Paleo people mean age to die was 35? Or maybe they just look 35.

[goodsamaritan]

I have a bone to pick with the theorists and archeologists who estimate that paleo people mean age to die was 35.  Which paleo time was that?  200,000 years ago?  500,000 years ago?  50,000 years ago?

Maybe the people's bones and teeth looked as if they are 35 years old by today's standards.  And today's standards are pretty much very low.

Ever since I got into detoxing, healthy living, raw paleo diet I feel like my I've been aging backwards.  Modestly, I look 10 years younger than my true age. 

My guess is the healthy raw paleo people looked the same from 20 to 80 years old.  If weston price could find lost tribes that have 1% tooth decay for the whole population, there may have been pockets of raw paleo people who had it even better.

Just my 2 guessing cents.

[JaX]

I've thought about the exact same thing. The scientists who examine bones compare them to our current standards. Who knows what the conditions were like in the paleolithic? Air, oxygen, minerals, everything might all have been very different than what we think. Archeology is a very inaccurate science. I've heard of numerous times where some scientists believed they had found dinosaur bones but it was then later proven to be from some mammal that is not extinct today..

[TylerDurden]

There are various issues. First of all, people in the Palaeolithic were subject to a much harsher environment than nowadays(harsher, IMO, than the Inuits). Plus, they died earlier as they, unlike Neolithic peoples, didn't have the know-how to heal broken bones. Plus, having a mean-age of 35 doesn't mean anything as that includes a very high childbirth-casualty-rate - it took until the Bronze-Age(c.2-3,000 years before Christ) before longevity-rates/height-rates recovered after the Palaeolithic, which rather indicates the superiority of a Palaeolithic Diet even when cooked:-
http://www.beyondveg.com/nicholson-w/angel-1984/angel-1984-1a.shtml


All one can say with certainty, given the archaeological record, is that, due to the physical activity(and diet) of our Palaeo ancestors, they were far fitter/stronger than their 20th/21st century descendants, and, very likely, even fitter/stronger  than our Neolithic ancestors. This was inevitable as , unlike in the Neolithic, they had no domestic animals to do much of their work for them etc.

Re aging:- Most rawists mention looking c.10(biological) years younger than their cooked-food-eating contemporaries of the same (physical)age, after doing the diet for years. That's unsurprising as skin regains its elasticity etc. when going raw and so on .....

[wodgina]

Filipino's  all ways look young, I was talking to a guy and expected him to be low thirties and he was 50 something! Must be better quality food and simpler? life. Is it a simpler life? Do you have the pressure to be successful in the Philippines? the four wheel drive and big house or can you opt out?

Or the fact that Filipino's DNA isn't as damaged as people from northern Europe like myself.

[William]

The estimate of 35 was based on modern methods of dating the bones of the dead, when there is no other way. It is easy to do this for Neolithic man (us) because we have a constant rate of diseases that leave marks on the bones.
They just count the marks.

For paleolithic bones, there are no such marks, showing that they had no disease. After all, it's why we eat a Paleolithic diet, nicht wahr?

So the bones cannot be dated for age at death.

It boggles the mind of some archaeologists and historians, who refuse to believe that modern man has sunk so low, so they claim that everyone died at 35. Of nothing!
No signs of war, broken bones are rare.

[TylerDurden]

One obvious point to make is that since the climate was much harsher than now with predators around etc, the life expectancy would be shorter. Also, a mean age of 35 doesn't mean they all died at 35, merely that there was a very death-rate during childhood(especially in the first few years) so that it was perfectly possible for an old man to live till 80 etc.