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

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.