• Question: how long was a human life span in the stone age?

    Asked by TheChosenOne to Angela, Claire, Ian, Robert, Sarah on 18 Nov 2014.
    • Photo: Angela Stokes

      Angela Stokes answered on 18 Nov 2014:

      I didnt know the answer to this, so i went away and read some papers for you. It looks like there is a concensus that in the stone age you could expect to live on average 35-40 years.

    • Photo: Sarah Harris

      Sarah Harris answered on 20 Nov 2014:

      This is actually a tough question to answer! I’m not an anthropologist, so wasn’t sure off the top of my head – from what I’ve it looks like there a lot of different theories (and I even learnt there’s a difference between life span and life expectancy!)

      Humans in the stone age had a much shorter life expectancy, because so many babies and children didn’t make it to adulthood, which drags down the average age expected to live from birth. But if you look at life span (i.e. once they’ve reached adulthood) it’s much longer, and might not be as short as expected – I read somewhere that they might have lived past 60 years of age!

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