>For most of history, humans and their ancestors didn't live very long. Again, this is completely irrelevant to your argument. You can still evolve to live fo

>For most of history, humans and their ancestors didn't live very long. Again, this is completely irrelevant to your argument. You can still evolve to live for a longer time while reproductively viable. >Once you have sexual reproduction in place, it is much simpler to just have lots of offspring than to evolve even more repair mechanisms to extend life (at no great benefit to genes). Again, it's all about trade-offs. For some organisms, it's most advantageous for them to reproduce as much as they can all in one go, and for others it makes sense to live a really long time and reproduce throughout that time period. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semelparity_and_iteroparity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semelparity_and_iteroparity I own The Selfish Gene. And unlike you, I've read most of his actual scientific work as well, not just his work for the plebeian.