> In 1833, the Factory Act banned children under 9 from working in the textile industry, and the working hours of 10-13 year olds was limited to 48 hours a week, while 14-18 year olds were limited to 69 hours a week, and 12 hours a day. Government factory inspectors were appointed to enforce the law.
Constant work day in and out, morning and night. At least before the industrial revolution farmers only had to work as long as there was daylight, and winters meant shorter work times.
This video [2] from Historia Civilis is very relevant. The gist of ot is that to this day, we work more hours than medieval peasants did.
[1] https://www.striking-women.org/module/workplace-issues-past-...
i found this lively criticism of the video on reddit: https://old.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/16y233q/histori....
my brief takeaway was that the claim might be true if "work" means "working for an employer for wages", but not if "work" includes "necessary labor for shelter, food, clothing, survival".
but it's an interesting thought though so i'm curious if you have other related resources to dig into.
For example the most amazing claims in the book were around the ability of Boquila trifoliolata to dynamically mimic other plants.
see this old HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31301454
But when one looks more closely the research, the behavior isn't as dramatic as Zoe made it sound, and the research may not be so strong, e.g. :
https://press.asimov.com/articles/plant-vision
but in reference to the linked article, i will say that the researchers interviewed in the book (and i got that sense for Zoe as well) were in agreement with you that the research didn't support a vision-based mechanism. but everyone agrees that the imitation is going on. the researchers in the book suggest a gene transfer-based mechanism instead! (mentioned briefly in your linked article)