From an evolutionary standpoint we just have to survive long enough to reproduce, if we can’t eat past age of reproduction there’s no evolutionary pressure to change that.
Evolution applies to the entire lifespan — if we could “reproduce” but died in childbirth every time, our species would have gone extinct long ago.
Parents and grandparents also contribute greatly to the success of a child long long after they’re born, helping to ensure it also survives to reproductive age.
[Edit : It turns out people have said the same thing while I was looking for the right source to confirm my point, so I guess this comment’s a bit redundant now. Still leaving it in case someone’s interested]
Child mortality
The most significant difference between historical mortality rates and modern figures is that child and infant mortality was so high in pre-industrial times; before the introduction of vaccination, water treatment, and other medical knowledge or technologies, women would have around seven children throughout their lifetime, but around half of these would not make it to adulthood. Accurate, historical figures for infant mortality are difficult to ascertain, as it was so prevalent, it took place in the home, and was rarely recorded in censuses; however, figures from this source suggest that the rate was around 300 deaths per 1,000 live births in some years, meaning that almost one in three infants did not make it to their first birthday in certain periods. For those who survived to adolescence, they could expect to live into their forties or fifties on average.
So reaching 50 wasn’t too rare for someone who had survived childhood, and given how people often started having children younger then, that was well enough to be grandparent. Doesn’t mean everyone would’ve gotten to known their grandparents, but it wouldn’t have been super rare either.
From what i’ve read and heard about the subject, the life expectancy generally looked something like this back in the hunter-gatherer days:
You were very likely to die as an infant, pretty likely to die before puberty, after that you were likely to make it to 40-50, and it wasn’t that rare to reach 70.
If you make past childhood for most of history outside of places experiencing plagues, major famines, or wars, you had a good shot of making it to your 70s
Generally sure. We’ve certainly evolved to want to be around for a while after reproduction though, for example human infants are completely worthless. That doesn’t mean we need to be top notch, but we do need to exist sufficiently to get children to even the most brutal, basic independence.
Compare that to something that hatches then is already just adulting, like many reptiles.
Especially considering how reliant we humans are on knowledge, without the previous generation teaching us we’re pretty well doomed.
Old people would have been highly valued just because they’re sitting on decades of knowledge and wisdom, in an age without permanent records of information grandma would have been the only source of information about the past, and would presumably spend most of their time just sharing that knowledge with everyone else.
From an evolutionary standpoint we just have to survive long enough to reproduce, if we can’t eat past age of reproduction there’s no evolutionary pressure to change that.
Thank goodness for modern dentistry.
That’s completely untrue.
Evolution applies to the entire lifespan — if we could “reproduce” but died in childbirth every time, our species would have gone extinct long ago.
Parents and grandparents also contribute greatly to the success of a child long long after they’re born, helping to ensure it also survives to reproductive age.
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“grandparents”
Life expectancy in 18th century France was in the 20s, grandparents are optional
I don’t disagree with your overall point, but statistics like that are almost always heavily skewed because of high infant mortality rates
The mortality rate during childbirth was pretty high for women on top of the infant rate. Childbirth as a whole dragged the numbers down.
The mortality of mothers only became a big issue between doctors being in charge of birth and hand washing becoming a rule
The domestication of storks has also led to fewer deaths upon delivery. I wish to also add something to this thread of reddit factoids.
18th century france is also quite possibly the single worst place and point in time to use as a comparison, there’s a reason people beheaded monarchs.
[Edit : It turns out people have said the same thing while I was looking for the right source to confirm my point, so I guess this comment’s a bit redundant now. Still leaving it in case someone’s interested]
The number’s correct but…
So reaching 50 wasn’t too rare for someone who had survived childhood, and given how people often started having children younger then, that was well enough to be grandparent. Doesn’t mean everyone would’ve gotten to known their grandparents, but it wouldn’t have been super rare either.
A reminder that life expectancy in ancient history was so low not because people generally croaked by 40, but because of how many children died young.
It’s an average, not a maximum. People regularly lived into their 70s and 80s hundreds of years ago.
From what i’ve read and heard about the subject, the life expectancy generally looked something like this back in the hunter-gatherer days:
You were very likely to die as an infant, pretty likely to die before puberty, after that you were likely to make it to 40-50, and it wasn’t that rare to reach 70.
If you make past childhood for most of history outside of places experiencing plagues, major famines, or wars, you had a good shot of making it to your 70s
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy#Life_expectancy_vs._other_measures_of_longevity
That was an evolutionarily insignificant time period.
Generally sure. We’ve certainly evolved to want to be around for a while after reproduction though, for example human infants are completely worthless. That doesn’t mean we need to be top notch, but we do need to exist sufficiently to get children to even the most brutal, basic independence.
Compare that to something that hatches then is already just adulting, like many reptiles.
I think the keyword is precocial vs altricial
Especially considering how reliant we humans are on knowledge, without the previous generation teaching us we’re pretty well doomed.
Old people would have been highly valued just because they’re sitting on decades of knowledge and wisdom, in an age without permanent records of information grandma would have been the only source of information about the past, and would presumably spend most of their time just sharing that knowledge with everyone else.