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HornedDiggitoe t1_j50sxod wrote

Reply to comment by thegreenrobby in Given that reproduction is difficult or impossible when both animals have different numbers of chromosomes, how did so many species evolve to have so many different numbers of them? by MercurioLeCher

> Our knowledge of medicine significantly alters our fitness odds, and allows many genes to reproduce that may not have otherwise survived.

Knowledge of medicine can’t be credited for that. That was largely due to human knowledge of farming/agriculture, as well as human empathy to care for the weak. Humans not surviving long enough to reproduce was historically caused more by a lack of food than anything else. If you had a dead weight (disabled) human in your group and not enough food to go around, guess who isn’t going to get fed?

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rising_ape t1_j50xhr4 wrote

Interestingly, our empathy "to care for the weak" may be more important than our knowledge of farming and agriculture here - we've found Neanderthal fossils that were severely disabled in life and would have been unable to care for themselves, but whose bones reveal that their initial injuries healed and that they lived on for years despite being "dead weight" (physically, at least).

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HornedDiggitoe t1_j50xrqe wrote

Right, but that would’ve only been possible if the Neanderthals had enough extra food to feed themselves and the disabled Neanderthal. You don’t necessarily need agriculture to have an abundance of food, but it certainly helps a tonne to make food abundance widespread.

It still circles back to being about food in the end.

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rm_systemd t1_j50yrtm wrote

It definitely can. Statistically, most people died in childhood from the many fevers, whooping cough, tuberculosis, syphilis, measles, polio, malaria, and infected wounds. There are even more tropical diseases, which is why Europeans had a life expectancy of 1 year in Central Africa prior to their discovery of Quinine.

Adult women then had to chance the maternal death rates due to hemorrhage and puperal fevers.

Those are the greatest reasons behind the 32 year life expectancy.

You can also credit sanitation, agriculture and industrialization, but vaccination soon after birth is mandatory for a reason, and that is why we had a way higher population than what ancient Rome and China could support, even with their excellent infrastructure and decent agricultural capacity.

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HornedDiggitoe t1_j514owa wrote

Without food abundance none of that medicine would have helped much. All these medical marvels you brought up were invented after agriculture. Imagine what the life expectancy was for disabled/sick people prior to an abundance of food.

Also, 32 years old is old enough to have reproduced and pass on genes. Life expectancy was much lower prior to agriculture.

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rm_systemd t1_j52wsn7 wrote

In ancient China, food was not more abundant. In fact, everyone outside of the top 2% ate mostly unpolished grains and wild vegetables, and were usually about 5 feet tall due to poor nutrition. However, Chinese medicine was effective as preventative medicine and supportive treatment, and so the empirical evidence stands that their cities were historically the largest until the industrial revolution entered full swing.

Farming in China has been largely unchanged for the last 2600 years, they had very little arable land per capita and no access to the abundance of the sea like Japan does. Rice is also a luxury for most of history, and only a staple in the South. Northern China was fed on wheat, millet and sorghum etc., and the Yellow River is the area that the Han culture originated and thrived for most of history.

Your point about feeding the weak only applies to famine and war, in a time where death rates are already high. It won't be statistically significant then, because everyone would be hungry and weak, then the plague or a hostile army would come out of nowhere and flatten them anyway. In that case, survival was as much luck as it was rational decisions.

The family, tribe or clan was also the most important unit in all of history, and they always provided for the infirm. Even Neanderthal tribes have left behind evidence that they supported the disabled. Liberalism was significant, because it recognized the individual, where the traditional conservative only saw clans as the smallest unit. That is not how it worked for the longest time. If you were family, you just fed them, it was that simple

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Emu1981 t1_j52xrle wrote

>Imagine what the life expectancy was for disabled/sick people prior to an abundance of food.

What makes you think that there was no abundance of food before the discovery of agriculture? Hunter gatherer groups tended to migrate around to follow the food over the seasons. Between this and the low populations it would have been pretty rare for the groups to go hungry over a long enough period of time for individuals to starve to death.

Agriculture and animal husbandry is what allowed for humans to settle down and to start multiplying like rabbits.

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thegreenrobby t1_j50wgn3 wrote

Agreed. Reducing the complexity of the human experience to "medicine" was a bit reductive on my part, although it certainly plays a part.

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