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Modern Humans Far More Robust Than Ancestors
joeljkp writes "The New York Times has an article up discussing how modern humans are 'So Big and Healthy Nowadays That Grandpa Wouldn't Even Know You.' Despite the hyperbole, the article makes several excellent points regarding the impact of antibiotics and modern medicine on humans in their youth. The 'baby boomers' of today have an overall level of health far higher than their parents did in middle age, and reason stands that their children will have even better health to look forward to." From the article: "The biggest surprise emerging from the new studies is that many chronic ailments like heart disease, lung disease and arthritis are occurring an average of 10 to 25 years later than they used to. There is also less disability among older people today, according to a federal study that directly measures it. And that is not just because medical treatments like cataract surgery keep people functioning. Human bodies are simply not breaking down the way they did before. Even the human mind seems improved. The average I.Q. has been increasing for decades, and at least one study found that a person's chances of having dementia in old age appeared to have fallen in recent years."
"and reason stands that their children will have even better health to look forward to"
Unless, of course, reason is to take peak oil and global warming under advisement.
I think it's well documented that Diabetes (type 2 - NIDDM) is appearing
at a much younger age than before.
Many ancient buildings have strikingly short doorways because it provided better insulation in the winter. The lesser height of the average man in antiquity is only part of it.
We would have even less arthritis if people didn't buy into jogging as some health benefit. It just kills your joints.
what I believe is likely the real reason.
Life was just plain a lot harder then.
It's as simple as that. We've moved from an agrarian society to an industrial one to a service economy. Life is easier. No more scythes or plowing with a horse. No more mining coal with pick axes. No subsistance farming or clearing new fields by hand (unless you want to, I suppose). People are more educated about what's healthy and what's not, no more mercury based patent medicines, or blood letting with leaches.
The article has it half right - modern medicine play a large part, but I believe the major effect is because it's able to recognize and address the true nature of ailments, not because it's making the human body more robust. That is, it's a remedial effect more than a prophylactic one.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Are there any credible reasons to believe that humans in general are growing physically stronger and more durable, rather than overreliance on technology (in particular, antibiotics) actually having the opposite effect?
Fuck Slashdot
I just hope I am kept alive long enough for the singularity to happen, hey Ray?
Kurzweil is also an enthusiastic advocate of using technology to achieve immortality. He advocates using nanobots to maintain the human body, but given their present non-existence he adheres instead to a strict daily routine involving ingesting "250 supplements, eight to 10 glasses of alkaline water and 10 cups of green tea." [5]
But also with immortality would come a bunch of challenges, here is an excerpt from his 1999 book, The Age of Spirtiual Machines:
The gambler had not expected to be here. But on reflection, he thought he had shown some kindness in his time. And this place was even more beautiful and satisfying than he had imagined. Everywhere there were magnificent crystal chandeliers, the finest handmade carpets, the most sumptuous foods, and, yes, the most beautiful women, who seemed intrigued with their new heaven mate. He tried his hand at roulette, and amazingly his number came up time after time. He tried the gaming tables, and his luck was nothing short of remarkable: He won game after game. Indeed his winnings were causing quite a stir, attracting much excitement from the attentive staff, and from the beautiful women.
This continued day after day, week after week, with the gambler winning every game, accumulating bigger and bigger earnings. Everything was going his way. He just kept on winning. And week after week, month after month, the gambler's streak of success remained unbreakable.
After a while, this started to get tedious. The gambler was getting restless; the winning was starting to lose its meaning. Yet nothing changed. He just kept on winning every game, until one day, the now anguished gambler turned to the angel who seemed to be in charge and said that he couldn't take it anymore. Heaven was not for him after all. He had figured he was destined for the "other place" nonetheless, and indeed that is where he wanted to be.
"But this is the other place," came the reply.
That is my recollection of an episode of The Twilight Zone that I saw as a young child. I don't recall the title, but I would call it "Be Careful What You Wish For. As this engaging series was wont to do, it illustrated one of the paradoxes of human nature: We like to solve problems, but we don't want them all solved, not too quickly, anyway. We are more attached to the problems than to the solutions.
Take death, for example. A great deal of our effort goes into avoiding it. We make extraordinary efforts to delay it, and indeed often consider its intrusion a tragic event. Yet we would find it hard to live without it. Death gives meaning to our lives. It gives importance and value to time. Time would become meaningless if there were too much of it. If death were indefinitely put off, the human psyche would end up, well, like the gambler in The Twilight Zone episode.
It's called evolution. get used to it.
No, it's not called evolution, it's called technology. We, Homo Sapiens, evolved our brains 200,000 years ago, but didn't really start to use them until 50,000 years ago. Surely there is something more than biological since we're discussing this via a computer terminals connected to a worldwide network instead of banging rocks against treetrunks, especially if there was a 150,000 year gap in between where we did so, with the same biology. See this wikipedia article.
You're confusing the measurement and the thing being measured.
Using your temperature example, let's way we used a dynamic scale such that the average temperature was defined as 100 deg. As the cycles of solar output, ocean currents, green house gases ebbed and flowed, the average temperature WOULD NOT CHANGE. The average temperature would remain 100 deg as long as the definition was unchanged.
In case you haven't picked up on it yet, temperature, like I.Q., is a human construct. It is what we define it as. We define average I.Q. as 100. There may be some delay between changes in the populace and adjustments in the definition, but if some strange radiation turned us into a world of Einsteins, the average I.Q. would still be 100.
Now the intelligence or mental ability represented by that 100 would change, but don't mistake the measurement for that thing being measured.
You mean the energy in the atmosphere would be rising. The temperature would stay the same.
Also: salt. Despite what you hear about salted fries and such, the average human eats VASTLY less salt today than they did 50 or 100 years ago, when salting meat was the primary means of preservation. Today virtually every house has great refrigeration, the foods have better preservatives, and people have an awareness of the dangers of salt on the cardiovascular system.
That being said, the water and soil pollution, horrible animal farming techniques, and a lack of any new antibiotics or other non-deathbed "wellness" medicine over the past 50 years probably argues in the grandparent-poster's favor.
E pluribus unum
We have essentially the same genes as 3 generations ago. Evolutionary change takes much, much longer than that,
We just live in a much better environment these days. Had our ancestors gotten to live like we, they would have been just as healthy.
From what I've read so far the information is relative to the US only. There is other information about European areas as well, but I wonder what there is to know about Asia and areas that are significantly less developed?
I have noted in the past that I seem to be a lot more healthy than just about everyone else I know. My health increases further as I avoid certain foods such as milk, bread and pasta.... things with excessive processing and preservatives. But those things didn't exist in the same form "back in the day." So I think there has to be more to it.
I have to assume part of what I experience is linked to the community in which I live, but still... if I am not an anomoly, then there's even more improvement that can occur.
Are you sure they renormalize the test? This could have been set in stone in the 1960's, just like the specification for obesity.
Can't muster the self-discipline to keep yourself in shape and poison-free in a society filled with healthy alternatives, free information about the risks you take, and a gym around every corner? Get your genes outta the pool, bub. :)
However, it should be noted that the evolution of the mind and the evolution of the body are at odds right now, much more so when you factor in both of the world wars which were just so luckily placed at the crux of vast technological revolutions. Just as brains were becoming as important to have as muscle in terms of succeeding in society, everyone with the traits of courage and physical prowess heads off to the slaughter. One should not understimate the impact of a massive war on the evolution of the species: Each of the millions upon millions of army-duty worthy men that died in those wars would've otherwise possibly taken up one of the female population and continued his bloodline. Instead, someone else, someone quite possibly smarter but not as physically endowed (those that piloted instead of fought on the ground, or worked as doctors, cryptographers, etc), took his spot. I'll always wonder how much this changed the direction of civilization... Without such an evolutionary boost to intellectual traits, would we have arrived at such a tolerant society so quickly? I say tolerant because in a remarkably short span of time, racial prejudice has been outlawed and homosexuality has been brought into the main light of society as an acceptable way of life. If I'd lived 50 or 70 years ago, I'd never have been able to predict society would move forward so quickly.
Ex nihilo nihil fit.
One thing this article misses is the impact of the industrial revolution on health. People are healthier today than they were 150 years ago or even 75 years ago, yes. The 19th and early 20th century had people in the industrialized world in rather unhealthy conditions with quite poor diet. The real question is looking at the health of people century by century over the last 10,000 years in a variety of places and cultures. Changes in medicine, population patterns (rural to urban) and diet have changed health, but not in the ways implied by this article.
Consider disease.
Antibiotics and modern medicine have changed disease in a big way. However, how common were major wide-spread outbreaks of disease 5000 years ago? The flu of 1918 and the plague of the Middle Ages were widespread because of increased travel and contact among peoples compared to say in 1500 BC. AIDS is a modern example of a disease that has spread quickly globally today, which would not have reached many populations in earlier times. People's in Western Hemisphere were almost totally isolated until 500 years ago. Australia as well was isolated.
Diseases brought from Europe such as small pox were the primary cause of the annihilation of the indigenous peoples of the Americas. Native American peoples had no immunity to such diseases.
Some diseases such as polio and small pox were common 1000 years ago and have been all but eliminated today, but probably were not so common in 3000 BC. Other diseases that have been eliminated such as leprosy seem to have a long history in some populations, but probably not all.
Consider nutrition.
In modern times people in the industrialized world by and large never want for calories. Excess calorie consumption is a far greater public health threat than lack of calories. However, this is not true world wide as famine kills hundreds of thousands in Africa in particular.
500 years ago, a lack of abundance of calories at some point during a person's life was fairly common globally. Also, poor nutrition from an unbalanced diet was far more common in Europe 500 years ago than today. Poor nutrition is a major problem today in South Asia and other areas.
How was the diet of peoples around the world in 2500 BC? Because the world was far less populated then, nutrition on average may well have been better than in 1500 AD.
The diet of woodlands Native Americans 600 years ago was probably as balanced as the diet of modern US residents. This was not necessarily true of the Native Americans of Central America, who relied more heavily on corn agriculture.
Much of this information on disease and nutrition can be ascertained from looking at skeletal remains.
One thing we do know from archeology: humans today are generally larger than they have been over the past 10,000 years. This is probably because of an abundance of calories throughout their lives, although reductions in disease may also be a factor.
My gawd, look at the people around you, and then see THIS movie:
The Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition (2001)
http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/preview/1808403906
Do you think any of the people around you, including yourself, might survive such a thing? I seriously doubt it. The mental toughness to do that doesn't exist anymore and those tough enough to do such things are supported by high technology instead of simple woolen clothing, a sailing ship, dogs, and a talented ship's carpenter (who was the real hero).
Modern humans aren't so robust. Take away my asthma meds and I'd be dead in a week.
--
BMO
My European ancestors tended to live to be around 40, but my Native American ancestors tended to live to 75 years and beyond -- one Cherokee great-great-great-grandmother lived to be 107. Native Americans truly did tend to live longer, but I don't see many studies on it, despite the fact that this pretty well-known. Why, I don't know. But I can guess some of the reasons they lived longer: better eating, more excercise, and most espceially, not a smany chronic diseases such as cancer, heart disease and diabetes in their bloodlines.
I dream of a better world... one in which chickens can cross roads without their motives being questioned.
You sure that the smaller buildings were simply not more robust and able to survive the centuries?
The buildings are not smaller. Their doors were shorter.
One reason is that given already, to withhold heat, but another is security. They're often intentionally shorter than people by a head.
While it may be a bit annoying to stoop to enter and leave your home it isn't any big deal really, but someone trying to storm your home is either going to get a knock on the head or be forced to crouch on entry (slows you down and exposes your neck/head as a target as you pass through).
KFG
Well, I was going to point out the numerous articles linking diets high in animal fats to strokes, heart attacks, cancer, diabetes, etc. But your link to a non-peer-reviewed article by an author who uses all his footnotes to quote his own research totally set me straight. Screw this vegetarian stuff, I'm gonna go eat me a cow or two.
Of course, in order to create enough meat to feed everyone a basically carnivorous diet, we'd probably need to quintuple our agricultural output, with all the associated environmental problems.
Finally, Jared Diamond said exactly what I expected him to say. Rather than attributing the poor health of agricultural societies to a lack of meat in the diet, he attributes it to three other factors. First, agrarians ate a less varied diet. Second, there were more people living closer together and trading diseases. Third, because of the previous two factors, it was much rougher on a society when a single crop failed.
So, no, I'm not buying this whole "we need to eat more meat" line you're selling.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
while our obsession on anti-biotic this and that has created a world where people lack immunities to bugs that our ancestors would of shrugged off. as anyone should know when you are born you share the same anti-bodies as your mother for the first two weeks of life for protection while the baby's own anti-bodies learn from them. this is how polio became such a problem it's a weak virus but when has no immunity it's devastating. also it doesn't just stop there.
l 1 90/1023
it's also what we eat. the human body evolved to basically eat animals for fat and protein and fruit/veggies for the rest, this may surprise people but we did not evolve to eat grain or dairy(other then human breast milk) yet the majority of our current food has the following.
* Highly processed foods that are deficient in important vitamins and minerals
* Synthetic food compounds
* High in refined sugars
* High in saturated fat
* Deficient in fiber
* Mega-size portions
* High in calories
you can drink milk only because of a recent mutation of a human gene. a normal human would not be able to eat any kind of dairy with lactose in it because once they reach maturity the gene for that gets turned off. this was about 6,000 years ago. the rest of the stuff in cow milk other then the nutrients are things we are not evolved to eat and might be the cause of some of out illnesses, along with the lectains in grain which can even block the absorption of protein.
more information.
http://www.earth360.com/diet_paleodiet_balzer.htm
http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/318/7
to assume we know better then nature is the epitome of ignorance.
Actually, the bigger objection I would have to the statement about average IQ's increasing is that IQ is a function of education. With all of the word comparisons and math problems on supposed "IQ tests," how could it be otherwise?
What's their source on that statement? Actually, nevermind - it's irrelevant.
The rest of the article looks interesting though. I am somewhat surprised, given the added stress we face and added pollutants. But maybe extra exercise and healthier eating make up for it?