Hi, I have an anthropology question. Is it true when people say that in hunter gatherer societies people generally lived as long as we do now, but the average lifespan was shorter because of high infant mortality rates. because that sounds like total shit to me. They ate meat raw off the bone and though you cured a headache by drilling a hole in your skull. How did those idiots live as long as us when we have antibiotics, 9-5 jobs and the FSA/FDA etc telling us what we can't eat. Also I thought I read in a textbook that the average lifespan was like 30 so wtf
I read the title as "Anthropomorphic question" and thought this thread was going to be about furries...
Drilling holes in skulls wasn't a medieval thing, it's something they discovered on a whole bunch of ancient skulls.
Drilling holes in heads was never a cure for headaches, that's a myth. It was used to counter swelling in the brain. It was also a last resort effort that was often unsuccessful.
They don't. They just know people drilled a perfect hole in someone's skull while they were still alive. It wasn't some cult thing specific to one group either.
there are also fossils of prehistoric people found with holes in their skulls but different causes of death, meaning that our party people ancestors were smart enough to get away with it
Large quantities of their diet consisted of plant food and "cooking", i.e. heating food for consumption, was invented an estimated million years ago or more.
People say "hunter-gatherers" but seem to only focus on that first part. Hunting an animal takes a lot of energy, time, focus, and above all, risk of injury. Majority of the diet consisted of food that was both plentiful and easily accessible - plants.
That's because in the past 100 years, mankind has basically extracted nutrients and chemicals from food and concentrated it en mass thinking it'll be even healthier if we eat it like that when our bodies were not designed to.
Sugar was something rare to come across in the natural world, so our bodies were designed to enjoy it heavily when we did find it. But now it's literally in every single beverage and meal at the highest concentration we can. And we still enjoy the hell out of it because our bodies think we found that rare nutrient every time we eat it.
I'm by no means an expert but I'm in the final stages of a double major, in anthropology so ill do my best to try and answer what you are asking, with some reservations.
To preface, a lot of what you are asking is a vast oversimplification and generalization of ~150,000 years of human history, and its varied and distinct cultures and evolution, so to some extent I can only provide broader answers. (I also have no clue how to post since newpunch so bear with me)
Is it true when people say that in hunter gatherer societies people generally lived as long as we do now, but the average lifespan was shorter because of high infant mortality rates. because that sounds like total shit to me.
Generally speaking, this is somewhat true for a number of reasons. Now it depends on the exact epoch of which we speak (there was an arguable decline in life expectancy around the time of the agricultural revolution in some areas for example) However, the notion of "average lifespan" as it is typically represented is somewhat skewed downward massively by infant and child death, this at least is true. Average lifespan from birth, as it should better be called, is exactly that, an average of how long one can expect to generally survive once they leave the womb. The first ~10-15 years of life are tough, especially the first 5, and its in these years that we see the majority of deaths more or less through out the majority of human history, a trend that stopped only relatively recently, and only in relatively affluent nations.
If we take a population of 5 individuals, in two scenarios, and count lifespans from birth, compared to lifespans of those who reach 15 years of age lets say, you can see how childhood vulnerability drives the average downwards.
Lifespan from birth (all)
5+1+3+45+50 = 20.8 ~21 years of age, life expectancy from birth.
Now if we only include the population which survives childhood:
lets say:
45 50 42 26 17 = 36 years of age
Now for a more accurate portrayal of this, wed need specific years, locations, archaeological data, etc, but the general thought process behind saying that infant death rates alter the perception of lifespan statistics, is indeed true. It's not that the majority of people are going to die at 35, its that the majority of people will never reach 5 to begin with, and the average reflects this.
Generally hunter-gatherer populations were and are most at risk to physical trauma as a means of death, as opposed to disease, old age, or other causes. This isn't to say that such factors wont make it more likely to for them to die, its simply that these would compound the risks of the lifestyle. More or less, a fit adult Hominin could expect to survive on average (it's hard to average the 150k or so years modern man has existed) more or less into late adulthood, early old age assuming luck or prowess kept them free from the majority of harm. But to get there, they would have to survive the gauntlet of childhood.
Now for a few other minor tidbits:
They ate meat raw off the bone
Evidence for the first use of fire to cook food predates modern man, it predates most Hominin species, and was likely first undertaken by hominids some ~1.5 million years ago, with the best evidence pointing to the use of cooking fires at a bare minimum of 1 million years ago as a rough estimate. This predates homo sapiens by some 800-900 thousand years.
though you cured a headache by drilling a hole in your skull
This is known as trepanning and still does occur, and occurred long after 9-5 jobs, antibiotics and the FDA. We really don't know why this was widespread among historic populations (well we do for those after the advent of written language, but that's a tiny sliver of human history.) In modern terms it does have some use in cranial surgery, and to some extent, it may have been used the same way historically , or as a ritual practice. The truth is we just really don't know exactly why it was done, though there is evidence to suggest both successful medical usage, as well as ritual act among prehistoric man.
hunter gatherer societies
As a final minor heads up, this in no way denotes a specific era of history. There are plenty of modern hunter gatherer socities that make use of metallurgy, industrial tools, modern medicine and belief. Its simply a lifestyle and a way to find sustenance. Remarkably enough, such modern societies, no matter the exact nature of their practice are typically both far healthier, and happier than their contemporary counterparts, showing markedly lower rates of depression and common illness than their 9-5 FSA and NHS counterparts.
Consider the epidemiology here. Yes we have far more advanced medicine now, but we also live in cities. Cities have an extreme population density whereas your typical hunter gatherer society is far more sparsely populated. Diseases have a much, much harder time spreading in these societies.
Sorry, you need to Log In to post a reply to this thread.