On Thursday, June 12, 2003, at 10:50  AM, Jens Wilkinson wrote:
> that it's something for us, today, but it wouldn't
> have been of any use at all to our paleo ancestors,
> presumably, because for them death from heart disease
> was virtually unknown AFAIK.

In traditional societies today, people who survive to adulthood have
nearly as good a chance as we do of making it to old age. The main toll
in in childhood. This may have been true in the paleolithic as well.
There must be some good reason we are allowed to live as long as we do,
no other comparable mammal lives anywhere close to as long as humans,
so I think it is something we are designed to do. A lot of those people
must have survived as well if it got passed down to us.

Vegetarian gorillas die of heart disease in their late twenties to
about forty.