I guess one needs to distinguish between 'survival' and being economically productive in one's contemporary society. Maybe a 1700s farmer would be more able to survive than me, and maybe a hunter-gatherer would be even more able to survive - that isn't the point. The point is that since the industrial revolution, one could participate in the wage economy and be rewarded quite well, even if the skills you had weren't deemed particularly valuable by that wage economy.

This becomes even more clear if one looks at the 30-odd years since WWII. In Western countries, a manual worker with fairly low skills was a comfortable member of the middle class. Since the mid-70s we've seen a shift in inequality. A lot of the good jobs nowadays require college degrees. This trend seems likely to continue: take Apple. If a robot can make an iPad, they don't need low-skilled manual workers, but they still need highly-skilled designers etc. The skill level needed to be economically productive has risen and looks set to continue to rise.

Btw, completely agree with fubarobfusco.