Viral Video Shows Man Planting, Cooking Sweet Potatoes Like a Caveman

Modern life has made getting a decent meal a breeze, but there are apparently some people who still long for the days when staying fed was a little more difficult than ordering off of Seamless. Just check out this video, in which a man cooks himself some sweet potatoes from scratch.

Really from scratch.

Looking a lot like a deleted scene from The Martian, a video from popular YouTube channel, Primitive Technology, depicts the many painful steps that our primitive ancestors must have gone through simply to stay alive. The man in the video begins by tearing down tree branches with his bare hands, using only a stone as a cutting tool and hammer.

He tediously constructs a fence to protect his crops, digs through the soil without so much as a modern shovel, plants his sweet potato plants, waters them regularly, spots a snake hiding in the crops, and generally makes us all really happy that someone invented the microwave oven.

When his efforts finally do yield some sweet potatoes, he then has to build a makeshift oven, arranging stones in a circle and burning wood to create ash.

All that effort for a meal that probably tastes only marginally better than your college cafeteria’s offerings.

As appealing as it may be to imagine getting back in touch with nature, based on the painstaking process depicted in this video, it’s fair to say that maybe modern life isn’t so bad.