Posted on 07/23/2011 6:46:46 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
Grandparents barely existed until as recently as 30,000 years, research suggests, because early humans died so young. But when people did start to survive into older age, it had "far-reaching effects" that led to the development of new tools and art forms. The advantages that humans enjoyed by having larger families with older relatives could have helped them "out-compete" rivals such as Neanderthals, it is claimed...
In the article, Rachel Caspari describes how analysis of the teeth of Neanderthals found in Croatia, who lived about 130,000 years ago, suggests "no one survived past 30". Because of gaps in the fossil record, she and colleagues tried to estimate when grandparents became common by working out how many individuals from different prehistoric groups reached 30. They calculated the ratio of older to younger adults -- the OY ratio -- in fossil samples of 768 individuals spanning 3million years, stretching back from the most primitive australopithecines to modern Europeans of the early Upper Paelolithic, who lived between 30,000 and 20,000 years ago. The researchers found that for every 10 young adult Neanderthals, who probably died between 15 and 30, there were just four who survived past 30 and so lived long enough to see their children have babies themselves...
By passing down knowledge of what plants were poisonous or how to sharpen a stone blade, elders would have improved early humans' skills and helped them thrive.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Interesting.
And now, in present day China,
uncles, aunts, sisters and brothers are very rare.
I question the premise that grandparents are innovators.
Maybe so but does that explain nobody living past 30? Modern day immune systems don’t behave in that way.
More likely it was not a problem in getting calories and protein at 20 or 40.
It was probably disease, infection and injury.
Their hygiene was probably horrible. Dysentery was probably rampant.
They drank from water they used for a toilet. They ate raw foods.
They were running from the tiger and fell down the rocks. Broken limbs did not heal.
And that little cut you got yesterday when you were pruning your hedges....that could have killed you.
Life sucked all around back then.
If the cut off age were 40 or 50 I could buy the infection, or healing theories. Given that the cut off is 30 my argument is that what really drops off fast between 20 and 30 is athletic supremacy as we see in today’s such biologic experiments. That is where you see a steep drop off starting to happen around age 30.
Sure things sucked then - but they’d suck for all ages. What sucked way worse for those at age 30 versus for those for age 20? The differential in suckage would be most great if we’re talking about mano a mano combat.
Probably a more likely scenario...to just be around and remind the younger dudes not to screw up and do something real stupid. If you avoid mistakes....you live longer. I’m also guessing that the older folks demanded less moves, and the clans stayed stationary for longer periods....so agriculture likely flourished with this less-move agenda.
That makes sense.
Sure. As late as early WWII getting wounded sucked a lot. Those infections took almost as many KIA. But not today.
The 20 year old didn't have to be able to outrun the tiger, just needed to be able to outrun the 30 year old.
It really had to be survival of the fittest, every minute of every day was all about survival.
That’s the punchline of a famous joke, not a serious argument.
By the early 1700s most of my female ancestors were living into old age. The 1600s were hard on them - early colonial New England had crowding, hunger and Indian attacks. Prosperity came in the 1700s with long life. As Massachusetts filled up, you got crowding, TB and dysentery.
Somewhere between one woman in ten or one in twenty died in childbearing when conditions weren’t too awful.
North Carolina mountains didn’t fill up; they lived to be old there. Almost no childhood mortaility either.
My theory is with reliable food and enough space, people do pretty well.
The “clock” still exists in humans. Female fertility ends in the forties.
And since we are “designed” around and for procreation, nature has determined that our “usefulness” and ability to support offspring ends at around that age. It takes a human child approx 15 years to mature. Maybe less.
Of course, nature is cruel. So, even if the “clock” exists, environmental factors will control longevity.
Environmental factors will affect fertility such as disease, nutrition, weight. A woman will lose her ability to have children if she is malnourished, etc. Maybe this is more of an issue when a woman is older thus dropping the age from mid-forties to thirties.
I remember reading that women super-athletes with very low fat can lose their menstrual cycle.
You don’t think it would be true in reality? Predators choose the weakest member of a group to attack, do they not? I know it is a punchline in a joke and couldn’t resist, but also know it would be somewhat true in real life. There are variables, the 30 year old might indeed be stronger/faster than the 20 year old- it happens. My 60 something hubby can easily outrun all of our grandchildren in a foot race- even the ones in their teens. If they get stalked by a tiger it won’t be hubby that gets eaten...
You don’t have to go back that far to see how deadly infections were to people. Just think of all the times most people need antibiotics before the age of 30, now what do you think happened before there were antibiotics? My parents generation was skeptical of doctors and hospitals because when they grew up doctors/hospitals could do little more than what could be done at home.
Well, by definition, we’re all just speculating here - obviously. I’m just speculating that man’s most important predator was other men. And that that would account for the findings in the article.
I guess *another* reason why I think that I’m right is that something changed 30,000 years ago. So what would that change have been? Tigers didn’t all of a sudden get more friendly 30,000 years ago. Bacteria didn’t all of a sudden get less virulent. Etc. etc.
But what could (and I would argue did) change 30,000 years ago was human social structures and arrangements. For all sorts of reasons early humans may have changed their social model, their economic model, technology may have changed etc. etc. and for some reason or combination of reasons 30 year olds stopped getting dispatched in steel cage death matches or ostracized from the group and left to starve but instead started being kept around for various reasons.
I guess having said what I just said that it could be they were killed off by other humans OR it could have been that they were cast off by the group and left to starve or be klled.
So pre 30,000 years ago it could be when you turned 30 you were killed by other humans or it could be you were abandoned by the tribe. Either way, you were done.
Then something changed and you were kept around and allowed to survive.
My point is that if 30 years old was a death sentence 40,000 years ago but wasn’t 20,000 years ago it was likely do to a change in the ways early humans self-organized and not due to the ability to outrun the tiger.
Why wouldn’t Neanderthals and early Humans live past 30 when elephants and mammoths routinely lived into their 60’s or 70’s?
I agree, although as someone pointed out above, old age and guile overcome youth and skill. The older man will probably have a great deal of experience, having survived such fights in the past.
Also, one of the threats to a meat-eater is other meat-eaters. Time and again cannibalism is suggested by marks on fossil remains, going back as far as Homo Erectus. The primate method of hunting though is to gang up on the prey. That strategy is common among canine and feline species as well. If the objective is to obtain mates, among primates the strategy has been an alpha male with three or more female mates. That’s also common among canines and felines, ants, well, pretty much you name it. :’)
The need to hunt in groups isn’t necessarily incompatible with polygamy of this kind, but it isn’t necessarily compatible either. :’)
Sorry for your loss. It’s never timely, no matter the age. I remember reading an obit years ago, someone was described as passing away “unexpectedly” at 101.
The environazis don’t want humanity to vanish, they want genetic engineering to create a “Brave New World” -style caste-based society, with themselves at the top.
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