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Longevity & health in ancient Paleolithic
vs. Neolithic peoples

Not what you may have been told

by Ward Nicholson
Copyright © 1997, 1999 by Ward Nicholson. All rights reserved.
Contact author for permission to republish.


Special update as of April 1999: LATE-BREAKING ADVANCES IN PALEOPATHOLOGICAL AGE-ESTIMATION TECHNIQUES have suggested that studies based on earlier techniques (as in the paper discussed here) may underestimate the age at death of older individuals and overestimate that of younger individuals. It's possible the range of estimation errors involved could be substantial. Thus, the profile of age-distribution results in compilation studies like the one discussed below may be flattened or compressed with respect to "true age."

On the other hand, however, this consideration does not affect the "relative age," so to speak, of comparisons between age at death of different skeletal specimens, as summarized here, nor does it materially impact inferences about health status as indicated by skeletal data. Thus, for that reason, the results presented here still remain of considerable interest in the comparison of ages/health status of late Paleolithic peoples vs. the Neolithic agricultural peoples who followed them. At a later date, updated information may be provided to supplement this report concerning estimated age-at-death figures.



How does the health/longevity of late Paleolithic hunters-gatherers compare with that of the Neolithic farmers who succeeded them? Periodically one will hear it stated in online discussion forums devoted to raw foods and vegetarianism that Paleolithic peoples only lived to be 25 (or 30, or 35) years, or whatever age. (The lack of exactitude in such figures illustrates how substantiating one's "scientific facts" is not usually a very highly emphasized value in these forums.) The intended point usually being that those terribly debauched flesh-eating cavemen--and women, presumably--were not living very long due to their consumption of meat.

As is often the case with such "facts," however, if one looks at the documented sources, one sees a different picture. Here we present a summary of a classic paper on the health and longevity of late Paleolithic (pre-agricultural) and Neolithic (early agricultural) people. [Source: Angel, Lawrence J. (1984) "Health as a crucial factor in the changes from hunting to developed farming in the eastern Mediterranean." In: Cohen, Mark N.; Armelagos, George J. (eds.) (1984) Paleopathology at the Origins of Agriculture (proceedings of a conference held in 1982). Orlando: Academic Press. (pp. 51-73)]

Note that these figures come from studies in the field of "paleopathology" (investigation of health, disease, and death from archaeological study of skeletons) of remains in the eastern Mediterranean (defined in Angel's paper to also include Greece and western Turkey), an area where a more continuous data sample is available from ancient times. Due to the unavoidable spottiness of the archaeological record in general, however, samples from the Balkans, the Ukraine, North Africa, and Israel were included for the earliest (Paleolithic and Mesolithic) periods. While the populations in the region were not always directly descended from one another, focusing the study within the eastern Mediterranean minimizes bias in the data due to genetic change over time.

The table below is adapted and condensed considerably from Angel's full table included in the above paper. Angel comments on the indicators given in the table below that archaeologically, lifespan is the simplest indicator of overall health. Growth and nutrition status can be generally indicated by skull base height, pelvic inlet depth index, and adult stature--the latter two of which are shown here in addition to lifespan.

HEALTH & LONGEVITY OF ANCIENT PEOPLES

Pelvic Inlet Depth Index
% (higher is better)

Average Adult Stature

Median
Lifespan (yrs)

Historical Time Period

Male
cm
(ft/in)

Female
cm
(ft/in)

Male

Fem.

30,000 to 9,000 B.C. ("Late Paleolithic" times, i.e., roughly 50/50 plant/animal diet--according to latest figures available elsewhere.)

97.7

177.1
(5'9.7)

166.5
(5'5.6)

35.4

30.0

9,000 to 7,000 B.C. ("Mesolithic" transition period from Paleolithic to some agricultural products.)

86.3

172.5
(5'7.9)

159.7
(5'2.9)

33.5

31.3

7,000 to 5,000 B.C. ("Early Neolithic," i.e., agriculture first spreads widely: As diet becomes more agricultural, it also becomes more vegetarian in character--relatively much less meat at roughly 10% of the diet, and much more plant food, much of which was grain-based.)

76.6

169.6
(5'6.8)

155.5
(5'1.2)

33.6

29.8

5,000 to 3,000 B.C. ("Late Neolithic," i.e., the transition is mostly complete.)

75.6(?)

161.3
(5'3.5)

154.3
(5'0.7)

33.1

29.2

3,000 to 2,000 B.C. ("Early Bronze" period)

85

166.3
(5'5.4)

152.9
(5'0.2)

33.6

29.4

2,000 B.C. and following ("Middle People")

78.8

166.1
(5'5.4)

153.5
(5'0.4)

36.5

31.4

Circa 1,450 B.C. ("Bronze Kings")

82.6(?)

172.5
(5'7.9)

160.1
(5'3.0)

35.9

36.1

1,450 to 1,150 B.C. ("Late Bronze")

79.5

166.8
(5'5.7)

154.5
(5'0.8)

39.6

32.6

1,150 to 650 B.C. ("Early Iron")

80.6

166.7
(5'5.6)

155.1
(5'1.1)

39.0

30.9

650 to 300 B.C. ("Classic")

83.5

170.5
(5'7.1)

156.2
(5'1.5)

44.1

36.8

300 B.C. to 120 A.D. ("Hellenistic")

86.6

171.9
(5'7.7)

156.4
(5'1.6)

41.9

38.0

120 to 600 A.D. ("Imperial Roman")

84.6

169.2
(5'6.6)

158.0
(5'2.2)

38.8

34.2

Medieval Greece

85.9

169.3
(5'6.7)

157.0
(5'1.8)

37.7

31.1

Byzantine Constantinople

87.9

169.8
(5'6.9)

154.9
(5'1.0)

46.2

37.3

1400 to 1800 A.D. ("Baroque")

84.0

172.2
(5'7.8)

158.0
(5'2.2)

33.9

28.5

1800 to 1920 A.D. ("Romantic")

82.9

170.1
(5'7.0)

157.6
(5'2.0)

40.0

38.4

"Modern U.S. White" (1980-ish presumably)

92.1

174.2
(5'8.6)

163.4
(5'4.3)

71.0

78.5

One can see from the above data that things are rarely as clear-cut as dietary purists would like them to be. For any period in time, there is good and there is bad.

The main thing to note here about the short average lifespans compared to modern times is that the major causes are thought to have been "occupational hazards," i.e., accidents, trauma, etc., stresses of nomadism, and so forth. It is not always clear how strongly other conclusions can be drawn about the effect of diet from these figures, but all other things being equal--

Other interesting tidbits on diet and health from Angel's paper relating to the Paleolithic/Neolithic transition:

Angel sums up the Paleolithic-to-Neolithic-and-beyond transition as follows [p. 68]:

Disease effects were minor in the Upper [Late] Paleolithic except for trauma. In postglacially hot areas, porotic hyperostosis [indicative of anemia] increased in Mesolithic and reached high frequencies in Neolithic to Middle Bronze times. [Reminder note: The end of the last Ice Age and the consequent melting of glaciers which occurred at the cusp of the Paleolithic/Neolithic transition caused a rise in sea level, with a consequent increase in malaria in affected inland areas which became marshy as a result.] Apparently this resulted mainly from thalassemias, since children show it in long bones as well as their skulls. But porotic hyperostosis in adults had other causes too, probably from iron deficiency from hookworm, amebiasis, or phytate, effect of any of the malarias. The thalassemias necessarily imply falciparum malaria. This disease may be one direct cause of short stature.

The other pressure limiting stature and probably also fertility in early and developing farming times was deficiency of protein and of iron and zinc from ingestion of too much phytic acid [e.g., from grains] in the diet. In addition, new diseases including epidemics emerged as population increased, indicated by an increase of enamel arrest lines in Middle Bronze Age samples....

We can conclude that farmers were less healthy than hunters, at least until Classical to Roman times. [Due to the difficulty in disentangling all relevant factors, as Angel explains a bit earlier] [w]e cannot state exactly how much less healthy they were, however, or exactly how or why.

--Ward Nicholson

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