Long Lives Helped Early Humans Thrive

We’re living longer now than ever before in human history. Not just the extreme record breakers like 121-year-old Jeanne Calment, but average global life expectancy is at an all-time high of about 73 years. While life expectancy has increased over the past two centuries, human potential for long lifespans has been with us for far longer.

For most of the 250,000 years humans have been living on Earth, we lived as hunter-gatherers, not toiling in office buildings and factories in large cities. Among hunter-gatherers, life expectancy was short—typically ranging from 25 to 35 years. Yet these averages belie the true extent of our ancestors’ lives. They’re dragged down because of high mortality rates early in life. In every hunter-gatherer group that has been studied closely enough to yield reliable information on ages, elders have been identified in their 60s, 70s and 80s. A major difference between then and now is just that many more of us now are lucky enough to reach elderhood. It seems the potential to live seven decades is built into our biology. The difference between then and now is one of degree, not kind.