Think you put in fewer hours than a Stone Age hunter-gatherer or a 20th-century factory worker in America? Though you might imagine workers today toil the least, the reality might be quite surprising. Looking back over prehistory and history, we reveal how much time ordinary people really spent laboring away and how work-life balance compares today. Click or scroll through to find out.

By looking at modern hunter-gatherers, anthropologists and archaeology experts estimate their prehistoric counterparts probably worked just three to five hours a day, though the hours worked are likely to have fluctuated wildly during the year...

If food was plentiful, say thanks to a glut of berries or following a big game kill, bygone hunter-gatherers probably worked even fewer hours. They would also have taken time off to perform religious rituals, bury the dead, dabble in cave painting, and other non-work activities.

A week in Ancient Egypt comprised of 10 days. Examining records from Deir el-Medina, the village where (non-slave) artisans who worked on the tombs in the Valley of the Kings lived, workers officially toiled away for eight hours a day with an hour's break for lunch at midday. Sounds pretty reasonable, and familiar, but they actually did this for eight days before resting for two days.

However, it wasn't all work work work, as the records show that in reality labourers only laboured for 18 out of every 50 days. This time off would have been for religious festivals and leisure activities, but was also a time for them to spend weaving, brewing alcohol, and making clothing.

The typical farm worker in the Israel of 100 BC tended crops or engaged in other farm work for around eight hours a day. For a working day that began at dawn and concluded at dusk that's a heavy load, but three hours would have been set aside for prayer, while eating the day's main meal was likely to have taken an hour or so.

Work was strictly forbidden on the Sabbath, as well as during a number of religious festivals: Rosh Hashanah (two days), Sukkot (a week), Shavuot (one day), and Passover (seven to eight days). Work was permitted at Purim, but many people would have spent the day enjoying the festivities. In addition, several work days a year are likely to have been taken off for weddings and other events.

Slaves in Imperial Rome were at the grindstone 24/7, but most free artisans only worked six hours a day, from 6am to midday. Not only that but festivals were frequent. In fact, according to some historians, Romans who were not in chains ended up working only half the year.

The Romans made the most of this abundant leisure time, taking time out to hit the local baths, watch chariot races at the Circus Maximus, view gladiatorial competitions and theatrical performances at the Colosseum, attend public executions, take part in orgies, and a whole lot more besides.

Life was far from easy for peasants in England in the Middle Ages, but their lot did improve after the Black Death when available land and average wages increased. According to Oxford academic James E Thorold Rogers, the typical working day consisted of no more than eight hours of toil. Farm workers put in longer hours at harvest time but worked shorter days in winter when there are fewer hours of daylight.

Sunday was the day of rest, but peasants also had plenty of time off to celebrate or mark Christian festivals. Economist Juliet Schor estimates that in the period following the Plague they worked no more than 150 days a year.

Workers in the Aztec Empire during the 14th century laboured away for four days, but didn't work on the fifth day. Instead they went to the local market to stock up on provisions. They would also take time off to partake in religious festivals, many of which involved human sacrifice.

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The year comprised of 18 months that were 20 days long, and at the beginning of each was a festival. So as well as the 73 days of the year spent mooching around the market, Aztec labourers would have stopped work on 18 days to participate in these monthly festivals.

During the reign of King Louis XIV, the workers of France had it tough, and hunger for the poorest was a fact of life. The typical working day was as much as 12 hours long, but two hours were set aside for lunch and perhaps an afternoon nap.

Nevertheless, the Ancien Régime is said to have guaranteed peasants, labourers and other workers a total of 52 Sundays, 90 rest days and 38 religious holidays off a year, meaning they worked just 185 out of 365 days.

A 1998 study by historian Hans-Joachim Voth found that workers in London in 1750 worked 11 hours a day, five days a week. Sunday was the day of rest, but those in gainful employment also skipped work on Monday, which was dubbed 'Saint Monday' at the time.

There were also 53 holy days during the year when labourers put down their tools and enjoyed a well-earned rest. All in all, Voth discovered that the average Londoner worked just 2,288 hours a year in the mid-18th century. That's just 208 days a year.

In contrast, the typical factory worker in mid-19th-century England toiled away for a shocking 16 hours a day, six days a week. Why the change? The Industrial Revolution was in full swing and factory owners could work their employees to the bone due to a lack of regulation and abundance of cheap labour.

'Saint Monday' and the vast majority of holy day holidays had been ditched by this point, with Sunday being the sole day of rest. The only other days workers could take off were Christmas Day and Good Friday as paid leave was non-existent and many people lived hand to mouth.

By the early 20th century, collective bargaining by unions and government regulation had resulted in much shorter working hours in the Western world. The typical working day in the 1920s had shrunk to eight hours. In America in 1926, auto pioneer Henry Ford cut the working week at his factories to five days after noticing productivity increased when his employees worked 40 rather than 48 hours.

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A slew of manufacturers followed suit. The 40-hour working week was enshrined in US law and adopted nationwide in 1940. At this time, there were eight public holidays: New Year's Day, Washington's Birthday, Decoration Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Armistice Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas Day. Most workers took these days off, and by the mid-1940s the majority enjoyed 10 days of paid leave a year.

An anthropological study of the !Kung Bushmen of Dobe in Botswana carried out in the early 1960s revealed that the adults of the tribe worked six hours a day on average, two and a half days a week.

This is a fraction of the hours most adults in developed countries were working at the time. In total, members of the tribe put in just 780 hours a year. Even the hardest-working individual was found to engage in only 32 hours work a week, or 1,664 hours a year.

In 1987, a study of the Hiwi, aka the Guahibo people, who live in parts of Venezuela, Colombia and Brazil concluded that adults spent just three hours a day hunting and gathering food, and occupying themselves with other work such as building shelters.

Interestingly, the culture has no structured time sequences. There are 16 points in a typical year that are loosely marked, from the start of the dry and wet seasons, to specific days when certain fruit ripens or insects emerge, and these time periods vary. Assuming tribal members took time off on these special days, they probably worked around 1,047 hours a year.

While the law in China limits the working week to 44 hours, it is frequently ignored by employers, particularly those in the technology sector where the so-called '996' work schedule is de rigueur. Staff are expected to work from 9am to 9pm six days a week, bar an hour's break in the middle of the day for lunch and an hour's respite in the evening to eat dinner.

Much of Sunday is no doubt spent in bed recovering from such an exhausting working week. Adding to the woes of tech workers in the country, paid leave is usually limited to just five days a year, though they are entitled to 11 paid public holidays.

Adults in the Netherlands have the shortest working week in the world at just 29 hours, according to the OECD. This levels out at just 5.8 hours a day, which would be considered part-time in many countries. Still, the Netherlands has the second lowest number of public holidays in the world at just seven. Full-time employees are entitled to a minimum of 20 days off a year.

In America, the typical working week, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, is 34.5 hours, which is considerably longer than the average in most European nations, according to official figures anyway. But many Americans slog away for even longer periods of time.

Which states in America have the longest and shortest working weeks?

Unlike workers in Europe, who enjoy plenty of paid leave guaranteed by legislation and aren't afraid to take it, American workers average just 12 days off a year and many don't work on 10 public holidays. Incredibly, US law doesn't actually require employers to grant their staff paid leave of any kind.

Now take a look at the countries with the worst work-life balance