On Mon, 3 Apr 2000 06:43:16 -0400 gordon <[log in to unmask]> writes: > The best evidence that mother nature begins to care less for us > after middle age is that we begin to fall apart physically. If natural selection > did not in actuality disfavor old humans vs young humans then we would not > lose our vision and our teeth as we grow old. Ardeith writes: As far as "Mother Nature" is concerned, nothing is supposed to be immortal......not animals, not plants, not rocks. Some plants are considered "annuals" because they sprout, grow, and reproduce in one growing season....and then die. Other plants take many years to grow to reproductive age, and then live on and one.......such as oak trees and sequoias. Animals are "programmed" to die off......this includes the human animal.......but humans can live long past the time they reproduce. Why men should be able to produce sperm all their lives is a mystery to me. Once they have generated a few children to carry on their genetic message, all that sperm seems to be a waste of resources.......but the male body has no way of knowing its "seed" has been passed on. The female body, OTOH, knows very well that its genetic message has been read and passed on...... so from a strictly biological point of view, there seems to be no need for the human female to live on past the point that her last child is weaned..... But both males and females are capable of living long past the age of reproduction.......and it must have been a "survival positive" in our long evolution.........humans are *cooperative* omnivorous predators.......far more so than any of the other predators in the world.......and as someone said, human children take a long time to learn the basics of survival.......human children are not "hard-wired" as some other animals appear to be.......having the grand-parental generation around to help with the gathering of food and the teaching of the young must have been a necessary factor in our development .......if this were not so, if this were not "survival positive" you would not find it happening in human populations around the world....... We are programmed to die......we reach a peak of development, do our reproducing, and begin to die......but it can take many years, during which we have much to teach the young...........and it has only been in the last few generations that the elder generation has been expected to live apart from their children and grand-children........... I think the way we live today is not the way we evolved to live.......just as the way we eat, is not the way we evolved to eat.............. [log in to unmask] ________________________________________________________________ YOU'RE PAYING TOO MUCH FOR THE INTERNET! Juno now offers FREE Internet Access! Try it today - there's no risk! For your FREE software, visit: http://dl.www.juno.com/get/tagj.