is tending a field and thinking "gosh, should I just give this up and head back into the mountains?" As little as they probably even considered hunter-gatherers, they probably considered them something "other".