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> Medicine, sanitation, pooping indoors, and not dying at 20 is very appealing. IIRC, the low life expectancy of hunter-gatherers is mostly due to the high inf

by mikevm 13y ago

> Medicine, sanitation, pooping indoors, and not dying at 20 is very appealing. IIRC, the low life expectancy of hunter-gatherers is mostly due to the high infant/child mortality. You can see similar life expectancy graphs in several animal species. Basically, once you reach a certain age, you have a high probability of living up to a decently high age. Regarding "Medicine, sanitation, pooping indoors", well, all of these became problems because of the Agricultural Revolution, where people lived in densely populated areas together with their domesticated animals. Diseases slowly spread from the animals to the humans, and the density and lack of sanitization increased mortality by helping disease spread quickly. The Agricultural Revolution also forced humans to do back breaking jobs for which our bodies were not built for (working hunched over in the fields, or carrying heavy weights on our backs), and shrunk our varied diet into mostly eating grains and grain-based foods. So I think you should probably re-think your poor view of hunter-gatherer societies.

ordinary 13y ago
What's wrong with having a poor view of societies with high infant mortality?
- mikevm 13y ago
  Nothing. I was just pointing out the fact that the low life expectancy doesn't necessarily mean that people were less healthy. In fact, they might've been even healthier than we are (more active, a varied diet, etc...).
tedks 13y ago
People always quote this, and I always wonder why it makes any difference. People in hunter-gatherer societies weren't "more healthy" than we are (as you imply in a later comment). Most people in hunter-gatherer societies died as infants. I don't consider that healthy, and I consider infants people. On average, most hunter-gatherers died at 20. In reality, virtually all hunter-gatherers died at 0, and the few that survived might live to 60. Again: this is the "things were better in the past" / "evolution is always right" argument template, and it's virtually always wrong.
- mikevm 13y ago
  It makes a difference because people assume that it's been a constant improvement ever since hunter-gatherer times, and it probably wasn't. I'm saying that the quality of life for most people probably went downhill ever since the Agricultural Revolution, and what humanity has been doing ever since was trying improve it using medicine, science, sanitization, and more. I'm not saying that the hunter-gatherers were healthier than we are today (note my use of "might've" in the original post), but evidence shows that the lives of people in post-hunter-gatherer societies was worse. Life expectancy went up considerably only in the very recent past: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy#Life_expectancy_variation_over_time http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy#Life_expectancy... [Note the reduction of life expectancy in the Neolithic (agricultural revolution).] Anyways, I'm not an expert on the subject and I don't have the energy to start going through papers and digging up more rigorous data.
  - tedks 13y ago
    How can you say quality of life has gone down when most people from hunter-gatherer times died as infants? Dying as an infant would be a pretty shit quality of life in my book, I don't know about you.

by mikevm 13y ago

ordinary 13y ago

What's wrong with having a poor view of societies with high infant mortality?

mikevm 13y ago
Nothing. I was just pointing out the fact that the low life expectancy doesn't necessarily mean that people were less healthy. In fact, they might've been even healthier than we are (more active, a varied diet, etc...).

tedks 13y ago

People always quote this, and I always wonder why it makes any difference. People in hunter-gatherer societies weren't "more healthy" than we are (as you imply in a later comment). Most people in hunter-gatherer societies died as infants. I don't consider that healthy, and I consider infants people. On average, most hunter-gatherers died at 20. In reality, virtually all hunter-gatherers died at 0, and the few that survived might live to 60. Again: this is the "things were better in the past" / "evolution is always right" argument template, and it's virtually always wrong.

mikevm 13y ago
It makes a difference because people assume that it's been a constant improvement ever since hunter-gatherer times, and it probably wasn't. I'm saying that the quality of life for most people probably went downhill ever since the Agricultural Revolution, and what humanity has been doing ever since was trying improve it using medicine, science, sanitization, and more. I'm not saying that the hunter-gatherers were healthier than we are today (note my use of "might've" in the original post), but evidence shows that the lives of people in post-hunter-gatherer societies was worse. Life expectancy went up considerably only in the very recent past: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy#Life_expectancy_variation_over_time http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy#Life_expectancy... [Note the reduction of life expectancy in the Neolithic (agricultural revolution).] Anyways, I'm not an expert on the subject and I don't have the energy to start going through papers and digging up more rigorous data.
- tedks 13y ago
  How can you say quality of life has gone down when most people from hunter-gatherer times died as infants? Dying as an infant would be a pretty shit quality of life in my book, I don't know about you.