Long lives helped first humans prosper

We live longer than ever in human history. Not just extreme record drummers like Jeanne Calment, 121, but average life expectancy is at a record level of around 73 years. Although life expectancy has increased over the past two centuries, human potential for long lifes have been with us for much longer.

For most of the 250,000 years, humans have lived on earth, we have lived as hunter-gatherers, not working in office buildings and factories in large cities. Among the hunter -gatherers, life expectancy was short – generally ranging from 25 to 35 years. However, these averages believe the real extent of the life of our ancestors. They are drawn down due to high mortality rates at the start of life. In each group of hunter-gatherers who was studied quite closely to provide reliable information on the ages, the elders were identified in sixties, the 1970s and 80s. A major difference between that moment, it’s just that many more of us now have the chance to reach the old one. It seems that the potential to live seven decades is integrated into our biology. The difference between that moment and now is a degree, not nice.

What a revelation that this long -lived potential is an essential part of who we are. It is not only a recent embellishment thanks to modern medicine. Understanding how this long life has become first of all is what motivated me to live and work among small societies like the pain of Paraguay and the Tsimane of Bolivia, and to write my recent book Seven decades. Long live has evolved because it helped our hunting and the ancestor gathering survives hard environments: the young generations relied on the experience, wisdom and support of the old ones to reach both ends.

In fact, I am convinced that one of the reasons why modern humans have surpassed other homesome was not due to individual inteoling brain problems solving complex problems – but cooperation between generations and advanced skills, expertise and cumulative knowledge of the elders.

None of us can avoid the movements of aging, but determine what aspects of our gradual disappearance vary to the other of environments and behaviors could help us learn to strengthen resilience. One of the greatest threats to health later in life stems from the consequences of inflammation – our key immune defense of the organism against invasions.

Inflammage is a term invented to describe a chronic low -grade inflammation of the genus sometimes observed in the elderly, which can promote many diseases of aging, including diabetes, heart disease, kidney disease and arthritis. It is generally characterized by increased production of inflammatory molecules, such as cytokines and chemokines, in various tissues of the body. Reported for the first time among Italians, inflammage was blamed for many of the worst afflictions that people suffer at the end of life in the industrialized world.

However, the inflammage agency is not universal. I have been working with Tsimane horticulturalists from the Bolivian Amazon for more than two decades as co-founder and co-director of the Tsimane and Life Histode project. Among the Tsimane, we found that some of the key inflammatory markers do not seem to increase with age.

In each group of hunter-gatherers, the elders were identified in the sixties, the 1970s and 80s.

Tsimane’s immune systems have high levels of inflammatory activity throughout their evolution of life, but atherosclerosis is rare, just like other chronic diseases linked to age generally associated with inflammation, such as diabetes and Alzheimer’s disease. No inflammation signal was found in Aboriginal Malaysians either. Among the two indigenous groups, various infections are the main triggers of inflammatory responses, rather than obesity, smoking and other characteristics of industrialized environments.

Our results suggest that inflammation itself is not intrinsically bad, but rather that its “pathological” effects depend on the environmental context and lifestyle. Inflammage as we know it today can be a “evolutionary gap” between our old biology and modern urban environments. This is an increasing number of examples where what we think about human aging is questioned once we have concentrated our attention outside the usual, educated, industrialized, rich, democratic (or strange) populations.

Aging is sometimes considered to be reverse or negative growth. Certainly, our muscular strength, our pulmonary capacity and our bone mass seem well before our 40^th Birthdays, and it is downhill from there. But more broadly, growth and aging are in fact intertwined rather than polar opposites. For example, growth rates can also influence aging rates: many species that develop quickly, such as Mays and mice, tend to age quickly, while slow producers like humans and elephants are more slowly. Stretch growth, delay aging. Even at the molecular level, many mechanisms that affect growth and development also have an impact on the rate of aging.

Aging is often like a reconfiguration, rather than exhaustion or a decline. For example, although the speed of treatment and other cognitive functions slow down with age, our crystallized intelligence, which captures a life of experience and knowledge, is maintained or even improves with age, just like our ability to regulate our emotions, and to bear a “bias of positivity” which selectively highlights good while minimizing bad.

Taking a broader vision, the lengthening of HealthSpans facilitated a “third chapter” of human life, a new stage of life stuck between the environment of adulthood and the appearance of advanced fragility. (This recalls the index of adolescence as a “new” stage of life between childhood and adulthood at the turn of the 20th century). But instead of the obsolete concepts of the third age as a period of social withdrawal or rejection by society, many now consider this step as an opportunity for a new type of growth – new roles in the family, the community and society, and new types of learning and fulfillment.

Many of these elders in the third chapter launch original careers, post-life job transitions that combine income with social impact. At least 9 million American adults aged 44 to 70 have already taken original careers in education, health care, government and non -profit organizations, and additional 31 million say they are interested in changing. Their motivations are noble: seven out of 10 adults say that it is important for them to make the world better. Highlighting the growth of the old old man can be one of our best strategies to meet the challenges of the future.

Image of lead: Jorm Sangsorn / Shutterstock

• Michael D. Gurven

  Published on September 16, 2025

  Michael D. Gurven is an eminent professor of anthropology at the University of California in Santa Barbara and member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. His work was presented in the New York Times and on NPR and the BBC.