There are many things that the average person before 1930 and before had, that some people lack today, stemming from the lack of day-to-day experience with animals (be it seeing them, hunting them or caring for them), that apply to humans too:
- Knowing offspring is the foreseeable consequence of sex
- Clarity about the difference between primary sexual characteristics and secondary sexual characteristics (behavior, group role, lifespan, …)
- Primary sexual characteristics (chromosomical) are not interchangeable
- Secondary sexual characteristics cluster like primary characteristics mostly, and a deviation from that is a marker of problems (poor health) in the animal
- Understanding veganism doesn’t give a higher moral ground
- Fertility follows timely patterns (basic parental planning)
- Animal (human too) behavior follows seasonal and timely patterns
- Outward appearances are markers of health
- Basic genetics (breeding carry characteristics to the offspring)
- Importance of quality food on health
- Population planning (too many animals can starve themselves of resources)
- Take behaviors of animals as risk cues
Weirdly enough, there are many people that have quite a skewed view of antiquity, supposing the contrary was true, not stopping to notice that watching animals and nature for just a bit of time gives you that insight no matter what. A lack of curiosity in regards of animals and such is detrimental for that topics. If most people get more experience with social experiences (screens, in particular) rather than exposure to nature, it’s no wonder that their understanding of things will mostly be favored by social concepts, since that’s what they are exposed to mostly - people tend to make up an idea of the world using the ideas most common to them. Being in front of a screen gives a way different view of stuff than seeing nature and caring for it.
I see many problems of today’s society as stemming from lacking that knowledge, applied to humans, and most ‘liberal vs not liberal’ problems that are talked about stem from that lack - it doesn’t seem to be about ‘liberal’ stuff but about curiosity for nature vs curiosity for social issues (which include figments of imagination)