Philip J. Goscienski, M.D.
May 2007
"But didn't the average person in the Stone Age die at about 28 years of age?" "How can our lifestyle be so bad when life expectancy is so long now?" Those are valid questions but they are based on statistics, not reality.
According to anthropologists, the average life expectancy during the Stone Age was about 28 years. That sure doesn't seem like much but by 1900 it wasn't dramatically better in America — only 48 years. Life expectancy soared during the next 100 years. For women in the United States it is now 80 years and men are about 4 years behind. Japanese women hold the current record, averaging 84 years. It's even higher in Okinawa, where 40 of every 100,000 people reach the century mark, about 4 times the number of Americans that reach 100.
Not all the credit goes to my medical colleagues. Environmental advances that include safe water supplies, refrigeration and control of sewage made more of an impact on average lifespan than antibiotics and other medical advances did. Physician care certainly doesn't matter much in Okinawa, where many citizens never even see a doctor in their lifetime
Infant mortality has a profound effect on life expectancy, which is simply an average of age at death. For instance, at the start of the 20th century in England, more than one-third of all deaths occurred before the age of 4 years. By the year 2000 less than 1 percent of children younger than four years had died. But if a Stone Age individual was lucky enough to avoid the perils of being born and to be agile enough to escape human and animal predators, he or she could expect to reach the age of 60 or 70. About 10 percent of them did!
The temperate climate that prevailed where the first humans originated provided hundreds of plant and animal species for food. Widely scattered bands of humans were not crowded enough to support epidemic diseases. It wasn't until humans became settled farmers that reliance on a few crops led to famine and crowding resulted in transmission of human parasites and plagues. Wherever hunters became farmers the average age at death went down.
People who existed during the Stone Age usually died quickly, especially if they were some animal's lunch! If a severe injury didn't lead to a rapid demise, a wound infection could lead to death in a few days. Modern medical miracles can keep even the brain-dead alive, protecting them from infection and sustaining them with feeding tubes. Type 2 diabetes didn't even exist in the Stone Age but it can last for decades now as physicians battle one severe complication after another, postponing death but prolonging disability. The average American spends the last 10 percent of his or her life battling the effects of heart disease, cancer, dementia and stroke. As longevity increases, that percentage will also increase.
There are lots of examples of those who have chosen not to accept years of frailty, discomfort and disease. Their solution: exercise daily and avoid excessive weight gain. So simple, yet for most of us, so difficult. Ah, for the Stone-Age lifestyle!
Philip J. Goscienski, M.D. is the author of Health Secrets of the Stone Age, Better Life Publishers 2005. Contact him at drphil@stoneagedoc.com.