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Data reliant on ancient records dating back thousands of years with an average n=20 reported as median ages of death not mean with SD of 15 or more
Even the Victorian era data was small sample sizes of around 100 taken from the rolls of the Fellows of the Royal College of Physicians....
The earliest data was also from upper echelons of society....Kings, poets, philosophers etc
Meaningless data collection of small sample size of elites of society questionable at best from earlier ages and of little practical application to the “average “ Victorian era citizen
I can get you plenty more. But you are obviously not interested in reality.
Yes, the decline of child mortality matters a lot for the increase of life expectancy. But as this chart below shows, there is much more to it.
Child mortality is defined as the number of children dying before their 5th birthday. To see how life expectancy has improved without taking child mortality into account we therefore have to look at the prospects of a child who just survived their 5th birthday: in 1841 a 5-year old could expect to live 55 years. Today a 5-year old can expect to live 82 years. An increase of 27 years.
At higher ages mortality patterns have also changed. A 50-year old could once expect to live an additional twenty years. Today the life expectancy of a 50-year old has increased to an additional 33 years.
As I said, it very much depends on what society you are comparing it to. In some societies there is a lot of poverty, so people don't survive long. In some, there are unsanitary conditions. It goes on and on.
"scientists have compared the life span of adults in contemporary hunter-gatherer tribes (excluding the infant mortality rate). It was found that once infant mortality rates were removed, life span was calculated to between 70 and 80 years, the same rate as that found in contemporary industrialised societies. The difference is that, in the latter, most individuals survive childhood (Kanazawa, 2008)."
"Adults everywhere and at all times, including our evolutionary past and in many developing nations today, live to be about the same age. Life expectancy at birth is very low in our evolutionary past and in many developing nations today because many infants and children die. For those who are lucky enough to survive childhood, the life is just as long as it is for everyone else and very few die in their 30s and 40s."
As I said, it very much depends on what society you are comparing it to. In some societies there is a lot of poverty, so people don't survive long. In some, there are unsanitary conditions. It goes on and on.
But those weren't your points, what I highlighted addressed your points.
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But those weren't your points, what I highlighted addressed your points.
You are only comparing against one time or place. As I already said many times, there have been times and places where poverty or unsanitary conditions caused short lives.
And you gave one example, I gave others. There isn't a definite consensus. But obviously there are many who doubt the myth.
Our mainstream medical system has a certain way of looking at nature, and how it's related to health. In that view, if we lived like our primitive ancestors we would be lucky to survive to age 40.
I completely agree with everything you said here. In my own life all my grandparents made it to 80 before kicking the bucket. How does that square with the medical myths that modern medicine is helping us live longer? My own parents made it to 80(s)... so...
I got annoyed last week when my neck hurt and a friend goes "welp... that is getting old for you?" Getting old? I snapped at her that I was 42 and that isn't "old", but her whole attitude was like, it is inevitable, just learn to take Motrin... that is the whole problem.
I completely agree with everything you said here. In my own life all my grandparents made it to 80 before kicking the bucket. How does that square with the medical myths that modern medicine is helping us live longer? My own parents made it to 80(s)... so...
I got annoyed last week when my neck hurt and a friend goes "welp... that is getting old for you?" Getting old? I snapped at her that I was 42 and that isn't "old", but her whole attitude was like, it is inevitable, just learn to take Motrin... that is the whole problem.
Right, all that is part of the myth. You will get aches and pains and they will just keep getting worse.
I had fibromyalgia when I was 30 (undiagnosed). I saw all kinds of medical doctors, and most of them said it was just old age. I was in terrible pain, suddenly! And they insisted it was OLD AGE. I was 30!!
Now I'm 65 and have done yoga ever since then, and I seldom have aches or pains.
OK I just found this thread and I am not going to go through 11 pages of responses, so here is my thoughts:
1) Yes, it's a myth to think that cavemen all died at 40 or 50, even the average lifespan of 47 for the US in 1900 is a lot more due to infant mortality and childhood diseases bringing down the average than one thinks. And if cavewomen constantly died in childbirth, we probably would be extinct by now (however, there are unusual things about human structure that make childbirth more dangerous for humans than other mammals).
2) But that said, while I am sure there are even cavepeople who lived to 100, a far bigger percentage of humanity does that today (and still rare but increasing). My guess and this is where I really think modern medicine factors in, is once you got past late childhood/early adulthood, cavepeople and even most people before the 20th century probably lived frequently into their 60s and 70s, but getting past 80 was like getting past 90 or 100 today.
3) And there still was certainly more deaths by mothers from childbirth in the past than today, but where I will agree with the OP is I don't think the majority of save cavewomen died from childbirth.
4) Heart disease may be partially due to modern "junk food" diets. Maybe even some cancers but I think other cancers are just more likely in old age so that's why we see more of it now.
5) And finally, there are always people who just had "longevity genes" and got lucky no matter what threw them, doesn't mean that everyone who made it past birth had the same natural lifespan of today. If you look up all the people who lived at or past 115 (I picked that extreme age because it's rare enough that you can actually research most or all of them, it's less than 100 people AFAIK), a surprising number of them (though maybe expected given the culture of their young adult time) smoked and often smoked for a significant part of their life (for example, Jeanne Calmant, the only person proven to make it past 120, she was born in 1875 and died in 1997), smoked cigarettes from her teen years until somewhere past 100); that doesn't mean that smoking won't shorten most people's lives.
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