since food is so important, why didnt our ancestors live longer?

this has been something that has been in the back of my head. although i completely understand and know how important diet is as it has dramatically improved my situation, i have always wondered why our ancestors haven't lived longer? for example, the life span of people today routinely go to 90, 100+, yet back in the caveman days wasn't it only like 30 or 40? or even in the early 1900's, it wasn't any 80, 90, 100+ as it is today but in the caveman days or before all these preservatives, wasn't everyone only eating fruits and vegetables and protein?

perhaps it has to do with those people weren't getting all the required nutrients that they needed and weren't able to understand this aspect. like how we know we need x amount of calcium, vitamins, carbs, etc. i see how if you have a clean diet, disease won't come to you so i don't see how modern medicine could have made a dramatic difference since we can see how a clean diet can prevent most diseases?

Have been wondering this to

There isn't very good data on how long ancestral man lived. Certainly their environment was more unstable than our own, what with food shortages, weather and winters, questions of shelter from those elements, and of course illness/injury had a much more severe impact given the lack of antiseptic. Our cushy lifestyles and baseline ability of our medical system to treat acute infection has no doubt increased our longevity. But its difficult to single out the single variable of food consumption to analyze its specific effects given how multivariate longevity actually is.

Most of the data you will hear about our ancestors having shorter lives is skewed. Child mortality was a MAJOR problem prior to the leaps in medicine we've made as of late. Think about the process of birth and all of the potential for adverse events that could negatively effect both the child and the mother. Death associated with child birth was a major issue for our ancestors, and was likely the biggest factor that influenced the average lifespan figures. Today its relatively safe to birth a child in comparison, but even as late as the 19th century, child mortality was a problem.

You have to take into consideration the quality of life of people today. Going into a nursing home at the age of 60 and living there for 10 or 20 years is tantamount to being dead IMO. Aside from this, the research biologist Art Ayers believes that high levels of inflammation are involved in most chronic disease processes. People subsisting on a hunter-gatherer diet would have lower levels of inflammation. His theory is that high levels of inflammation are somewhat protective from acute infections due to an overstimulated immune system. Essentially, high levels of inflammation help the body to initially better resist infections but eventually cause the body to succumb to chronic health problems. In his article he tied this in to ancient people gathering into communities and switching to grain based diets and how this would protect them from plagues associated with living in packed communities. Keep in mind, this is just his theory, but it could have some legitimacy. That would explain the trend from high mortality rates seen in the young several generations ago vs the chronic health problems seen in the middle aged and elderly today.

We don't know enough of the past and how accurate scientists are when talking about it. Just because food was more nutritious, doesn't mean tribes were smart enough to eat a balanced diet. Maybe some fruits and vegetables were not grown in some areas, maybe the meat they ate was sometimes infected. Who knows how long they regularly went without food. There are a lot of different factors that come into play.

Our ancestors did not die of things like heart disease or cancer. They mostly died from Physical trauma like falling off a cliff, or getting hurt while hunting. cavemen were 10x healthier then the people of today. If humans stayed a hunter gatherer species we would probably be a lot better off and the world would be a better place.

blueman99 wrote:Our ancestors did not die of things like heart disease or cancer. They mostly died from Physical trauma like falling off a cliff, or getting hurt while hunting. cavemen were 10x healthier then the people of today. If humans stayed a hunter gatherer species we would probably be a lot better off and the world would be a better place.

Totally 2nd this. Was going to state the same thing.

Death was not cataloged in early people for one thing and dying from an infection before the advent of antibiotics would usually take the life of a person--if they were low thyroid.

Beyond that sanitation practices have helped, all in all, 'modern medicine' really does almost nothing, since it uses symptomatic treatment as an attempt to resolve diseases that did not exist before modern medicine.

poor hygeine, poor sanitation practices, infectious disease, to list a few

i'd also say infectious disease, but id say the no 1 reason they died was being hit over the head with a rock or stick by another caveman, or perhaps injury from wild animal.

blueman99 wrote:If humans stayed a hunter gatherer species we would probably be a lot better off and the world would be a better place.

Why was agriculture necessary for the development of civilization

It was when human started growing grain that they became full during the daytime - and lazy - then they setttled down in what later became towns.

Before grains humans was never full during the day - only at the night they ate to be full.

They burned herbs on their fires to make a bluish ash that they painted their bodies with - this ash protected against infections if they had a wound.

Humans lived without agriculture for many million years - only so far a few thousand years as we know us today.

But we have to acknowledge the opportunity costs.

As hunter-gatherers, as we could really classify most other forms of life on earth, the opportunity cost of this way of gathering the necessities is huge. You spend all of your waking hours hunting or foraging.

It becomes easy to see how agriculture made possible the huge advancements man has made in the past several thousand years. Number one it segregated classes of people, those who were responsible for the food supply. It freed up other people to spend their waking hours devoted to scientific and technological advancement.

It may be an evil, and the socio-economic system and deluded sense that we own the earth that it produced is very unnatural. But most of the advancements we've made today wouldn't have been possible without it. Me? I guess I'm pretty used to this lifestyle at this point so it would be difficult to revert back to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle now, but if I had the choice, I guess I would have made it so we never got to where we are now. I mean, take a look at the maps of lights on the earth's surface at night, we look like an infection.

But I agree that infection was probably the biggest factor that may have shortened average lifespan figures, and as I said above, child mortality. If you adjust for these, I'd bet the life spans were longer.

Tiger maulings.

That escalated quickly.

Ya but these advancements in technology don't make our lives any better, honestly they make it worse and more stressful.. If we were still hunter gatherers we would be just as happy as anyone today. It makes no sense with all of our "wonderful technology" most people still work 8+ hours a day. Cavemen would only have to spend a few hours a day to get food and water, they would have a lot more free time to relax and play.

Also Before Agriculture there was no rulers no government which is the downfall of the human race.

Good point.

And that also ties back to what agriculture did. It allowed us to hoard resources, and obviously those resources weren't hoarded equally. The social caste system developed out of the nature of this, and those with land and resources wielded the power. Whereas most hunter-gatherer societies were collectivistic and the majority would stop one person from trying to gain too much power, society became individualistic. Add spirituality to this mix and suddenly divine right to rule comes into play and the rest of history as we know it plays out.

The reason we have so much wealth, resources, and technology and yet still haven't developed a Eutopia is because we are still individualistic and the desire to hoard resources for power is still in play, but that system has become so ingrained into our infrastructure, that the majority can no longer just gather together to redistribute the power without tearing down the entire system.

The people in power have a huge interest in keeping the wealth distribution where it is at. And the concept of interest rates has indebted every person born into our modern world. For this reason we all must continue to work under this system, because it empowers the few, despite the fact we have the technology to build a Eutopia. The collectivist values just aren't there anymore.

I read some time ago that it was found that the bones studied of those hunter-gatherers were much stronger relative to age than those of modern civilizations. Rather than shrinking as many geriatrics do, their bones remained integral and long.

Sorry hehe, I was just trying to say they lived in a more dangerous world!

Bear maulings would have also been problematic lol

And disease, cold winters, injury, etc >.<

In biblical times people lived longer, this may be due to a much stronger earth`s magnetic field amongst other things that we would have a hard time to comprehend.

Of course today's generation of sitting in front computers and eating packed frozen foods will live a shorter life than our current generation.

TheOne wrote:In biblical times people lived longer

Good point, I forgot Abraham lived until 175. Jesus...

I bet Ray Peat was alive back in Biblical times! He claims to be in his 70s but he's probably been around hundreds or even thousands of years =D

Youtube Dan Beuttner!!

I've heard that with ant-aging science being on the precipice of something big, anybody alive right now (and probably still fairly young) will live to 200 or greater. Whether this is true, well we really can't know. But its an intriguing thought. The bigger question comes when we ask if those would be quality years. Can we maintain youth for that length of time...I for one have no interest in living to 200 years in the state of a seventy year old man. Now, if I could live to two hundred in the state of a 25 year old, that would be a different ball game.

And by god, if these estimates are anywhere near true and science will grant us this in the near future, then they damn well should be able to give us back our hair, haha.

anthonyspencer54 wrote:I've heard that with ant-aging science being on the precipice of something big, anybody alive right now (and probably still fairly young) will live to 200 or greater. Whether this is true, well we really can't know. But its an intriguing thought. The bigger question comes when we ask if those would be quality years. Can we maintain youth for that length of time...I for one have no interest in living to 200 years in the state of a seventy year old man. Now, if I could live to two hundred in the state of a 25 year old, that would be a different ball game.

And by god, if these estimates are anywhere near true and science will grant us this in the near future, then they damn well should be able to give us back our hair, haha.

i can see stem cells playing a huge part in this. i have been researching it and some of the work that they are able to do is quite amazing. i mean, they are literally able to grow organs from these stem cells. they even recently were able to create the first animal from stem cells only. as in, they had sperm and egg created from stem cells as opposed to taking them out of the 2 parents. the downside? only the rich people will be able to take advantage of this.... i better start making more money....

Haha. Yeah, no shit. You are absolutely right about that. And given the population control, eugenicide that's already taking place, there is no doubt that it would be a secret kept to the elitists. The earth couldn't sustain a race of people who live 500 years anyway, what with birth rates climbing so quickly and people having children just to claim more social program benefits. It would actually be a terrible thing. I mean, we're already living a global lifestyle that's unsustainable. If you compounded that by making each individual live twice as long, you'd have a serious problem on your hands. Its probably better that we die for now, at least until something teaches people as a whole to establish a balance with the earth. The current culture with respect to how we treat the environment and how we see our role in it, just doesn't deserve to live that long. Damn, that was cynical as hell, but unfortunately all too real.