Modern Humans Far More Robust Than Ancestors 359
joeljkp writes "The New York Times has an article up discussing how modern humans are 'So Big and Healthy Nowadays That Grandpa Wouldn't Even Know You.' Despite the hyperbole, the article makes several excellent points regarding the impact of antibiotics and modern medicine on humans in their youth. The 'baby boomers' of today have an overall level of health far higher than their parents did in middle age, and reason stands that their children will have even better health to look forward to." From the article: "The biggest surprise emerging from the new studies is that many chronic ailments like heart disease, lung disease and arthritis are occurring an average of 10 to 25 years later than they used to. There is also less disability among older people today, according to a federal study that directly measures it. And that is not just because medical treatments like cataract surgery keep people functioning. Human bodies are simply not breaking down the way they did before. Even the human mind seems improved. The average I.Q. has been increasing for decades, and at least one study found that a person's chances of having dementia in old age appeared to have fallen in recent years."
Increasing IQ's? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Increasing IQ's? (Score:3, Funny)
Of course. IQ == Idiot Quotient.
Didn't you get the memo? If you can't fix it, feature it!
Re:Increasing IQ's? (Score:2)
Our ethical IQ is lower, and we are less rational. (Score:2)
The problem with IQ is, we have no ethics IQ test. We also don't do a good job teaching people to be rational. You can be a genius but if you are an irrational genius, you'll make the sort of emotional quick short term decisions that will harm the long term future. If you are irr
We can go to the moon, or mars. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Increasing IQ's? (Score:2, Insightful)
we are living too long, and arent miserable enough (Score:2)
What we really want as humans, are shorter, more miserable lifespans. The only way to have this is to keep doing exactly what we are doing. Yes we did increase the lifespan with modern medicine, at the same time we increased misery levels to the highest they have ever been in history.
Inequality is higher than ever globally. While slavery has been abolished, starvation and poverty has been increased. While the world is more educated, we are also brilliant suicide artists, constructing the tools and devices o
Re:we are living too long, and arent miserable eno (Score:2)
It might be true, but I'll never know just from reading your post.
Re:we are living too long, and arent miserable eno (Score:2)
Imagine being born in the third world, and
Re:we are living too long, and arent miserable eno (Score:2, Insightful)
We believe our culture to be the height of civilization, that our evolution has been a steady process of improvement, that we have gone from single-celled organisms, to brutish beasts, to intelligent beings, and only the higher from there, well, one day maybe we'll ascend and become gods ourselves!
Bec
Re:Increasing IQ's? (Score:5, Insightful)
The average IQ is 100, by definition if IQ. That's what the tests are normalized for.
Re:Increasing IQ's? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Increasing IQ's? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Increasing IQ's? (Score:5, Informative)
http://users.fmg.uva.nl/jwicherts/wicherts2004.pd
This study concludes the Flynn effect is a matter of how you tweak the numbers. It's weak enough it's not really worth talking about. Other studies have shown IQs have been declining in the West since the mid to late 90s.
Re:Increasing IQ's? (Score:2)
*snicker*
Re:Increasing IQ's? (Score:3, Informative)
People who take tests normalized decades ago tend to score more than 100. The older the test is, the higher people tend to score.
Lookup the Flynn Effect for more information: "The Flynn effect is the continued year-on-year rise of IQ test scores, an effect seen in most parts of the world, al
IQ is meaningless. Misery and lifespan matter. (Score:2)
We live longer, but we work to increase world misery, not decrease it. To be blunt, we don't care about human emotions, we care only about making a quick $ and nothing else. It's not about lifespan, IQ, or anything relative to the future. It's just about controlling the present.
Re:IQ is meaningless. Misery and lifespan matter. (Score:2)
The only end effect of this increased health is to increase the length of time we toil. Nothing more.
Re:IQ is meaningless. Misery and lifespan matter. (Score:3, Insightful)
But you are right, most people are commiting suicide, look at the world. There are plenty of people who die saving lives, who die protecting the country, and who die with honor every day. Then there are people who just, die in the most irresponsible way they can think of. If you want a death with
Re:Increasing IQ's? (Score:3, Insightful)
1. As noted by the parent, it's technically meaningless.
2. Measuring intelligence is such a challenging task that many people think it's not worth trying.
3. "It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value". (Arthur C. Clarke). If you doubt this, just look at the members of Mensa and where their great intelligence has got them.
Re:Increasing IQ's? (Score:2)
Never take the appearance of the status quo at face value.
Well we are intelligently designed after all :) (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Well we are intelligently designed after all :) (Score:2)
Re:Well we are intelligently designed after all :) (Score:3, Funny)
Is a conclussion like a concussion brought on by the conclusion obtained through the use of a clue-stick?
Evolution IS Intelligent Design. (Score:2)
In my opinion, if you believe evolution is God, you believe in God just like the person who believes an old man in the sky created Adam and Eve, both theo
Re:Well we are intelligently designed after all :) (Score:2)
okay.... Fortunately eye see that our eyes have not shrank to that of Guinea Pigs nor have we undergoing eye enlargement of the Chupacabra (of the movie) kind...
Re:Well we are intelligently designed after all :) (Score:2, Funny)
The New and Improved Human 1.8! Now faster, more secure, and more stable than ever before!
Eh, what's that sunny? (Score:2)
I doubt it. (Score:4, Insightful)
Our generations (current teenagers up to 30-somethings) have grown up with McDonalds and more, and with obesity on the rise with no end in sight, I think we'll begin to see another decline with our generation, with arthritis, diabetes, and heart disease all coming on earlier.
Re:I doubt it. (Score:5, Insightful)
There are, however, large groups of people that are doing quite the opposite (as described in TFA). We have a better chance to see exactly what keeps people going longer, better.
As a physician, these are fascinating studies, although I wonder just how good the "data" is from the 1800's. Skimming some of the abstracts from the original data, they use Nasty Statistical Thingys to impute and imply things which always makes me wonder (there's a reason I went into the Biological sciences as opposed to math and physics) how much their working the data to get thier conclusions, but they've stuck to some clever data points to prove the bulk of thier thesis (body mass index which just relies on weight and height).
Again, we have the potential for creating a much more fined grained dataset if we could ever come up with a consistent language for describing health and disease and come up with a near universal, lifelong, electronic record so that these sorts of issues can be teased out.
Already, quite a lot of this sort of data is coming from the Scandanavians who 1) have a much less diverse population than the US 2) have had more centralized, coherent and universal medical records than the US.
So toss the pizza and cigarettes, unplug the computer and take a hike.
Re:I doubt it. (Score:2)
I believe that's called evolution. (Score:3, Interesting)
However, it should be noted that the evolution of the mind and the evolution of the body are at odds right now, much more so when you factor in both of the world wars which were just so luckily placed at the crux of vast technological revolutions. Just as brains were becoming a
War (Score:5, Insightful)
Women dig out-of-towners, and occupying soldiers are just about the manliest out-of-towners anyone will ever meet. Plus, during an occupation, soldiers typically have the best food, sundries, and other assorted things that are great to have. The point being, it's entirely possible that the drive for war exists precisely because we evolved to wage war as a way of periodically spreading and mixing different gene pools. Just something to think about.
Re:War (Score:2)
Our ancestors fought, but never waged war - that's something only a culture with near-unlimited resources (food, material, and human) can do. But, you are partially correct - periodic skirmishes presented an opportunity to take captives from other tribes and villages and thereby refresh the gene poo
Rape (Score:3, Insightful)
Traditionally, when conquering a city, soldiers will rape all the women and pillage its riches. This is one of the main attractions of the soldier profession. Killing all the males is optional, but also has obvious evolutionary implications.
During WW2, certainly the Red Army practiced this to the fullest, and I would guess that it was practiced by more civilized armies more than was publiciced too.
Re:I believe that's called evolution. (Score:2)
You just have to look at the legions of obese parents dragging around obese kids down the chocolate aisle at the supermarket to realise that obesity is not an evolutionary disadvantage.
Re:I doubt it. (Score:2)
I also wondered about data like "in 18nn, NN percent of the population had heart disease". In that era, diagnoses were fairly crude, and often at best wild guesses. What would those people be diagnosed with (if anything) in t
Re:I doubt it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Have you never heard the phrase "greasy spoon"?
As a baby boomer let me inform you that McDonald's started serving fried burgers because that's where the demand already was. In fact, their food is a damned sight less greasy than was typical in prior times. Many older people go so far as to bemoan the fact that they can't get a properly greasy burger anymore, only that McDonald's crap.
We used to use butter as a staple. The five gallon can of lard/Crisco could be found in nearly any home's pantry. Fat puddings were revered. Colonel Sanders did not invent fried chicken.
Don't believe everything you read in the papers. If you'd ever been interviewed by one you'd know they're full of shit.
KFG
Re:I doubt it. (Score:5, Interesting)
That being said, the water and soil pollution, horrible animal farming techniques, and a lack of any new antibiotics or other non-deathbed "wellness" medicine over the past 50 years probably argues in the grandparent-poster's favor.
Re:I doubt it. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:I doubt it. (Score:2)
I was going to respond this statement, but then I remembered what inevitably happens when you argue with morons on the internet....
Re:I doubt it. (Score:2)
Re:I doubt it. (Score:2)
What information are you basing that statement on? Everything I've read and observed shows exactly the opposite.
BTW, one can cook meat thoroughly enough to kill parasites without making it "crunchy" (as any hunter knows). Sustained temperatures above ~160F for a certain period of time will kill nearly all parasites or disease organisms, extremely high temperatures or overcooking is not required.
SB
Re:I doubt it. (Score:3, Informative)
Firstly, I said water and soil. The air is definitely cleaner because we replaced a lot of coal with natural gas, cleaned up a lot of power plants, and destroyed our steel industry and sent it overseas.
Re:I doubt it. (Score:2)
I agreed people use & eat much less salt today than 50-100 years ago. But your concept of time is a bit off. 100 years ago would be 1906. In 10 years the first World War starts.
"Alexander Twining began experimenting with vapor-compression refrigeration in 1848 and obtained patents in 1850 and 1853. He is credited with having initiated commercial refrigeration i
Re:I doubt it. (Score:2)
I doubt there was ever a golden age where everybody ate healthy food all the time. But I think it's cheaper and more convenient now, so we just eat more often. (I can't believe Wendy's can sell a junior cheeseburger deluxe for $1, the industry is a marvel of efficiency). Perhaps the bigger factor is that people historically used their bodies a lot harder. That kept them thin,
Re:I doubt it. (Score:2)
Re:I doubt it. (Score:2)
Your veggies ain't properly done unless cooked up with some salt pork, old world style.
--
BMO
Re:I doubt it. (Score:2)
Give me liberty, or give me death! (The cholesterol makes sure of that!)
Re:I doubt it. (Score:2)
White Castle [wikipedia.org] was selling burgers for a nickel in 1921.
But the american fast food menu would be recognizable to any working class kid born 1850-1890. He wouldn't know pizza or tex-mex, of course.
Re:I doubt it. (Score:2)
Diabetes (Score:4, Interesting)
at a much younger age than before.
Hey (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Diabetes (Score:2)
When I was a kid (1960s), there was never more than one obese child in any school. In the 1980s, we started seeing a large proportion of late-teens who where chubby. By around 2000, most early-teens were chubby. Now, many grade-schoolers are morbidly obese (over 50% of their body mass is fat) -- and they're the norm, not the exception.
Wit
Exactly, it's what we want. (Score:2)
I'm sure there are some individuals here who do want cures for diabetes, cancer, and other diseases, and I'm sure these diseases could be cured if we wanted to cure them. It's a matter of will, if we put hundreds of billions into it, it would be cured.
Arthritis (Score:3, Interesting)
Not all highschool coaches are dumb! (Score:2)
When I was a sophomore in HS, 1984, one of the coaches who taught phys. ed. told us why jogging was bad. I think jogging peaked in the 1970s. When I was in college, I joined the running club and kept at it until I realized my knees weren't cut out for long distance--but nobody in the running club intentionally jogged. We all strived for an efficient, smooth, long-distance pace. Oh, and shoes have become hi-tech marvels compared to what was worn just 30 years ago. I didn't stop exercising, I switched to
Re:Arthritis (Score:3, Informative)
Most common forms of arthritis are either caused by an immune system malfunction (causing the immune system to attack otherwise healthy joints) or by an infection. Jogging is a high impact exercise, and as such if you already suffer from arthritis it may accelerate the disintgration of the joints but it does not cause arthritis. The high impact nature of jogging is one of its main adva
Re:Arthritis (Score:2)
The article and conclusion totally ignores.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Life was just plain a lot harder then.
It's as simple as that. We've moved from an agrarian society to an industrial one to a service economy. Life is easier. No more scythes or plowing with a horse. No more mining coal with pick axes. No subsistance farming or clearing new fields by hand (unless you want to, I suppose). People are more educated about what's healthy and what's not, no more mercury based patent medicines, or blood letting with leaches.
The article has it half right - modern medicine play a large part, but I believe the major effect is because it's able to recognize and address the true nature of ailments, not because it's making the human body more robust. That is, it's a remedial effect more than a prophylactic one.
Re:The article and conclusion totally ignores.. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The article and conclusion totally ignores.. (Score:2)
But if you compare today with "pre-westernized" America, then life now seems much more difficult that it used to be. No 60 hour work weeks doing the same pointless tasks. No bills, cars, credit cards to worry about. Daily work consisted of feeding the family. There was much more free time, and I would think there was more "l
Re:The article and conclusion totally ignores.. (Score:3, Interesting)
That's actually an unbelievably complex subject. It would seem straightforward: food is easy to obtain now:
1. Go to grocery store.
2. Pick food off shelf.
3. Pay.
4. ???
5. Eat.
In raw energy expended (if you want to count calories), we expend - maybe - 10% of what our ancestors did.
But then.. we work 40-60? hour weeks to do it; I should think if our ancestors had been so busy hunting/gathering/toiling, they wouldn't ha
Skeptical (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Skeptical (Score:2)
Great News (Score:4, Informative)
To the "100 is always the avg LOL!!1" crowd (Score:5, Informative)
Smack those smarmy bastards (Score:4, Funny)
"Ooh, but the cavemen didn't have glut--"
"Fuck the cavemen. They were chased by saber-toothed tigers and lucky to live to the age of 20."
I say pump me full of drugs, corporate America!
Increasing IQ? (Score:3, Funny)
And it took less than one decade for the average IQ to drop below that of a rock.
*Sigh*
Re:Increasing IQ? (Score:2, Informative)
Actually, it has stayed the same. By definition, the average I.Q. is always 100.
Kids these days are morons (Score:2)
Meanwhile... (Score:2)
Re:Meanwhile... (Score:2)
All over the world or just the US? (Score:3, Interesting)
I have noted in the past that I seem to be a lot more healthy than just about everyone else I know. My health increases further as I avoid certain foods such as milk, bread and pasta.... things with excessive processing and preservatives. But those things didn't exist in the same form "back in the day." So I think there has to be more to it.
I have to assume part of what I experience is linked to the community in which I live, but still... if I am not an anomoly, then there's even more improvement that can occur.
Bogus research (Score:2)
I will wrap up TFA...
Americans and Europeans of today, who have health insurance, are bigger, fatter, and healthier than people who were too poor pay their way out of conscription during the Civil War.
Boo War!
Hooray Health Insurance!
* unless, of course (Score:2, Insightful)
article paints incomplete picture (Score:3, Insightful)
The article talks only about how health has improved over the last few hundred years. This is almost entirely due to nutrition and sanitation. The article fails to mentions the much more interesting point that we are probably still less healthy than our ancestors of 2000 years ago. Hunter-gatherers are on average taller than Americans today, and there has never been a documented hunter-gatherer cancer death. Read accounts of the original Spanish explorers in the Carribean and Florida. They saw how much taller and healthier the hunter-gatherer tribes were.
m ondmistake.html [iastate.edu]
http://www.agron.iastate.edu/courses/agron342/dia
http://www.paleodiet.com/lindeberg/ [paleodiet.com]
The ideal human diet is high in meat and animal fat. For the last several hundred years "civilized" humans have been highly reliant on grains and short on quality fats and proteins, which has been disasterous for human health. Only in the last hundred years has meat and fat consumption risen to reasonably healthy levels in wealthy countries. The effects of increased meat and fat intake was clearly documented in post-war UK and Japan, where deliberate efforts to raise egg and dairy consumption had dramatic effects on heart disease and general health.
Re:article paints incomplete picture (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course, in order to create enough meat to feed everyone a basically carnivorous diet, we'd probably need to quintuple our agricultural output, with all the associated environmental problems.
Finally, Jared Diamond said exactly what I expected him to say. Rather than attributing the poor health of agricultural societies to a lack of meat in the diet, he attributes it to three other factors. First, agrarians ate a less varied diet. Second, there were more people living closer together and trading diseases. Third, because of the previous two factors, it was much rougher on a society when a single crop failed.
So, no, I'm not buying this whole "we need to eat more meat" line you're selling.
Article misses the bigger picture-health over time (Score:5, Interesting)
Consider disease.
Antibiotics and modern medicine have changed disease in a big way. However, how common were major wide-spread outbreaks of disease 5000 years ago? The flu of 1918 and the plague of the Middle Ages were widespread because of increased travel and contact among peoples compared to say in 1500 BC. AIDS is a modern example of a disease that has spread quickly globally today, which would not have reached many populations in earlier times. People's in Western Hemisphere were almost totally isolated until 500 years ago. Australia as well was isolated.
Diseases brought from Europe such as small pox were the primary cause of the annihilation of the indigenous peoples of the Americas. Native American peoples had no immunity to such diseases.
Some diseases such as polio and small pox were common 1000 years ago and have been all but eliminated today, but probably were not so common in 3000 BC. Other diseases that have been eliminated such as leprosy seem to have a long history in some populations, but probably not all.
Consider nutrition.
In modern times people in the industrialized world by and large never want for calories. Excess calorie consumption is a far greater public health threat than lack of calories. However, this is not true world wide as famine kills hundreds of thousands in Africa in particular.
500 years ago, a lack of abundance of calories at some point during a person's life was fairly common globally. Also, poor nutrition from an unbalanced diet was far more common in Europe 500 years ago than today. Poor nutrition is a major problem today in South Asia and other areas.
How was the diet of peoples around the world in 2500 BC? Because the world was far less populated then, nutrition on average may well have been better than in 1500 AD.
The diet of woodlands Native Americans 600 years ago was probably as balanced as the diet of modern US residents. This was not necessarily true of the Native Americans of Central America, who relied more heavily on corn agriculture.
Much of this information on disease and nutrition can be ascertained from looking at skeletal remains.
One thing we do know from archeology: humans today are generally larger than they have been over the past 10,000 years. This is probably because of an abundance of calories throughout their lives, although reductions in disease may also be a factor.
We are actually LESS robust (Score:2)
Modern humans more robust? What? (Score:2, Interesting)
The Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition (2001)
http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/preview/1808403906 [yahoo.com]
Do you think any of the people around you, including yourself, might survive such a thing? I seriously doubt it. The mental toughness to do that doesn't exist anymore and those tough enough to do such things are supported by high technology instead of simple woolen clothing, a sailing ship, dogs, and a talented ship's carpenter (wh
Re:Modern humans more robust? What? (Score:2)
Robust? Depends on the dictionary (Score:2)
It's just another example of a word that can mean the opposite of itself.
(Another example is "Certain foods ar
The article forgot to mention (Score:2)
I know a fair bit of people who look much older than their age and people who cant get medicine for any of their diseases.
Someone please add this to the article submission system in slashdot:
UPDATE ARTICLES SET TEXT = 'In America, ' + TEXT;
How about less hard and dangerous labor? (Score:2)
So which ancestors are they talking about? (Score:3, Interesting)
Terminological quibble (Score:3, Informative)
Thus, the Neandert[h]al (sub)species was "robust", the invading Cro Magnon people were "gracile". In common English speech, more common terms might be "stocky" versus "slender".
Ordinarily this wouldn't matter. But we're dealing with a topic in which the technical terminology is relevant. Using the technical term in some vernacular sense is understandable, but it's misleading. And it's likely to lead to dismissal by people knowedgeable in the subject.
You'd think that we'd want to avoid this in a forum that consciously targets "nerds" and "geeks" (two more technical terms that the public uses very differently).
Re:Average IQ increasing? (Score:5, Informative)
That said, it's the IQ measurement that's changing; its actual norm value is in fact increasing, and has been for more than a century (basically, since it was formalized under the current system.) If we made a temperature system which was relative to the planetary norm, even though the measurement would have to be shifted downwards year to year to account for Intelligent Warming (sorry, I live in the Republican Religious States of America,) the temperature would indeed still be rising, even though the scale was being modified to keep it relative.
Just because the scale is renormalized doesn't mean what it's measuring isn't changing.
Re:Average IQ increasing? (Score:2, Interesting)
You're confusing the measurement and the thing being measured.
Using your temperature example, let's way we used a dynamic scale such that the average temperature was defined as 100 deg. As the cycles of solar output, ocean currents, green house gases ebbed and flowed, the average temperature WOULD NOT CHANGE. The average temperature would remain 100 deg as long as the definition was unchanged.
In case you haven't p
Re:Average IQ increasing? (Score:2)
But look on the bright side: we can be around to annoy our kids a lot longer.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Yup (Score:3, Informative)
The "shorter medieval man" myth turned out to be founded on the fact that it's easier to take in clothes than add material to them, so smaller outfits were more likely to be preserved. It's not a huge effect, but given enough time even a small effect adds up.
Re:Yup (Score:2)
I checked the Metropolitan Museum's website and found three suits (all from the 16th Century) listed -
73 inches = 6 feet, 1 inch = 185.4 centimeters
69 1/2 inches = 5 feet, 9 1/2 inches = 176.5 centimeters
74 inches = 6 feet, 2 inches = 187.96 centimeters
My best estimate is to subtract about 1 inch for padding in the helmet and (sabatons)
Re:Yup (Score:2, Interesting)
The buildings are not smaller. Their doors were shorter.
One reason is that given already, to withhold heat, but another is security. They're often intentionally shorter than people by a head.
While it may be a bit annoying to stoop to enter and leave your home it isn't any big deal really, but someone trying to storm your home is either going to get a knock on the head or be forced to crouch on entry (slows you
Re:It's called evolution. (Score:4, Interesting)
No, it's not called evolution, it's called technology. We, Homo Sapiens, evolved our brains 200,000 years ago, but didn't really start to use them until 50,000 years ago. Surely there is something more than biological since we're discussing this via a computer terminals connected to a worldwide network instead of banging rocks against treetrunks, especially if there was a 150,000 year gap in between where we did so, with the same biology. See this wikipedia article [wikipedia.org].
No (Score:3, Interesting)
We just live in a much better environment these days. Had our ancestors gotten to live like we, they would have been just as healthy.
Sexual selection (Score:2, Insightful)
However, size I feel would be greatly affected. In both men and women (at least in European cultures) being tall lends sexual advantages and over time these will begin to alter a populations average genetic make up.
How many women are looking for short, dark and handsome?
Re:reason (Score:2)
Are you sure you mean reason and not irrational fear?
How are those possible futures supposed to affect health anyway?
Or the alternative (Score:2)
Re:Or the alternative (Score:2)