Damn, I don't have my sources to hand, but: it's also very difficult to project definitive info re: agriculture/etc? because about the time we do a lot of agriculture we also start doing a lot of WAR, and a lot of high income inequality, and also the infant mortality thing is more significant than one might think (ie: actually we may just be getting an increased survival of "suboptimal" specimens to actual adulthood, whereas the rigours of babyhood/very young childhood are often more rigorous in a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, as well as there being fewer to-term pregnancies overall).
We also honestly have very poor total numbers of survivals of bones for pre-agriculture societies because we have significantly fewer mass gravesites that are protected from animal scavengers/etc, plus the usual problems with getting bone survivals at all, so we can't be sure how much of our data is because we have a Weird Sample. (This doesn't get talked about a LOT, but speaking as someone who does the history shit all the time it is a significant issue and it's ALWAYS a significant issue: we can only judge by survivals and sometimes our survivals might be subject to weird selection pressures we're not aware of but are not necessarily representative to our work).
This is also germane:
Gurven and Kaplan 8, in a review of hunter‐gatherer and subsistence farmer mortality data across 12 populations, report that ~60% of newborns in these populations survive to age 15 and ~40% to age 45. Those who survive to age 45 can expect to live another ~20 years 8.
If you make it to 45, you're likely to make it to 65 - but you probably WON'T make it to 45. So, you know.
Basically we know that hunter gatherers move a hell of a lot more than we do! And that this appears to be better for their health when everything else is equal.
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Date: 2019-04-25 07:44 pm (UTC)We also honestly have very poor total numbers of survivals of bones for pre-agriculture societies because we have significantly fewer mass gravesites that are protected from animal scavengers/etc, plus the usual problems with getting bone survivals at all, so we can't be sure how much of our data is because we have a Weird Sample. (This doesn't get talked about a LOT, but speaking as someone who does the history shit all the time it is a significant issue and it's ALWAYS a significant issue: we can only judge by survivals and sometimes our survivals might be subject to weird selection pressures we're not aware of but are not necessarily representative to our work).
This is also germane:
If you make it to 45, you're likely to make it to 65 - but you probably WON'T make it to 45. So, you know.
Basically we know that hunter gatherers move a hell of a lot more than we do! And that this appears to be better for their health when everything else is equal.