Teeth Show How Society Was Shaped By Old Age

The Telegraph (UK) ^ | 6-7-2004 | Roger Highfield

[blam]

GGG Ping.

[Coyoteman]

Another good one. Thanks!

[FairOpinion]

"The lifespan of our ancestors made a dramatic leap 32,000 years ago, allowing people to grow older and wiser, according to a study of hundreds of ancient teeth that is published today.

The wear on the teeth suggest that longevity more than quadrupled at that time, a jump that may have been the key factor that shaped modern civilisation. Before then lifespan had increased only steadily."

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[SlickWillard]

Lifespan extended dramatically in the early Upper Palaeolithic Period, around 30,000bc, when Homo sapiens - modern man - was becoming established in Europe. The American team believes there had to be a distinct evolutionary advantage to large numbers of people growing older, which in turn enabled still more of our ancestors to live longer.

Knowing absolutely nothing whatsoever about paleoanthropology, how much d'ya wanna bet this was precisely the point at which early man harnassed fire?

Other candidates might be: Discovered seed-based plant agriculture, discovered husbandry-based animal agriculture, discovered spoken language, discovered the idea of rudimentary written notations, discovered the spear [probably just a tad early for bows and arrows],...

Or maybe was privy to a little divine intervention?

[Ciexyz]

I see gender bias in this article. It mentions the influence of older WOMEN on society...but fails to mention the men! (Guess the brutes were too busy hunting bison to pass on knowledge at the hearth???)

[blam]

" Discovered seed-based plant agriculture, discovered husbandry-based animal agriculture."

These (IMO) are the most likely, they already had all the others.

[KarlInOhio]

I see gender bias in this article. It mentions the influence of older WOMEN on society...but fails to mention the men!

They're just making a value judgement that teaching young mothers how to raise children is more important than teaching sons how to hunt and light their farts on fire.

[SauronOfMordor]

It mentions the influence of older WOMEN on society...but fails to mention the men!

Precisely chipping flint into arrowhead and spear points, the applied geology of how to find likely sources for flint, fire-starting techniques, the vagueries of animal migrations, how to tell when to expect the next salmon run, how to tell when some huge horned critter is about to charge -- all these branches of knowledge are insignificant compared to the proper way to burp a kid. </sarcasm>

Plus, having a few older guys around to protect the camp while they make more spearpoints and arrowheads would have been useful in reducing infant mortality (as well as women-mortality)

[Dysart]

Great find. Article mentions that it's difficult to speculate on the causes for the longevity jump, but my money is on a great advancement in communication. Yea, they already had a primitive language, but I propose that this was the time when it became more structured. No matter what other innovations were put forth at this time, without the ability to communicate these ideas, they would have been limited in scope.

[curmudgeonII]

The wear on the teeth suggest that longevity more than quadrupled at that time...

Absolute nonsense. If the average life span had been 25 years, a figure which seems to be way too low, according to the authors the average longevity would then have jumped up to 100.

[balrog666]

Anthropology ping!

[Dysart]

Absolute nonsense. If the average life span had been 25 years, a figure which seems to be way too low, according to the authors the average longevity would then have jumped up to 100.

No, the incidence of longevity quadrupled, not the average lifespan.

[Dysart]

The American team believes there had to be a distinct evolutionary advantage to large numbers of people growing older, which in turn enabled still more of our ancestors to live longer.

[Lester Moore]

By calculating the ratio of old-to-young individuals in the samples, the scientists found that the number of surviving older people increased throughout human evolution.

And the sample is how many?

[PoorMuttly]

.....or did they learn to stone-grind foods and grain and thereby consume more abrasive particles, accelerating tooth wear........... ......or did the older generations start worrying about the younger's behavior and future...and grind their teeth as they slept..... ....or..

[jennyp]

And the sample is how many?

That information is restricted to the small, privileged subset of people who read the article. :-)

The findings, published today by Dr Caspari and Dr Sang-Hee Lee in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, were based on a comparison of more than 750 tooth fossils from successive time periods.

[dread78645]

... but my money is on a great advancement in communication.

Agree. Probably the start of story-telling or the narrative how-to-survive because this is how grand-pa did it.

[lizma]

Thank you so much for picking up Farmfriend's ping but is she O.K.? Why did she leave? Please tell her we'll miss her and thank her for her trouble She was always the ping I enjoyed the most.

In todays society, grandparents are usually not close by. I for one, don't think this is a good idea in the long run. Wonder how it will effect us.

I spent pretty much every weekend with my grandparents when I was a kid. It was a hoot. My kids don't get to have that. I feel bad for them.

Elders, no matter what sex, always benefit society. Even though we now have books and the internet to relay stories to us, it can no way compare to your Grandpa explaining the Russian revolution to you while you are on his knee. That was priceless and shaped me forever.

[VadeRetro]

Crevo implications ping.