> Medicine, sanitation, pooping indoors, and not dying at 20 is very appealing.
IIRC, the low life expectancy of hunter-gatherers is mostly due to the high infant/child mortality. You can see similar life expectancy graphs in several animal species. Basically, once you reach a certain age, you have a high probability of living up to a decently high age.
Regarding "Medicine, sanitation, pooping indoors", well, all of these became problems because of the Agricultural Revolution, where people lived in densely populated areas together with their domesticated animals. Diseases slowly spread from the animals to the humans, and the density and lack of sanitization increased mortality by helping disease spread quickly. The Agricultural Revolution also forced humans to do back breaking jobs for which our bodies were not built for (working hunched over in the fields, or carrying heavy weights on our backs), and shrunk our varied diet into mostly eating grains and grain-based foods.
So I think you should probably re-think your poor view of hunter-gatherer societies.
People always quote this, and I always wonder why it makes any difference.
People in hunter-gatherer societies weren't "more healthy" than we are (as you imply in a later comment). Most people in hunter-gatherer societies died as infants. I don't consider that healthy, and I consider infants people.
On average, most hunter-gatherers died at 20. In reality, virtually all hunter-gatherers died at 0, and the few that survived might live to 60.
Again: this is the "things were better in the past" / "evolution is always right" argument template, and it's virtually always wrong.
It makes a difference because people assume that it's been a constant improvement ever since hunter-gatherer times, and it probably wasn't. I'm saying that the quality of life for most people probably went downhill ever since the Agricultural Revolution, and what humanity has been doing ever since was trying improve it using medicine, science, sanitization, and more.
I'm not saying that the hunter-gatherers were healthier than we are today (note my use of "might've" in the original post), but evidence shows that the lives of people in post-hunter-gatherer societies was worse.
Nothing. I was just pointing out the fact that the low life expectancy doesn't necessarily mean that people were less healthy. In fact, they might've been even healthier than we are (more active, a varied diet, etc...).
IIRC, the low life expectancy of hunter-gatherers is mostly due to the high infant/child mortality. You can see similar life expectancy graphs in several animal species. Basically, once you reach a certain age, you have a high probability of living up to a decently high age.
Regarding "Medicine, sanitation, pooping indoors", well, all of these became problems because of the Agricultural Revolution, where people lived in densely populated areas together with their domesticated animals. Diseases slowly spread from the animals to the humans, and the density and lack of sanitization increased mortality by helping disease spread quickly. The Agricultural Revolution also forced humans to do back breaking jobs for which our bodies were not built for (working hunched over in the fields, or carrying heavy weights on our backs), and shrunk our varied diet into mostly eating grains and grain-based foods.
So I think you should probably re-think your poor view of hunter-gatherer societies.