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Work.

Historia Civilis · explainer · Watch on YouTube

Labor, work & inequalityWorld history

What it is

Historia Civilis traces the history of work and time discipline, comparing modern working hours with those of medieval peasants and the changes brought by clocks and industrialization. It draws on works such as Schor's The Overworked American.

Why Hacker News recommends it

HN uses it in work-hours and four-day-week threads as the source for the claim that people worked fewer hours before the industrial era.

  • 3 people recommended it
  • 3 different months
  • 1 strong recommendations
  • first 2023, last 2025

What HN commenters said

  1. “Here is an excellent video on the history of work.”

    Excellent history of work and how it came to be.

    kolanos, 2025-03 · Strong recommendation · in “X’s director of engineering, Haofei Wang, has left the company”

  2. “Just watched this interesting video comparing how much we work today to medieval times.”

    Compares modern work hours to medieval peasants, who worked far fewer hours.

    patmorgan23, 2023-09 · Recommendation · in “How a Four-Day Workweek Works, from the Companies Pulling It Off”

  3. “This video [2] from Historia Civilis is very relevant.”

    Shows we work more hours than medieval peasants did.

    GreenWatermelon, 2025-05 · Recommendation · in “Jules: An asynchronous coding agent”

Excerpts from Hacker News comments, linked to the originals. Summaries and labels were written by a language model from those comments.

Topics: labor history, medieval peasants, work hours, industrial revolution, clocks

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