A world devoid of modern art, literature, massive amounts of information all over the world available in milliseconds, modern medicine, post-Renaissance rational thinking and philosophy and science, the ability to freely travel the entire world and see foreign lands many thousands of miles away? A world where taking this picture would have been impossible?

Hell no.

Uhm, emphatic NO.

This wasn't paradise lost. This was anarchy.

Probably a great era to live in if you wanted to have a high probability of seeing your close family/tribe/clan get slaughtered/killed and/or raped in feuds/war.

Not particularly. I'd like to live the lifestyle (hunter/gatherer) but have some modern comforts--Internet access, a mattress, and medicine. I don't think many people would like to regress, which is what you're proposing. Not too keen on dying at 40 because of a tooth infection ;)

I would go for the Pliocene personally. Australopithecus was absolutely killing it, and there was some great hoofed mammal action going on. Scavenging antelope meat?? All day yo. Predatory birds on their way out, awesome. Those guys were the worst.

Not a chance. I'd most likely have died three years ago thanks to a horrible infection from a run-in with a stingray. I very much appreciate the availability of modern-day surgical techniques and antibiotics.

I can't believe what I'm reading here--sounds like a Hollywood script. Step out of the "everyone knows" box and put on your thinking caps. Ignacio is the only one who makes any sense.

Let's see...on the one hand you're all living the paleo lifestyle I'm assuming for health and longevity, and on the other hand paleo man was typically dead by 30 from an infection? We have a magnificently designed body with an amazing immune system. But the slightest infection would have killed us? Does that make sense? Then what's the purpose of an immune system? Yes, later in agricultural times when we were eating foods we hadn't adapted to, our immune systems became compromised and the increase in population and poor sanitation led to common infection. And, of course, today with the horrible diet infections are rampant--yes, people would be dying of infections. But in paleo times, with sparse population and eating the way we were designed, our immune system would have protected us.

Wars and the aggressive behavior, as Ignacio correctly stated, were also a result of population density and eating grains. No reason to be fighting in paleo times. And eating meat kept the neurotransmitters functioning properly. We all see the aggressive nature of vegans.

Famine? Again a function population density of agricultural times.

Regarding arguments I always hear of succumbing to accidents or being eaten by animals, sure, transplant any of us back into that time and I'm sure it would happen. But I would have to think that the average prehistoric would have heightened awareness of his environment such that those occurrences would not be commonplace. Let's see...on one hand our superior brain would enable us to outsmart an animal to catch it, but on the other hand we're so dumb as to be dinner for another animal.

If we had been so susceptible to all the things people claim, we would never have survived as a species.

Answering the specific question, I prefer living today because I like the modern conveniences. But I've no doubt that had we been alive then, my wife and I would have invited Ignacio and his family over for dinner, and we would have all lived a happy life to a ripe old age.

Clean water, fresh food, crystal clear blue skies free of smog and mercury emissions, beautiful creatures roaming about, beautiful skinny women with gorgeous smooth skin running around half-nude, no deadlines, no time crunches, free time to shag, sitting by the campfires, feeling human warmth and banding together as a community/tribe every second of every day, no Wall Street, no bombs, no lying newspapers and loud mouth propagandists on TV, radio and Internet, no diabetes, no chronic diseases of the mind and body. Just human existence in our natural habitat. There's something mystical and even spiritual about it.

I think we have been stripped of our connection with mother Earth and thus robbed of our true inner spirit.

Screw it, I'd miss my New York Yankees.

I would have lived in the Paleolitihic area if I could have chosen. Im so happy when Im out in nature, when I can hear the sounds of nature, feel the sun in my face and take a sip from the fresh water in the river. Im most happy when Im with few and close people who I really know. Maybe I romanticize the Paleolitihic area. But Ive always felt like I was born in the wrong timesphere. Of course you have the cons: infections, famine, drought, and early death, but we have lot of illnesses today as well. My mac doesnt make me happy, and I have quit wasting my time watching tv a long time ago..

Nope! Considering I've had four experiences so far that would have most likely killed me without a mix of modern and/or some advanced herbal medicine, I'm very much enjoying this modern era. However, you could also argue that I would have had a stronger immune system if I was alive then, and wouldn't have been exposed to weird strains of staph or pneumonia, but there would be a million other microbes and parasites to contend with still. I am especially thankful for the medically appropriate use of pitocin (don't get me started on the inappropriate uses of it every day to "schedule" and "augment" otherwise normal labors) that helped birth my baby after 9 days of labor that stopped when my uterus ran out of energy and would have most likely taken both my genes and my sons genes out of the game if we lived in a different time. Just happy to be alive.

No.

It is getting better all the time in terms of material progress and the choices offered in the market place.

The challenges posed by the human environment today (abundance of bad foods) are preferable to the existential threats that were a constant factor in the paleolithic era.

Uhm, I can barely stand sleeping outside in the summer with a sleeping bag. . .

I love it being here these days though I would also have loved to be there in paleo times! Besides with strong bodies and great immune systems people were far more resistant to virusthan today. Also population density was incredibly lower so that inetr-humans violence was much less extended. Yes I am sure it was great time and BTW I am also sure that life was much less violent than most imagine it: as populations were much smaller people were not in constant in fighting!

Ahhh... No. Quite happy here.

However if someone could finish the time machine I would love to go back to visit paleo times, so we could study exactly how we lived and evolved. That would be special.

No way. I'd be dead too - if the knee infection I got at age 6 didn't kill me, then getting diabetes at age 8 would have - no insulin!

And like the other posters said, we'd miss out on information, science, communication, etc that they didn't have. I like my 21st century, thank you very much!

I would not because I know i would be a worry freak about my kids. I can barely handle it now.

I just want things to go back to when there weren't cellphones or wireless internet. Maybe even keep cellphones, but lose wireless internet. I don't see any need to go back to pre agriculture. For some reason life got duller when wireless internet was everwhere, and why not assume it has to do with EMF pollution.

Nope, but I wish I could have been around in the pioneering days. No doubt I would have died from something aweful but oh to explore!

Maybe not the paleolithic era...most of us would be dead by the time we were 30.

On an upside, eating like we do now would a whole lot easier! Besides getting our meat, that would be a bit riskier than walking into the grocery store...(get it?)

Personally no. Paleo life was for the young. I've already outlived it by a factor of two.

I'm finding it hard to go back even two generations in time, to the Neolithic pursuit of farming. 80 acres of fallow land doesn't yield anything with the click of a mouse. My plantings this year are dismal and I'd starve if I had to live on them. I'll get better at it with experience, but if I want to get good at it I would be putting in 24/7. Even then I can't visualize taming more than 5 acres of this brushy mess.

Paleo life would be even tougher. The world is not a sunny playground if you're trying to eke subsistence out of it.