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They died early because of trauma and infections. But looking at present day hunter gatherers, we can learn a thing or two. Have a look at this, from here:

Let’s look at a comment from Kim Hill, Professor of Anthropology from ASU, whose work on the Hiwi was so misrepresented in the Scientifica American article he took the time to write the following comment, which is #126 of the comments associated with the SA article. I’ll provide that comment below, and I’m going to bold certain sections that I think are particularly important:

A few quick observations since the work of my wife and I on the Hiwi is extensively cited here (as is our demographic documentation of hunter-gatherer lifespans). First, the Hiwi, like the other hunter-gatherers that we have worked with and visited, are much healthier in general than are Americans, but with the caveat that they suffer from maladies that we can cure with modern medicine (infections, parasites). They are lean and fit. Ache hunter-gatherers of Paraguay are even more fit than the Hiwi, they eat more and have extremely high exercise loads. High mortality of hunter-gatherers (mainly in infancy) is not relevant to the argument here because it mainly comes from violence and trauma. Warfare was a major cause of death among the Hiwi, nobody is suggesting we emulate that part of the paleo lifestyle. Parasites are unpleasant, and yes luckily we now have ways to eliminate them that our ancestors never achieved. But the point is that if Hunter-gatherers are lean, and fit (they look much more like serious athletes than do modern people), why? If not their diet and exercise regime, then what does make them lean and fit compared to modern people? Logic suggests that diet is part of the solution (excercise seems downplayed by everyone).

So the discussion here should be focused on what we can learn from hunter-gatherers to improve our own health. How do “paleofantasy” critiques contribute to that discussion? I'm not sure, I haven't read the book. Yes there is significant genetic evolution in recent times, yes dietary variation in human foragers around the world suggest no single optimal diet, but still, what can be extracted by acknowledging that they are lean and fit? The paleodiet discussion has been very important for advancing our understanding of human nutrition — a field which has been dominated by the search for “minimal requirements” rather than “optimality”. But the bottom line is that the paleodiet critics need to contribute rather than just critique. And for the record, my wife Ana Hurtado and I have been eating a paleodiet (by accident because of fieldwork) for more than 30 years, because we grew accustomed to that diet (long before the fad). Meats, and unprocessed plant foods are a simple generalized ancestral diet and appear to produce better health than the current standard modern diet. As anyone who knows us can affirm, Hurtado and I are a lot leaner and fitter than most Americans in our age cohort (near 60). Why?