I wouldn’t imagine it’d play a role in reproducing though. It may help ones ability to live longer, but they have probably procreated long before tooth loss has become a major issue of well being or mortality.
this is misleading, the article starts by saying that life expectancy was 30-35 but then goes on to say that this is the average lifespan, which includes the fact that most people died in childhood.
When accounting for that, the average lifespan becomes at least 50 years old.
can we maybe not propagate misinformation? it was perfectly normal for hunter-gatherers to reach at least 50 years old, and if you think about it for a bit it makes sense that the age where we start to fall apart is about the oldest that people got to in the past, which is around 50-60 yrs.
the average lifespan in the past was something like 35, but that’s because tons of people died early on, which remained true up until the invention of modern medicine which was like 100 years ago and doesn’t really have anything to do with your diet.
There didn’t used to be multivitamins. The broad spectrum of hominid diets never guaranteed you’d get enough trace minerals and elements to keep growing more teeth and there wasn’t evolutionary pressure to do so when you’re like five to ten years into your adult teeth when puberty hits.
I’m surprised that mammals evolved to not regrow teeth. You’d think it would be a significant advantage.
I wouldn’t imagine it’d play a role in reproducing though. It may help ones ability to live longer, but they have probably procreated long before tooth loss has become a major issue of well being or mortality.
It’s also only recently that we’ve been living for so long.
https://www.verywellhealth.com/longevity-throughout-history-2224054#toc-prehistoric-life-expectancy
this is misleading, the article starts by saying that life expectancy was 30-35 but then goes on to say that this is the average lifespan, which includes the fact that most people died in childhood.
When accounting for that, the average lifespan becomes at least 50 years old.
They last long enough if you only live to 35.
can we maybe not propagate misinformation? it was perfectly normal for hunter-gatherers to reach at least 50 years old, and if you think about it for a bit it makes sense that the age where we start to fall apart is about the oldest that people got to in the past, which is around 50-60 yrs.
the average lifespan in the past was something like 35, but that’s because tons of people died early on, which remained true up until the invention of modern medicine which was like 100 years ago and doesn’t really have anything to do with your diet.
Ah, my mistake. I was using the average age. Thanks.
There didn’t used to be multivitamins. The broad spectrum of hominid diets never guaranteed you’d get enough trace minerals and elements to keep growing more teeth and there wasn’t evolutionary pressure to do so when you’re like five to ten years into your adult teeth when puberty hits.
Or at least space them out a bit. You get one set for the first 5-10 years, and then the second set has to last you the remaining 60-70.
Getting a new set at like 35-40 seems like a more sensible system to me.
Gotta be awkward at the office when Dave starts losing his baby teeth and has his midlife crisis at the same time
mammal teeth work pretty well as long you don’t eat too much sugar and acids.
Anthropologists can look at a pile of skeletons and tell if it’s before or after processed sugar.
It’s our modern diet of refined sugar and plenty more that harms teeth
It’s somewhat within our control to do something about it
The redundancy is already there since we have 32 teeth to begin with. If you lose one or two it’s not really a big deal.
And there’s a fine line between helpful regrowth and cancer. the more regrowth there is, the more likelihood there is of cancer.