Marilyn Harris:
> To which (average) age did paleolithic people live and how has that
> been
> proven?
This was covered in a thread at the PaleoDiet list (see excerpted posts
below). The majority of the increase in lifespan during the 20th century was
due to reduction in infant (less than one year old) mortality.
Date: Sun, 6 Apr 1997 09:23:30 -0600
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From: Ward Nicholson <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Paleolithic diet and longevity
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Kevin Tisdel writes:
>Given paleolithic man was lucky to live into their twenties, is it logical
>to >extend that diet to modern man who lives almost four times as long? I
>do not >question that the Paleolithic diet was appropriate for Paleolithic
>man, but I >am hesitant to extend that diet to modern man without further
>understanding...
Maybe Loren can cite more recent references than I, but an interesting
chart on Paleolithic longevity I have seen had data indicating that late
Paleolithic peoples actually lived into their early to mid-30s on average.
And even more interestingly, they were also perhaps slightly longer-lived
(though not by much) than the agricultural people who followed them and who
ate less meat/fat and higher quantities of carbohydrates.
These longevity figures are for skeletons where the age at death was
determined using standard "paleopathological" techniques, for prehistoric
humans who lived in the Eastern Mediterranean where a lot of research has
been done and the data is available. Main thing to note here about the
short average lifespans compared to modern times is that the major causes
are thought to have been "occupational hazards," i.e., accidents, trauma,
etc., stresses of nomadism, and so forth. [Source: Angel, Lawrence J.
(1984) "Health as a crucial factor in the changes from hunting to developed
farming in the eastern mediterranean." In: Paleopathology at the Origins of
Agriculture. (proceedings of a conference held in 1982) Orlando: Academic
Press. pp.51-73]
Median Lifespan
(yrs)
MALE FEMALE
- 30,000 to 9,000 B.C. 35.4 30.0
(late "Paleolithic" times)
- 9,000 to 7,000 B.C. 33.5 31.3
("Mesolithic" transition period from Paleolithic
to some agricultural products)
- 7,000 to 5,000 B.C. 33.6 29.8
("Early Neolithic," i.e., agriculture first spreads
widely)
- 5,000 to 3,000 B.C. 33.1 29.2
("Late Neolithic," i.e., the transition is mostly complete
- 3,000 to 2,000 B.C. ("Early Bronze" period) 33.6 29.4
- 2,000 to 1,450 B.C. ("Middle People/Bronze Kings") 36.5 31.4
- 1,450 to 1,150 B.C. ("Late Bronze") 39.6 32.6
- 1,150 to 650 B.C. ("Early Iron") 39.0 30.9
- 650 to 300 B.C. ("Classic") 44.1 36.8
- 300 B.C. to 120 A.D. ("Hellenistic") 41.9 38.0
- 120 to 600 A.D. 38.8 34.2
- Medieval Greece 37.7 31.1
- Byzantine Constantinople 46.2 37.3
- 1400 to 1800 A.D. ("Baroque") 33.9 28.5
- 1800 to 1920 A.D. ("Romantic") 40.0 38.4
- "Modern U.S. White" (1982-ish presumably) 71.0 78.5
I am not entirely sure what to make of these figures, but all other things
being equal (which they may not have been, I don't know) longevity seems to
have decreased slightly during the first several millennia after the
introduction of agricultural foods, then gradually rebounded. If true,
wouldn't this indicate that meat/protein consumption itself could not have
been the factor responsible for decreased longevity? (Looks like it would
to me.) From some of the later time periods involved where civilizations
were known to be on the rise or fall, it appears that social factors have
the biggest impact on longevity, particularly since longevity never rose
above about age 45 for long, often falling below that figure for centuries
at a time, until the 1900s, since which time it has almost doubled.
--Ward Nicholson <[log in to unmask]> Wichita, KS
Date: Mon, 7 Apr 1997 11:29:00 -0600
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From: Loren Cordain <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Age span of current hunter gatherers
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Ward has done a great job in presenting Angel's estimates of human age spans
from paleolithic times to present. I also disagree with Kevin Tisdel's
statement saying "paleolithic man was lucky to live into their twenties".
The fossil record for the paleolithic period is obviously VERY
incomplete and therefore there is no means to provide an unbiased
statistical analysis of life tables for populations living 20,000-30,000
years ago or more. The entire number of fossil hominids ever found for
this period could fit nicely into a small room. We have very little
evidence on how these people died, nor can the age at death be accurately
determined. We certainly can distinguish between child and adulthood, but
relative age at death during adulthood can only be broadly estimated.
The best surrogate for studying the age distribution of pleistocene
humans is the age distribution of living hunter gatherers. This
information is also inexact as most hunter gatherers, because of illiteracy,
do not keep precise records of age. The only data I know of in which life
tables have been established for living hunter gatherers is that of Neel's
work with the South American Yanomama [more commonly called Yanomamo or
Yanomami] (JV Neel. Health and disease in unacculturated Amerindian
populations. Ciba Foundation Symposium #49; 1977, 155-177.). During the
early 1960's to the mid 1970's, Neel and colleagues made a census of 29
Yanomama villages (there was minimal western contact at this time) and
developed a life table showing percentage of the population by age groups.
He compared the life table curves of the Yanomama to that in Japan (the
world leader) during the mid 1960's and to that of India in 1900. Obviously,
the Japanese were far superior to the Yanomama at every point on the curve,
however the Yanomama life table curves were superior to those of Asians
living in India until age 40 and were at least equal to those of the
[Indian] Asians until age 80. This data is remarkable given that the
Yanomama have no modern medicine, engage in constant inter-tribal warfare
and live in an environment where tropical diseases are rampant.
So, this data suggests that modern day hunter gatherers have higher
mortality rates throughout their lifespan when compared to modern,
industrialized societies, but lower rates than in poor, agrarian societies.
For estimates of the activity levels of paleolithic man, I refer
Kevin to our most recent paper on this concept (Cordain L, Gotshall RW,
Eaton SB. Evolutionary aspects of exercise. World Rev of Nutrition 1997
81:in press).
Loren Cordain, Ph.D.
[Note: technically, the Yanomamo are hunter-horticulturalists who cultivate
plaintains and cassava, not pure hunter-gatherers. Their consumption of
starchy tubers is enough so that some of them look overweight. --PP]
Date: Tue, 8 Apr 1997 02:42:56 +0100
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From: Staffan Lindeberg <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Paleolithic diet and longevity
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I suppose life expectancy at birth for Pleistocene hominids may have been
around 30 years but not necessarily that low. The main cause of a low
figure would be high mortality rates among infants, children and
adolescents. Life expectancy at 30 may very well have been an additional 25
years or more. How much more can not be estimated by use of available
osteological methods [Isçan, M. Y., Kennedy, K. A. R. (1989).
Reconstruction of life from the skeleton. New York, Wiley-Liss].
Age estimations are very difficult after middle age and fossil remains are
often classified as belonging to a human aged "40 years or more". An age
process is not equally rapid in different humans, samples are often small
and many of the age processes are influenced by lifestyle (e.g. bone loss).
Other problems are lack of contemporary autopsy material for comparison,
bone changes occuring after death, selection bias, different disease
patterns during different times and insufficient standardization of age
estimation methods.
By the way, don't we have any paleoanthropologists or paleopathologists in
the group? If not we ought to go and get some.
Staffan Lindeberg
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