"Seventy-two Is the New 30": Why Are We Living So Much Longer?
Charles Q. Choi
for National Geographic News
Published October 16, 2012
"A 72-year-old in today's Japan has the same odds of dying as a 30-year-old in the preindustrial world. That's the startling conclusion of a new study that gauges just how far the death rate has fallen in industrialized countries in recent centuries.
"In other words," the researchers write, " ... 72 is the new 30."
"Humans nowadays survive much longer than our closest living relatives, chimpanzees, which rarely live past 50. Even hunter-gatherers—who often lack the advanced nutrition, modern medicine, and other benefits of industrialized living—have twice the life expectancy at birth as wild chimpanzees.
"So what's changed in us since the days of our ape ancestors? Are we living so much longer mainly because of changes in our lifestyles or because of genetic mutations—in other words, evolution?"
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Photo credit and caption:
Rest equals rust? Elderly Japanese work in a greenhouse garden (file picture).
Photograph by Randy Olson, National Geographic
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