Sex at Dawn

Prehistoric life expectation must have been longer than 30 years. Otherwise the institution of grandmothership could not have evolved.

Believing we live twice as long as our ancestors is a mostly harmless conceit. All you need to do is take out your wallet and check the pictures on the bills. Sure looks like a lot of old guys to me...except for Hamilton but he stopped a bullet.

What you really ought to do is a column on puberty...explaining exactly why and when it occurs. Screw up the timing and kids will miss the critical period when they're supposed to become adults. Then again, if you do decide to tackle that particular blessed lie, you may get hauled off to prison.

Did I really hear on the news that 28% of American men between 25 and 34 still live at home?

Interesting post, and something I'm glad to have read.

Ironic that in an article debunking myths, you propagate one about Twain being the source of the quote about lies.

The "paleo" movement isn't as much about doing exactly what our paleolithic ancestors did, it's trying to live a live that is more closely tuned to evolution, given what we have in our environment today. In fact there are plenty of paleo folks who do eat bugs, as well as those who shun factory farmed animals bred to eat corn and to contain a higher fat content than what existed prior. Grass fed beef is in fact lower in fat and higher in omega-3/omega-6 ratio. The latter is a marker of health in many soceities.

Eating meat raw is an outlier practice. Most paleo folk do not do this.

The NY Times reporter was indeed misguided when it comes to the lifespan of the average man back then. Guess they were just trying to come up with some counterbalance to the article.

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Infant mortality was horrifically high in hunter-gather societies.

You acknowledge this fact. Are infants not considered persons? Do their frequent deaths not matter?

We have undoubtedly made significant progress in reducing the risk of childbirth and childhood for both the infant and the mother.

That's also ignoring the significant progress we have made in reducing the risk of homicide. According to Pinker, and most modern archeology, hunter-gatherer societies were far more violent than society today. As much as 50% of men died at the hands of other men.

Progress isn't an illusion, you are truly a fool if you deny it.

. . . and might I add a strangely shoddy fact-free argument. You set up your argument as a refutation of the belief that if one lived past 30 in prehistoric life, they had done well -- oddly using as support a quote from the psalms (hardly prehistoric) -- but end it with the argument that it's absurd to think that prehistoric humans thought someone at 30 was old. There's a rather large disconnect between these two arguments, as there is between your argument and your vent against the "paleo" movement. And although you mention high infant mortality rate (though not disease, famine/starvation, violence...) somehow that doesn't equate. Yes, I agree that the human body seems to be structured to optimally live 70 or so years and yes there surely were prehistoric humans who lived past 30 -- but how many of them? What percentage? And who the heck knows whether or not prehistoric humans thought of other humans in their 30s as old.

Your overall argument here (which is not altogether clear) fails to convince me to drop the belief that in prehistoric times -- as well as a hundred years or so ago in many parts of the world, and still today in some parts (e.g., Swaziland), to survive infancy, plague, famine, & war into your 30s or 40s -- means one has done well.

The article makes interesting contentions with respect to the age of our ancestors, but unfortunately there is not much supporting proof. I have read a number of articles on Neanderthals which indicate that they rarely survived past 40. By contrast, bones of homo sapiens sapiens often indicate survival beyond 70. Neanderthals were a different species, so perhaps they are not the "ancestors" referred to in the article. But it did always seem odd to me why there should be such a drastic difference in age of death between homo sapiens sapiens and homo neandertalis.

It's always educational to see what "holes" people can find in any argument made. I mean that in both a positive and negative sense.

To the comment that the Old Testament is "hardly prehistoric," one can only ask where to find some appropriately prehistoric quotations. There a bit hard to find. (And this from someone who accuses me of "shoddy" reasoning!)

Pinker's claims (made at TED and in his book The Blank Slate) concerning war in prehistory are shockingly uninformed, if not an outright distortion of the research. We devote a chapter to this in the book (along with Keeley, Edgerton, Chagnon, and the other most prominent proponents of this view). I'll leave the detailed discussion for the book, as it's too involved for a blog.

Neanderthals were indeed a different species and not considered to have been ancestral to Homo sapiens. Both species lived concurrently in Europe, in fact. They were quite different from Homo sapiens, both in their anatomy and diet.

Thanks for reading.

CPR

Are you serious dude? If you can't find a prehistoric quote you use what you apparently think is the next best thing, and that's your excuse?
"Well I know this rock isn't from Mars, but we can't get to Mars to get one so shut up!"

Minor quibble. Hobbes wasn't talking about prehistory. He was talking about pre-society -- which (hat-tip to Rousseau) may have been no more than an abstraction. So, there's no sense in which anything said he shows he was lying.

Wathever happened with prehistoric dudes, the fact that average lifespan has doubled over the las two hundre years (and that includes the reduction of infant mortality because, you know, that does mattter) is there People have always lived long, but not with cancer, arthritis or diabetes, that's progress

Good article some things seemed arguments went against what you were trying to prove but hey cant win them all right. For one alot of people in pre history lived well into old age hints the bones we have dug up and dated and studied and are shown by science to be well into there 50's 60's and 70's. Its funny how some people who posted on here are trying to say that just a hundred years ago people were not living into old age but written history shows that to be a lie as well many emperors lived well into there 60's well documented even some people considered barbarians in ancient times (who according to civilized romans were dirty filthy and any other insults they could come up with) aleric the goth lived to be in his 70's as written by the romans. In the middle ages people were living into there 60's ghenghis khan died when he was 65 of and it wasnt from natural causes could he have lived into his 70's answer is probably yes. I have read on some sites that say the average life expectancy in the bronze age was 20 makes you wonder where we all came from. Im not talking about food shortages im talking you just living even now if you go to war or there is a famine the life expectancy will drop but as long as there is food and water people have seemed to been living for 60 or more years atleast 30000 years ago according to scientific finds but then again it all goes back to the lies thing this articel says at the beginning you will believe what you want. Also could you do and article on coulumbus i get tired of him he didnt discover the world was round and he never came to the modern day USA why do we have a holiday for this guy.