Re: CHAT: Religion, Philosophy & Politics

> Date:         Sun, 30 Apr 2000 21:53:39 -0400
> From: Steg Belsky <draqonfayir@...>
> On Sun, 30 Apr 2000 19:40:50 +0200 Lars Henrik Mathiesen <thorinn@...> writes:
> > They may only have lived 30 years on average, but in that time they
> > had much more leisure and social contact than the average civilized
> > person ever gets.
> >
> > The problem is that the planet will only support on the order of a
> > million people in that style.
> According to my anthropology professor, the !Kung San, a predominantly
> hunter-gatherer ethnic group in southern Africa, have a lifespan similar
> to people from the United States.  It's agriculturalists who have shorter
> lives, not hunter-gatherers.  The H-Gs also get better nutrition.
Well, it's hard to get worse nutrition than a typical US person unless
you have access to the same range of manufactured food or live in an
actual famine area. But yes, even primitive agriculture was a step
back. Apart from nutritional onesidedness, it seems that the starchy
diet also led to much increased population growth.

But I'm happy to hear about the lifespan of the !Kung San---no worries
then, let's find 6000 planets more and all go back to that lifestyle.

On afterthought, I think I got the figure of 30 years from an article
about rain forest indians --- a less benign environment. (And there's
the question whether 'your' lifespan and 'my' average life expectancy
is the same thing: Is it calculated at birth or maturity, are
accidents and illness factured out or not, and so on).

Lars Mathiesen (U of Copenhagen CS Dep) <thorinn@...> (Humour NOT marked)