Human ancestors lifespan

andrewlee224

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I don’t think there’s a lot of information on lifespans of human ancestors - like australopithecus, h. Habilis, etc.
I’d love to find out what their lifespan was.. and also whether any change in lifespan to our species occur gradually, or did a single specimen suddenly develop a longer lifespan? Probably the first. But if it’s the first why didn’t the lifespan extension continue indefinitely?
 

blob69

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I don’t think there’s a lot of information on lifespans of human ancestors - like australopithecus, h. Habilis, etc.
I’d love to find out what their lifespan was.. and also whether any change in lifespan to our species occur gradually, or did a single specimen suddenly develop a longer lifespan? Probably the first. But if it’s the first why didn’t the lifespan extension continue indefinitely?
I think lifespan is way overrated as a good measure for health. In my opinion modern people have a longer lifespan as compared to traditional societies also or perhaps even mainly because they don't count many dead babies (prematurely born, stillborn, abortions etc.) in the statistics - it is simply as if these people never existed. In truly traditional societies they were deeply religious and therefore counted such births. And the way of counting badly skews the data - if you look at the publications linked below, you will see that even between countries this data can differ greatly and is not realistic because of different counting methods.





Next, so-called "life expectancy" is an unrealistic number (except maybe for older people) also because it is an extrapolation far into the future based on current trends. Even stuff like a country's GDP is calculated into this number. I recently talked to a demographer (PhD) in my country and he explained that in reality people die about 5-10 years sooner than the life expectancy we are constantly being told about as if it was something that is happening now. He said that for younger people the life expectancy number is meaningless and they will almost surely live much less than is stated. You have to know that for countries it is important to inflate this number as much as possible for many reasons.

In short, statistics is a b****...
 
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andrewlee224

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I think lifespan is way overrated as a good measure for health. In my opinion modern people have a longer lifespan as compared to traditional societies also or perhaps even mainly because they don't count many dead babies (prematurely born, stillborn, abortions etc.) in the statistics - it is simply as if these people never existed. In truly traditional societies they were deeply religious and therefore counted such births. And the way of counting badly skews the data - if you look at the publications linked below, you will see that even between countries this data can differ greatly and is not realistic because of different counting methods.





Next, so-called "life expectancy" is an unrealistic number (except maybe for older people) also because it is an extrapolation far into the future based on current trends. Even stuff like a country's GDP is calculated into this number. I recently talked to a demographer (PhD) in my country and he explained that in reality people die about 5-10 years sooner than the life expectancy we are constantly being told about as if it was something that is happening now. He said that for younger people the life expectancy number is meaningless and they will almost surely live much less than is stated. You have to know that for countries it is important to inflate this number as much as possible for many reasons.

In short, statistics is a b****...
Thanks, by lifespan I mean actually the maximum lifespan that can be observed, like e.g. around 120 years for modern people. I’m wondering what that number was for our ancestors, and why.
 

blob69

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Thanks, by lifespan I mean actually the maximum lifespan that can be observed, like e.g. around 120 years for modern people. I’m wondering what that number was for our ancestors, and why.
I think the same argument is valid here - data for maximum lifespan in the past is unreliable, based on sketchy historical writings and dubious scientific methods. Generally it's likely that maximum lifespan did not increase gradually throughout history but fluctuated greatly based on changing conditions. The degree of civilisation/urbanisation probably not increased, but lowered it (that rural people lived longer than urban was actually a well-known "fact" even just one hundred years ago). What was written down in the past is from eras that were relatively advanced, we don't have good data from non-civilised societies.

I did some research myself and inspected ages of death on graves in my small town in Central Europe and compared them to a remote village on a distant Croatian island where people even not that long ago lived without any hospitals and much other connection to civilisation. Age of death was on average definitely higher on this Croatian island as compared to Central Europe. So the story of modern medicine and other "benefits of civilisation" increasing lifespan is probably not true, or this island would have to be living the "nasty, short and brutish" existence too.
 
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Tim Lundeen

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Smoke is a major confounder, because most historical environments had high smoke toxicity so it's hard to compare. Smoke toxicity is greatly reduced today, replaced by numerous other poisons and metabolic stressors.
 

Jessie

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I think the increase in lifespan happened exponentially in a short amount of time, not gradually over long periods. The invention of antibiotics likely had a huge impact on this. It was even something Broda Barnes noted in his books about hypothyroidism. Antibiotics reduced the amount of premature death (from infection) so rapidly that people started living long enough to develop chronic degenerative diseases.
 

Ben.

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So the story of modern medicine and other "benefits of civilisation" increasing lifespan is probably not true, or this island would have to be living the "nasty, short and brutish" existence too.

Could it be that the longer lifespan is also due to people being kept alive artificially trough machines and meds (keeping them alife despite their health condition)? It sounds harsh but theres alot of peole out there that would have left this place many years ago.

I think the increase in lifespan happened exponentially in a short amount of time, not gradually over long periods. The invention of antibiotics likely had a huge impact on this. It was even something Broda Barnes noted in his books about hypothyroidism. Antibiotics reduced the amount of premature death (from infection) so rapidly that people started living long enough to develop chronic degenerative diseases.

Can we look at it that easily? While i guess increased lifespan goes with increased potential for disease, nowadays theres many people from childhood on with cronic health issues. Sideeffect trough industrialization/chemicals in the environment/food supply?
 

Jessie

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Can we look at it that easily? While i guess increased lifespan goes with increased potential for disease, nowadays theres many people from childhood on with cronic health issues. Sideeffect trough industrialization/chemicals in the environment/food supply?
I think there's nuances worthy of discussion. The late 20th and 21st century has brought on new challenges for us. Epidemiology shows us that sugar, saturated fat, and calcium have decreased over the past several decades while PUFA, phosphates, corn syrup, and processed junk have increased. Not to mention our exposure to fluoride, iron fortification, thickening agents, and endocrine disruptors have dramatically increased as well. I haven't checked, but I also wouldn't be surprised that our methionine and tryptophan consumption has increased while our gelatin consumption has decreased. In fact I'm all but sure it has. All of this garbage is a net-negative for metabolism and health. Even when fully aware of all of this, it's impossible to remove everything 100%. It's all about risk mitigation and picking your battles.

There's also the huge debate of our times, regarding 5G and Wifi. Personally I think there's a lot of hype here, but there is a disturbing amount of consistency in the scientific literature that suggests Wifi is interfering with out calcium channeling. This has catastrophic effects on our metabolic health. In fact the central issue with metabolic dysfunction is when calcium displaces magnesium inside the cell, resulting in less ATP. This happens in a hypo state, it also can apparently happen (at least to animals) when exposed to wifi, and it's everywhere.
 

blob69

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The invention of antibiotics likely had a huge impact on this. It was even something Broda Barnes noted in his books about hypothyroidism. Antibiotics reduced the amount of premature death (from infection) so rapidly that people started living long enough to develop chronic degenerative diseases.
Are you sure about this? I like Broda and have read all his books and used to believe this about antibiotics too. But if you look at historical graphs of falling mortality after the industrial revolution in the West, no steep fall after antibiotics came into use is noticeable. This quote by Ivan Illich describes it well: "The combined death rate from scarlet fever, diphtheria, whooping cough and measles among children up to fifteen shows that nearly 90 percent of the total decline in mortality between 1860 and 1965 had occurred before the introduction of antibiotics and widespread immunization."

I definitely don't know of many people who were saved by antibiotics in my generation (I'm 40) or younger.

Personally I came to think that there are probably forces behind this that we just don't understand. I read about cosmical influences a lot lately and for example, Black Death and subsequent waves of plague could have well been caused by cosmical influences (cometary debris, cosmic rays etc.). Around the 19th and 20th century these negative influences seem to have lessened a lot; perhaps that is why mortality dropped so sharply and not because of all our "advances", which are really not all that beneficial when you think about it? And perhaps now it's worsening because we're entering another unfavorable era in this regard (a grand solar minimum)?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not claiming I know what it was, but I stopped trying to understand the issue after realizing just how complex our world is and how little do we really know.
 
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blob69

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Could it be that the longer lifespan is also due to people being kept alive artificially trough machines and meds (keeping them alife despite their health condition)? It sounds harsh but theres alot of peole out there that would have left this place many years ago.
That might be a factor, but I think these measures (surgery, invasive ventilation etc.) kill a lot of people too.
 

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