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Consider that modern life is very different from the vast majority of evolutionary history that framed how we developed. In a modern, affluent society, a 50 yea
by Erik816 10y ago
Consider that modern life is very different from the vast majority of evolutionary history that framed how we developed. In a modern, affluent society, a 50 year old woman would have little problem successfully raising a newborn. On the African Savanah, would that same 50 year old woman do just as well? Or would she on average find that she could not raise her children as well as the 20 year old mothers? I'm guessing the latter.
Life was not as easy and it was likely much shorter on average. In a more primitive society, if a newborn's mother dies, that newborn probably has very low survival odds. Older women could definitely still have played an important role in raising children in the context of the family/tribe, but I see clear evolutionary advantages to having your children while younger, because you are simply more likely to be alive to raise them.
- LionessLover 10y ago> it was likely much shorter on average The average includes a huge number of deaths of children and of mothers though - not counting those risks (childhood, especially the very early one, and giving birth) it's higher than most people think. In a lecture on microbes (http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/return-of-the-microbes-how-infections-are-once-more-taking-over http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/return-of-the-m...) the professor mentions as an aside that a late Victorian British citizen after excluding those risks actually had a slightly longer life-expectancy than a modern British citizen! While that is fairly recent it still is long before modern medicine and antibiotics. Quote: > And what is interesting, if you take out the childhood mortality, the Victorian person between 1850 and 1880 lived slightly longer, if he was a male, than you do today. ("if he was male": giving birth was very risky) So it seems that good food (variety plus enough of it) and hygiene did most of the job of extending life-expectancy outside the above two risks - and modern medicine very significantly lowered childhood and birth (mother) deaths. In the light of such evidence modern medicine does not seem to have had a great effect on life expectancy once you made it past childhood. We can't do anything against "aging".
- Erik816 10y agoI am talking about 2 million years ago, not 2 hundred.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- kiliantics 10y agoYeah, life was not that easy for these people in some sense. (I'd argue it was easier in others - no debt, no stress, no health problems stemming from sedentary lifestyles.) A 20 year old woman was much more capable of hunting than a 50 year old. Therefore, the 50 year olds were probably left back at camp with the children while the younger women and men went hunting. There is plenty anthropological research on the social structures of these hunter-gatherer humans and children were usually collectively raised by the whole group rather than in their biological families.