<[email protected]> wrote: > > What I find interesting is what influence evolution may have on lifespan > and why. Is long life a species survival strategy? >
Among primates, yes. Species that take care of offspring, rather than laying eggs and abandoning them, must have a long adulthood. They cannot die off quickly the way salmon do after spawning. People and chimpanzees not only take care of their own offspring, they take care of orphaned members of the tribe, and they pass on cultural and technical knowledge. (People obviously more than chimps!) This created an advantage to surviving into old age. Especially during long span of history in which we had language but no writing, and the only store of knowledge was in people's brains and in epic poetry and stories. (Epic poetry is often codified knowledge in an easy-to-remember format.) For women, this created an advantage to living well past menopause which I think is unique to our species. Some anthropological studies show that elderly women transmit more information and do useful, life-saving labor in old age than men do, which may explain why they live longer than men, even after they are elderly and no longer able to do as much physical labor as young people do. - Jed
