By the way, recall that humans were traditionally hunter-gatherers, for hundreds of thousands of years. This required them to be intimately familiar with a large chunk of land around their home and know all the plants and animals that were there. Rural dwellers still show similar knowledge of the land.

Kim Stanley Robinson’s novel ‘Shaman’ kinda touches on this just a bit, showing what life might’ve been like for a prehistoric human. The author is known for meticulously researching the subject matter of his books: for example, he’s said that he spent time figuring out which words likely originated in prehistoric time, and that it felt weird to have his characters basically say “mamma mia”, as those are some of the oldest words.

(Although a recent thread on Reddit on a related topic assumes throughout that humans were nomadic before agriculture. This clashes with my previous belief, but I don’t know enough about this to figure out which view is correct.)