How did we evolve to live up to elderly life?

[soon2bepro]

First of all, if you don't believe in, or don't understand evolution as a reasonable scientific theory, REFRAIN from posting in this thread. Please.

Women can't procreate after a certain age. Most men can't either, not because of infertility but because of other reasons. So how did we evolve to the point where some of us naturally live so many years? What's the darwinian explanation for elderly life?

Maybe because elders are often wiser so they help others survive? But old people are often not wiser. A wise man is often wise most of his life, not just when he's reached old age.

Maybe it has something to do with wise men having more time to spread their knowledge.

What do you people think?

[chezlaw]

A popular explanation (no idea of any evidence) is grandparenst help look after the kids. Makes intuitive sense to me.

[David Steele]

It is my impression that most did not live to the point you are talking about before modern medical developments.

D.

[eurythmech]

Makes sense that you don't die until your kids are old enough to take care of themselves/each other?

[Prodigy54321]

I think that the main reason why people live a good amount of time after the age that they tend to stop procreating is that we have developed a tendency to take care of them..without assistance in the form of advances in medicine and personal care for them, they would not live so long after the age that they tend to stop procreating.

Dawkins I think explained it well in "The Selfish Gene"..he explained old age as basically the accumulation of harmful tendencies such as tendencies to develop diseases that are only triggered late in life, that is after the age that people tend to stop procreating.

the reason why this is true is obvious..late life harmful tendencies are taken out of the gene population much less so than early life harmful tendencies because older people already had a chance to procreate...Dawkins even commented briefly that he suspected that you could make humans live much longer than they do now if we abided by a rule that we are not allowed to have children before a certain age.

[alphatmw]

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It is my impression that most did not live to the point you are talking about before modern medical developments.

D.

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[soon2bepro]

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It is my impression that most did not live to the point you are talking about before modern medical developments.

D.

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But some did. And they weren't rare cases.

[chezlaw]

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[ QUOTE ]
It is my impression that most did not live to the point you are talking about before modern medical developments.

D.

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But some did. And they weren't rare cases.

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To some extent that's just statistical, if there's an increasing probability of dieing each year (above some age threshold) then many will live longer than others.

I don't know if there are any useful simulations comparing 1) every agent is killed off when the offspring are adult and 2) dieing gradually over time and caring for the grandchildren.

Isn't is just a question of which makes better use of resources? and if resources are plentiful then the extra nuturing is very cheap.

chez

[madnak]

Older people (particularly women) probably played a major social role in early societies. This involved raising children, managing the community, and sharing knowledge (the trait that was ultimately responsible for our success as a species). This became especially true as communities became more organized and ideas of authority developed, and as different peoples began to collect larger and larger amount of information about seasons, plants, and animals. Also, most of the food for early humans was obtained through gathering, and humans are competent gatherers into old age.

With regard to the idea that nobody lived long until modern times, that is a cultural myth. It probably stems from the fact that in early civilized cultures life expectancy was often very low (due primarily to infant mortality rates) and that such cultures had a strong tendency to show widespread malnourishment. This was apparently unique to civilized cultures, however - civilization arose in areas where the natural resources became scarce due to climate change. The development of irrigation was basically an act of desperation, as populations increased and arable land decreased. It's likely that humans were living to 6' tall or more and to 60-80 years of age in the natural environments of the Paleolithic.

[danlux]

Dr. Drew said that humans were only supposed to live to be about 40 years old naturally. I trust Dr. Drew.