Almost everyone 100+ years ago knew how to raise crops and livestock.
"Modernity" takes many forms--and always has--but writ large I might describe it as vertical systematic complexity, with each higher tier of technological ascendency relying on that below, and participants on said higher levels being, as a function of human intellectual limitations, incapable of participating in any tier but their own.
That's a exceptionally windbag way of saying, that's not true. 100, 1000, and even 10,000 years ago there were plenty of people specializing. Whether you were the Animal Skin Guy, the Marble Carving Guy, or the Industrial Machine Guy, you were not self-sufficient.
That said, you point as a trend stands. While there may certainly have been those living in Rome that wouldn't know which part of a plow went in which part of a field, people today take dependency--on many things, but overall on a world in which they are utterly insulated from scarcity or the deprivations of war--to a whole new level.
"Modernity" takes many forms--and always has--but writ large I might describe it as vertical systematic complexity, with each higher tier of technological ascendency relying on that below, and participants on said higher levels being, as a function of human intellectual limitations, incapable of participating in any tier but their own.
That's a exceptionally windbag way of saying, that's not true. 100, 1000, and even 10,000 years ago there were plenty of people specializing. Whether you were the Animal Skin Guy, the Marble Carving Guy, or the Industrial Machine Guy, you were not self-sufficient.
That said, you point as a trend stands. While there may certainly have been those living in Rome that wouldn't know which part of a plow went in which part of a field, people today take dependency--on many things, but overall on a world in which they are utterly insulated from scarcity or the deprivations of war--to a whole new level.