So you're suggesting we compare how old people live by ignoring all those people that died? In 500 years if the average life-span is 200 years will we ignore the people that died during this era in their 70's?
So on one hand you are saying that a pre-historic diet leads to an early death, but you also want to count deaths that have nothing to do with said diet? Not so fast.
Infant mortality has everything to do with medical care and very little to do with the diet. That's why infant deaths should be thrown out when talking about the diet.
If I have 3 people, one died at age 0, one died at age 50 and one died at age 60, the average lifespan is about 36.5. Clearly misleading. I don't think people realize just how high infant mortality was prior to the advent of modern medicine.
I think you missed the point of the previous commenter.
If you have 5 people who are born on the same day, 4 of which live till 80, 1 of which dies shortly after birth, the average lifespan will be 64 even though 80% of the people lived until 80.
His point was that most of our increase in average lifespan can be attributed to the reduction in infant mortality rather than people living to higher ages.
no, it's a common misunderstanding of the lifespan metric. mberning is pointing out that the 'maximum' lifespan hasn't really changed. The change has primarily come from infant mortality so one possibility is once infant mortality is eliminated we would no longer see gains in life span.
