4 ms·
On the first chart, we see that humans are definitely an outlier. Slide us back to the left and see where we would "naturally" be without modern medicine and w
by juan_juarez 14y ago
On the first chart, we see that humans are definitely an outlier. Slide us back to the left and see where we would "naturally" be without modern medicine and we should live around 35 years. This lines up nicely with historical data[1].
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy#Life_expectancy_variation_over_time http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy#Life_expectancy...
- TeMPOraL 14y agoExcept "historical data" is not what where we would "naturally" be, since life expectancy is dragged down by high child mortality rate.
- balsam 14y agoNot to be snarky, but what are the child mortality rates for a monkey or a hamster?
- bgilroy26 14y agoThis doesn't answer your question, but when we evolved to walk upright a significant level of risk was added to childbirth.
- TeMPOraL 14y agoMy point is that life expectancy is a useless metric in this context as here we're interested in average life span of a person that survived childhood.
- drucken 14y agoLife expectancy at birth of both humans and Neanderthals pre-agriculture (Upper Paleolithic), is also just over 30 years. That works out to be almost exactly 1 billion heartbeats and correlates well with the regressions, according to those charts. Given the above, it is kind of amazing how long humans remain fertile, even without modern medicine [worrying sigh - parents just don't tell you these things].