DBWI: WI humans lived longer?

Depends upon whether biology or outside factors are what's shortening lifespans. The figures you quote (roughly age 10 for puberty and mid-30's absolute max) look like some of the information I've seen on Neanderthals, but the Neanderthals lived under severe environmental conditions which may have caused them to miss their full genetic potential.

As for the vast majority of modern humans, the maximum lifespan didn't exceed the 40's until the 20th century, with improved public health, sanitation, and nutrition being the deciding factors.

OOC: Really? Many people lived into their 60s, 70s, 80s, and even 90s before the 20th Century. Average life expectancy was lower because so many people died at birth or in childhood from various diseases and accidents, but anyone who reached adulthood could count on living well beyond their 40s under normal circumstances.
 
Goodbye cruel world

At last a computer terminal that is unguarded! My name you need not know, but my age is 52, a fact accertained by the doctors and scientists who keep me here in this cellar. I approached a doctor after living in the hills with my family. They had all started to deteriorate as if their life was advancing at a speeded up rate, to the extent that my wife died last month. She was 49. My children still survive in our secret valley, but they too age at an incredible speed. I alone am uninfected by what the doctors call "the vapours". My call for help for my family was met by incredulity, and the dispatch of a military biological unit into the hills to discover my families whereabouts. I will not divulge the spot, despite the pain they inflict on me. I have tried to escape back to my loved ones, but they chain me to the operating table that is in the middle of the room they keep me in. Yesterday they started to make preparations to harvest my organs for research. Please help me, I can hear them shouting outside the door! They have found a key -- help me -- plea
 
Good bye Cruel World Hoax

Dear readers

Please forget the message you have received from our establishment. It was a hoax of the worst kind. To suggest that we men of science would stoop so low as to harvest a persons organs, can only be described as a cruel slur against our faculty.

When we find the purpetrator of the cruel hoax, we will dismiss him from our employment at once.

To suggest that man could live so long is just a fantasy, and is not possible in this world or any we know!

Once again we appologise for the posting.

Colonel Troutstrangler
MSc Eugenics BSc Military Studies

Head of Military Biological and Physical Science Department
Central Region
Kingdom of Lancashire
 
Stupid hoaxes. It's just to poke fun at conspiracy theorists. I just read that it is impossible for anyone to live longer than 37 because of the human body's limitations.

(OOC: Nice.;))
 
surely nobody would be willing to go to war either with such a long life to look forwards to there would be no army!
Also criminals sitting life sentence would be sitting there forever sucking up tax money you'd have kill them all with execution! although with a life sentence becoming half a century the crime rate might drop significantly?

A life sentence at hard labor could balance things out. At least, you'd get lots of public works projects accomplished at minimal cost over that much time.
 
OOC: Really? Many people lived into their 60s, 70s, 80s, and even 90s before the 20th Century. Average life expectancy was lower because so many people died at birth or in childhood from various diseases and accidents, but anyone who reached adulthood could count on living well beyond their 40s under normal circumstances.

My apologies; I should have clarified that the average maximum lifespan didn't exceed the 40's. Of course, the upper classes lived longer as they could avoid backbreaking and dangerous manual labor and had access to better food and medical care, and there have always been exceptional cases of people who could live long lives in spite of their conditions.

But for the vast majority of people not lucky enough to win the genetic lottery (by being born to the right parents or with the right genes) the driving factors in determining lifespan were public health and safety.

Now, back to the context. ;-)
 
A life sentence at hard labor could balance things out. At least, you'd get lots of public works projects accomplished at minimal cost over that much time.

If the maturity was older, though, maybe it might be harder for the prisoners. Especially with more people surviving past 30. Although, prisoners might not live that long in such harsh conditions.
 

Keenir

Banned
OOC: How would civilization develop if no one has ever lived past 35, and that age being quite rare?

ooc: probably a buffet of options:
  • the Big Man / Potlatch principle of leadership - he who spends the most / does the most, wins leadership.
  • the Judges principle of leadership - he who is held to be divinely-appointed, leads.
  • the Oddessey principle of tradition - you can pass an insanely-large amount of knowledge through oral teachings.
  • the Rosetta Stone principle of tradition - write everything down, and preferably in more than one language/dialect.
 
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