Historians and anthropologists who have studied boredom have often concluded that it is not a universal affliction, but is instead a problem that is largely confined to contemporary society. Perhaps this seems counter-intuitive: I mean, what could be more boring than hunting and (especially) gathering, the ecological adaptation that has been the means of support throughout most of the time humans have been on the planet? Every day you get up and look around your territory for stuff to eat, no TV, no internet, not even a book to read. We might expect that foraging groups would have an extensive vocabulary of boredom, but as far as I know that has never been reported in the anthropological literature.

In fact, it seems as though nobody in the English speaking world complained of boredom until the mid to late 18th century. Why might this be? No one knows for sure, but it is probably relevant that this is roughly the same time that modern novels started to appear. More broadly, the first stirrings of the contemporary culture of entertainment date from around this time, and as opportunities for entertainment proliferated, people began to compare their daily experience to the adventure and romance and glamour of the worlds they could experience through entertainment.