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by chistev4 hours ago |
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upvoteby CookieCrisp4 hours ago|
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What did people do 500 years ago?
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upvoteby EduardoBautista4 hours ago|
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Die as a child at alarming rates
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upvoteby lukan4 hours ago|
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But those who did not, got quite old without ever seeing a doctor.

(If we are talking about hunter gatherers, not poor exploited peasants)

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upvoteby steve_adams_863 hours ago|
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Humans have assisted each other medically, supported injured and disabled tribe members, and sought out medicinal herbs since long before history was written. I'm not sure how you'd delineate between modern health care and when humans never had some notion of health care and/or support when bodies enter failure modes. We don't survive well without a lot of assistance and care, and living long lives required plenty of bodily maintenance regardless of how fortunate and healthy we were.
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upvoteby b1122 hours ago|
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I think, if you add clarity, such as how aspirin alone is a wonder, how iodine to clean wounds is a life saver, how soap is a miracle, and all the parasites we don't have, yet all this we take for granted.

We are certainly much healthier, with the little trinkets we keep in our houses.

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upvoteby lukan1 hours ago|
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Willow bark was used like aspirin. Soap is a old concept (ash is desinfectant as is vinegar ). Alcohol for cleaning wounds is a very old concept alike. As was jumping into clean water every day (also in winter).
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upvoteby b11258 minutes ago|
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Yes, and all of those solutions are suboptimal compared to the modern variants, were not always available, and making alcohol required technology (just as fire usage was technology).

The real point here, is a lot of people today don't realize how supported they are, with medicine and the trappings of modern life. The simple things I've listed are quite literally a wonder, but to the modern human, often it's not even considered a big deal.

Even in a rural remote areas of Canada or the US, you can just get in your vehicle, drive for half an hour, and then suddenly be surrounded by tens of thousands of products to make you healthier. A city dweller can walk for five minutes, and have the same.

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upvoteby lukan46 minutes ago|
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"The real point here, is a lot of people today don't realize how supported they are, with medicine and the trappings of modern life. "

No doubt. But I like to spend time in remote wilderness, so I do know what I have and do not have there. I definitely feel healthier if I am outside more often and can take care of various injuries myself, but if I would really need one, I surely would call for a modern medical helicopter and not go find some plants.

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upvoteby TheOtherHobbes25 minutes ago|
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One of the problems with modern life is that we've forgotten how many things will try to kill you given half a chance. So we grow up complacent with normalcy bias and end up inventing imaginary personal threats - like being scared of vaccines - instead of dealing with real collective threats like climate catastrophe.
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upvoteby fhn2 hours ago|
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quite old as in 50 because the avg lifespan back then is certainly lower than it is now.
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upvoteby LorenPechtel14 minutes ago|
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There was no "average" lifespan back then. It is a bimodal curve, one peak young, one peak old. "Life expectancy" is far more about the size of the two peaks than an average. In modern society the old peak very much dominates, but even then "life expectancy at birth" is still substantially influenced by the size of the two peaks. Much of the difference across the developed world actually comes down to what doctors classify as a live birth. (Big negative correlation between infant mortality and stillbirth.)
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upvoteby 1attice4 hours ago|
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Citation required
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upvoteby Fezzik3 hours ago|
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Gurven, Michael & Hillard Kaplan (2007). “Longevity Among Hunter-Gatherers: A Cross-Cultural Examination.” Population and Development Review, 33(2), 321–365

If you made it past age 5 as a hunter-gatherer you’d likely live to 50-60 years of age.

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upvoteby 1attice3 hours ago|
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Interesting. Yet as someone approaching the first of those two last numbers, I would say that that isn't very old at all
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upvoteby Fezzik3 hours ago|
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It’s also worth noting that, while this is (I think) likely the most cited paper on the topic, all the observed societies are from the 20th century. So we can’t necessarily extrapolate from that that hunter-gatherers 300,000 years ago fared the same.
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upvoteby exe343 hours ago|
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Old people are at least 20-30 years older than I am.
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