Our relationship to leisure activities has evolved over the centuries, but you’ll still recognize plenty of these beloved pastimes.
Believe it or not, long before movie theaters and bowling alleys, before Settlers of Catan and Xbox, our ancestors found pleasant ways to pass their idle hours. Then as now, obligations filled only so much of the day — the rest was theirs to do with as they liked.
Writing in the late 1970s, the Australian anthropologist W. E. H. Stanner described how the modest material requirements of Aboriginals allowed them to spend ample time “on all the things for which life could be lived when basic needs were met: the joys of leisure, rest, song, dance, fellowship, trade, stylized fighting and the performance of religious rituals.”
Nevertheless, as civilization marched on, people still managed to entertain themselves — as well as they could afford to, anyway. As settlements grew and work became more specialized, the resulting social structure enabled an elite minority — chiefs, warriors, priests and their families — to live off the surplus created by others. Thus was born the leisure class, with its extravagant notions of recreation.
By the Roman era, if not before, the modern work-play distinction was firmly in place. The Latin words for leisure and business are, respectively,for ancient Romans, business was literally defined as a lack of leisure, suggesting the bonds of work restrict your freedom to spend your time how you choose.
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