Achieving Hunter-Gatherer Fitness in the 21st Century: Back to the Future (2010) | Hacker News Reader

Achieving Hunter-Gatherer Fitness in the 21st Century: Back to the Future (2010)

amjmed.com

I know a girl that is a fervent supporter of the Hunter-Gatherer meme. She believes fully that in paleolithic times everything was better because back then we didn't pollute as much as we do and the people that are currently in power would not be. Everybody was healthy and lived long and carefree lives, flowers braided in long hair, snatching the occasional berry of a brush and once in a half year butchering a rabbit.

When I argue with her about this I can't seem to get the point across that in paleolithic times she'd most likely be dead already, and that even though we may have missed the path to some kind of nirvana in our local maximum limited hill climbing algorithm we are very much better off than anybody, even the most healthy and lucky person in the long ago past.

Hunter-Gatherer fitness is not a thing to strive for in isolation, the utility of the energy expense is not balanced by anything you really need to have (say, the ability to outrun a predator) in our modern society.

That said, there is also no reason to let your body go to pot.

You're probably right.

But as far as I know, the short average lifespans back in the days had mostly to do with higher child mortality.

I'd imagine it would be a fairly even spread between violence, famines, dying while giving birth, simple diseases, infant mortality and accidents.

Life expectancy upon reaching adulthood is also a comparison that is frequently done. The arrival of effective hygiene and medicine in the last ~150 years has had a very clear effect on those numbers (a 65 year old US person today can expect to live 6 or 7 years longer than their 1900 counterpart. That's a 65 year old!).

I also think it's tough to correctly estimate the impact of medicine on quality of life. A lot of things in medicine are so effective that we forget they exist (like correcting cleft palate or whatnot).

Early hunter gathers had fewer communicable disease risks due to vastly lower population sizes. So, for example they did not get the seasonal flue. Consider, there was lot's of EU to America disease spread, but almost nothing went the other way. Despite the fact that south America had fairly large scale farming and population growth.

Excluding communicable diseases, most people stay fairly health until 50+ and many hunter gathers likely lived into there early 90's. Infection likely a major risk, but antibiotics are very recent and less necessary than frequently assumed.

Syphilis is believed to be a New World disease.

I guess I'm not informed enough to start picking a number, but as far as I can tell, the life expectancy upon reaching adulthood has historically been notably lower than it is today, even prior to the horrors of civilization.

There where a few that made the trip back. But, an estimated ~95+% of people living in the Americas where killed by European diseases. Granted, some of this was deliberate biolocial warfare, and far more people immigrated to the new world than made the trip back. But, even still it's a huge difference.

Measles, Smallpox, Typhus, and Cholera for example where all major and easily spread diseases.

Antibiotics aren't the only modern advance to combat infection. Consider also the tools and knowledge (proper wound cleaning and binding) that's been developed to prevent infections in the first place.

True enough, but it's internal wounds where antibiotics are most useful. There are also a fair number of Antibacterial herbs for external wound treatment that where in use. Even just honey can be useful. A flowing stream is not sterilized, but can be used for wound treatment, the ocean is also useful for this.

The point is it's not as bad as you might think. Consider cavities, without refined sugar and massive quantities of grains there actually far less common.

That said, late stage hunter gathers where probably much worse off.

On the topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEYh5WACqEk

This is a weird argument as a benefit to hunter gatherers. The benefits you're discussing are only tied to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle because of low population density. They would have the same issues if they were at the population density we are now...but they couldn't be, because the earth couldn't sustain them.

It's definitely not an argument in terms of looking to hunter gatherers for diet or fitness advice, though :)

I agree, I am not saying the lifestyle was overall great or anything. Just that it was better than you might think.

Though as to disease it's not just population density. Domesticated animals mostly birds, pigs, and cattle for example created a larger pool to spread disease. Though diseases will spread from primates to humans with minimal contact.

PS: You could also have separate populations with minimal contact and have fewer diseases evolve. So, we could have high population density as long as people did not travel or keep animals.

And the mortality of women in childbirth.

But you are right, if you lived to 12 you'd likely live a pretty long life - the average was lower though.

count the times you took anti-biotics, cut yourself deep enough or needed surgery (from bad teeth to things like an appendectomy) - if anything of those applies, you would very likely have died in the good old days.

my eye sight requires contact lenses, without i cannot survive.

there is a reason earth only had a minimal population at that time. the current billions of people are only possible through the modern marvels of medicine, agriculture, etc.

hehe, true.

I had Meningitis when I was about one year old and a double Pneumonia when I was about twelve. But nothing happened in my adult life.

The increase in population size has much more to do with technical advancements in farming and food processing that with medicine. Main limiting factor was amount of food available, not diseases.

Most people's eyes are affected by modern lifestyle (all day staring at a computer screen). Eyes are muscles, use 'em or lose 'em. Looking at a two dimensional plane all day instead of constantly focusing on things at varying distances makes your eyes weaker. I bet a lot of us devs who wear glasses now and have terrible eyesight would have been better off in the olden days in terms of vision health.

i was 5 years old when they mounted ashtrays on my face due to really bad astigmatism. my family only had a black and white tv back then, i didn't watch much tv until much later in life.

not entirely sure your theory applies, to me at least.

i think you see much more people with bad eyesight nowadays as life/nature does not kill us off immediately. with minimal corrections we can be productive members of society (unlike 5k years ago).

I submitted this yesterday but it got no traction. It's an interesting read, and she may enjoy it: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/12/31/the-s...

Interesting. I'll pass it on but I doubt it will find a receptive audience.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_savage

Not but 150 years ago there were still hunter-gatherers who thrived in the form of native american tribes:

>Before our white brothers arrived to make us civilized men, we didn't have any kind of prison. Because of this, we didn't have any delinquents. Without a prison, there can't be no delinquents. We had no locks nor keys therefore among us there were no thieves. When someone was so poor that he couldn't afford a horse, a tent or a blanket, he would, in that case, receive it all as a gift. We were too uncivilized to give great importance to private property. We didn't know any kind of money and consequently, the value of a human being was not determined by his wealth. We had no written laws laid down, no lawyers, no politicians, therefore we were not able to cheat and swindle one another. We were really in bad shape before the white man arrived and I don't know how to explain how we were able to manage without these fundamental things that (so they tell us) are so necessary for a civilized society.

-Lame Deer

Thrived sometimes, starved others, now and then died in violent conflict with other Native American tribes. Absolutely they got the short end of the stick from the US (and many other actors); but to pretend that the Americas were a peaceful utopia before the Europeans arrived is silly.

Who is pretending it was a peaceful utopia? That's silly. Counting coup (showing bravery in battle) would earn a man great prestige. Of course there was war between tribes and people went hungry at times, during a harsh winter for example. However, before the railroads and the gold rush expanded out West many Sioux tribes lived in relative homeostasis with their environment and had a nearly constant buffet of Buffalo.

The thing to keep in mind is that there were hundreds of Native American societies, and they varied considerably in their social practices. Slavery was fairly common on the Plains. The Pawnee still practiced human sacrifice in historic times. The Beaver Wars were unbelievably genocidal. It may be the case that some of the Siouan groups (such as the Quapaw) moved west was to escape social collapse and genocide. The enormous diversity of NAtive societies has been largely forgotten/erased through romanticization (itself a form of cultural domination) and sociocide).

Many of the tribes were non literate and had no form of written language which also contributes to the historical obfuscation. Many of those who did use a form of writing, such as the Mayans, had their historical writings deliberately destroyed by the Conquistadors and Inquisitors because their culture was seen as deeply heretical:

>We found a large number of books in these characters and, as they contained nothing in which were not to be seen as superstition and lies of the devil, we burned them all, which they regretted to an amazing degree, and which caused them much affliction.

-Bishop Diego de Landa, 1562

Offtopic, that sarcastic tone really caught me by surprise - it sounds more like an older New Yorker than a Native American tribal leader.

It is characteristic of his role as a Heyoka, or sacred clown.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heyoka

It's hard to quantify happiness or flourishing or whatever we define as the ultimate goal.

That said, it's quite clear that infant mortality, occasional starvation or death from minor infections and other paleolithic norms are not a benefit to whatever we define as the ultimate human goals. It's equally clear (regardless of quantification) that obesity, depression and suicide rates, loneliness, impostor syndrome and other features of 21st century life are not of benefit to us either.

I'm fairly sympathetic to the view that if you moved people into a "natural" setting for a few weeks or months where they gather food, live in close contact with natural cycles like daylight and weather and expose their bodies to the stresses of such a lifestyle, than many of these modern pathologies dissipate. I've experienced this (like many people report) when camping or trekking even for a few days. I am also inclined to accept (in a general way with few absolutes and much room for exceptions) the hypothesis that this is an evolutionary heritage.

Look Brother jacquesm… I agree that people get overblown with their health ideology and that it can get silly. We don't really want to be paleo or even know how. But, it's based on ideas that are interesting, appealing, and not nonsensical. So what if people get a little overexcited about them. You should listen to me when I get into a good futurism conversation. Your friend is looking for a way to live better and her approach is sensible. We also need a couple of puritans and extremists among us, as long as they're harmless. Someone needs to bear a flag and find out where the logical limits of some idea is, like Richard Stalman does for Free Software..

TLDR, sometimes we (people) get a little carried away with theory. But overall, these paleo ideas are nice ideas. They're intelligent, reasoning about ourselves as evolved beings and actively working to alleviate some of the ills. It's way more interesting (and sane) than most things people get passionate about. Ever visit HN when open vs private offices gets discussed?

> Your friend is looking for a way to live better and her approach is sensible.

I wish. She's one very small step away from becoming a street-person.

You should probably revisit your assumption that life in paleolithic times was necessarily so terrible. I believed this by default as well before actually reading up on the topic. Let's start with the data we have: 1. From bones, we know that the average height decreased as people started farming. Bones became more fragile, teeth less healthy etc. This was probably caused by a worse diet and more disease. 2. By studying hunter gatheres in today's Africa, we know they spend less than 5 hours a day hunting and gathering. They spend much more time than us relaxing and socializing. 3. From bones we know that hunter gatherers very rarely showed signs of violent deaths (counter to the stereotype).

I'm sure there is conflicting research about this, but it's clearly not as cut and dry as you make it seem.

So if life in paleolithic times was actually pretty decent, why did people start doing agriculture you might ask? Because hunter gatherers would inevitably be conquered by those who did, because farming can support more people, leave a surplus than can feed armies, and give the opportunity to invent new technology. Hunting and gathering never produces such a surplus, and wild resources are only enough for smaller tribes.

That's not to say we'd be better off living like hunter gatherers today, but we should probably keep an open mind. Maybe we can learn something about how to best live our lives.

By "relaxing and socializing", what exactly do you mean? Do you think they opened a good book and a bottle of Bordeaux?

Leisure time isn't valuable unless you have something to fill it with.

Plus, most of those statistics about historically higher "leisure time" are misleading, because anything that wasn't professional work was probably personal work; mending clothes, performing the brutal labor associated with pre-industrial cooking, etc. I'm also skeptical of any such claims directed at pre-civilization humans, because it's not like they could do a very good job of writing down what they did that day.

> Leisure time isn't valuable unless you have something to fill it with.

Soylent gree^W^W Socializing is people!

Exactly that - they talked with each other, told stories, passed on oral histories, and created very high quality crafts.

There was labor, but it was not "brutal". Food preparation, tool/clothing repair, etc took up a lot of time but it was not difficult and could be done while socializing.

In the earliest journals of scholars who visited early Native American cultures, the scholars actually complained about being bored due to actual lack of work that needed to be done. Everyone really was just chilling.

A lot of work today can be done while socializing as well; it isn't really balanced to discount extra non-hunting/gathering work time because it wasn't their primary role.

I think we can all come together behind the idea that being isolated inside in a cube farm for >8 hours a day with minimal social interaction or variety of stimulus is unhealthy.

Which very high quality crafts are you referring to? Every pre-agriculture artifact I've seen looks to have been made by a modern three year old. The only impressive thing I've seen come from pre-agriculture society is agriculture.

Have you ever done long-distance backpacking or similar outdoorsmanship? Even with modern outdoors tech, conditions are often really rough. Pre-agriculture people were even worse off. It was very much brutal. They also had to contend with unchecked disease, malnutrition, and lethal weather.

Does a life of "just chilling" sound tolerable to you? These people had no intellectual pursuits, nothing to strive for. If certain parts of humanity hadn't developed agriculture and eventually industry, humans would just keep rolling around in the dirt and dying at 50 until an asteroid took us out of our misery.

And why would I want "hunter-gatherer fitness"?

Running slowly for long distances is not the epitome of top-health. In fact it reduces body fat (good) and muscle mass. Just take a look at any marathoner, compare it with short-distance runners.

This looks like "Paleo diet" for exercise. And similarly to it, some aspects make sense, but others don't.

From the first page..

>"These profound and far-reaching changes in genetic expression may explain why cardiovascular fitness and daily energy expenditure on physical activity are among the strongest correlates of longterm health and survival"

This assumes you want longterm health and survival.

Well yeah.. "of course" would I say. Doesn't "everybody"? You have to assume something when you write a paper or debate. It would be pretty tedious and difficult if you have to debate every basic existential questions every time you write or say something. It seriously dampens the progress.

The purpose of "citation needed" is not to improve the conversation; its the opposite.

Right... because most medical articles assume patients and doctors are striving to remain sick and die.

From a post yesterday: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity

From the fine article:

  "Prolonged and excessive aerobic exercise efforts such as
   marathons, ultra-marathons, full-distance triathlons, and
   very-long-distance bicycle rides are inconsistent with our
   genetic heritage. The pattern of exercise for which we are
   genetically adapted involves a diversity of activities
   performed intermittently, at moderate intensities and 
   moderate durations. Even in highly trained individuals,
   high-intensity, multi-hour endurance exercise effort is
   associated with damage to the myocardial cells and
   connective tissue."

If your idea of hunter-gatherer fitness is running marathons all day, perhaps reading the article would enlighten you otherwise?

edit: See Table 2 in particular for a list of hunter-gatherer activities and corresponding modern activities. Note only 1 or 2 out of 13 activities involves running.

My idea of hunter-gatherer fitness is something optimized to give all you have before you're 40. Something optimized for violence (men) and procreation (women). That's stupid.

We didn't evolve to live as long as we do today. We didn't evolve to eat what we'll have to eat to sustain a population of trillions. If we strive to be what we evolved for, we'll go backwards. We should strive to be what we want to be, what we can be.

But see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistence_hunting

> If your idea of hunter-gatherer fitness is running marathons all day

Parent poster said in their comment that running marathons all day is not healthy:

> > Running slowly for long distances is not the epitome of top-health

Stating that after asking "Why would I want hunter-gatherer fitness?" (presumably a rhetorical question) implies that their understanding of hunter-gatherer fitness involved running slowly for long distances. I may be wrong but I don't see why it would have been brought up otherwise given that the article already addresses that point:

  "The prospective clinical trials that have been performed
   assessing the health effects of various exercise regimens
   and the observational data are generally supportive of the
   health benefits conferred by a hunter-gatherer style of
   fitness regimen. A growing body of data indicates that
   many of the benefits of exercise accrue at relatively low
   to moderate levels of exercise. Continuous higher-level
   activity, such as jogging 32 km/week, was not found to be
   statistically better than walking 19 km/week for reducing
   features of the metabolic syndrome."

>Please don't insinuate that someone hasn't read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Obligatory New Yorker Cartoon: http://www.newyorker.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Newslett...

That's awesome.

Those who cannot differentiate between life expectancy at birth and life expectancy at adulthood are doomed to draw misleading cartoons.

I'm pretty sure that once we subject current human population to natural selection that was in effect in paleolithe, everyone who survives a year later will be pretty fit.

My understanding is that, ignoring infant mortality, life expectancy for paleolithic humans was around 50 years.

Does it not follow that the genetic fitness argument can only work if you're some way below that age? The article doesn't seem to address this at all.

Disclosure: I know next to nothing about this subject so I appreciate my argument may be naive to the point of laughable.

Well that would be relevant if paleolithic humans died from cardiovascular disease or physical injury caused by exercise.

I'm pretty sure that isn't the case, and they died of things that are completely solved now (hence our longer life expectancy).

> I'm pretty sure that isn't the case

That's great! Where can we read the detailed data you have?

Nothing is "completely solved". Even the plague is still around, we just avoid it by washing ourselves more -- something you wouldn't do if you followed along with the idiotic notion that what we did "before" was better. It wasn't. People likely died of cardiovascular disease same as today, there was just more competition among "things that could kill you" than there is today. This state of things changed because we stopped doing what we were doing "before".

That's not quite what I meant.

My point is that, if only a small fraction of the population survived past, say, 65 for 8000 generations, we're unlikely to be genetically pre-disposed to anything much that optimises for long term health. It just wouldn't make genetic sense.

So a regimen that focuses on what is good for our paleolithic selves strikes me as being probably only coincidentally helpful for anything much beyond a healthy 20s or 30s.

TBH it's not obvious why we would be genetically optimised to survive much beyond child rearing age, say, mid 30s to early 40s but, again, I don't know enough about paleolithic society to make anything other than a superficial case.

I'm also not arguing against the likely health benefits of daily exercise etc. Long term or otherwise. Just against the genetic case that uses the "what was good for our ancestors" argument.

Actually, there is a genetic advantage for having old people who can't procreate. In societies, having old people to take care of infants frees young people's time to either obtain resources or procreate more.

Also the extensive education and experience hunter gathering requires is all in the old people's heads.

"I'm young and strong but starving"

"Before you were born I was killing wild deer down in that obscure valley you overlooked, now you and a couple kids head out there, and drag some meat back for the rest of the tribe, also we're dying of thirst and I used to play in a freshwater spring in that other valley as a kid"

"Ah yes that is a very attractive looking mushroom to a hungry youngster, but I regret to inform you that 37 years ago one looking exactly like it poisoned my great aunt when I was just a kid like you"

Not sure about Paleolithic, but this source claims average lifespan for hunter gatherers at 70 years. Not bad considering one gets to hang with their friends and family, have low stress, work less.

http://www.anth.ucsb.edu/faculty/gurven/papers/GurvenKaplan2...

There is the curious case of human menopause and grandmothers. Most species procreate young until death. But humans specifically have woman productively live raising grandchildren 10-20 years after losing fertility. Not quite sure when this evolved, but over a hundred thousand years ago.

I think one of Goodall's original female chimps is still popping them out every 3-4 years at age 50, if I am not wrong.

IIRC, one of the main differences between human and chimp behavior towards infants is that human parents are willing to allow other humans, even strangers, to handle their infants. Chimps never allow this, because other chimps even within the group will kill the infants.

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Anyone who is glorifying hunter-gatherers needs to look at the hard evidence, of which we actually have. There are plenty of recorded evidence of hunter gatherers societies and there are still many that exist, such as in Papa New Guinea for example.

Their lives are full of incredible violence and murders happen all the time. There is a reason that the populations do not exceed a certain capacity. Because they kill each other. (Sometimes it's because there is only so much food in a certain area to support them) There are plenty of sources. Guns, Germs, and Steel is a great book that can explain some of this.

Food, yeah defiantly (and definitely). The rest? Meh not so much. Just stand up more than sitting and you'll be alright.

But I genuinely believe we had less carbohydrates (regardless of complexity). A single slice of bread is too much for the average person.

With "normal" food, I only lose weight if I run 5k every day. Otherwise I rise to the point where my kcal requirement increases because of my weight and it "evens" out.

My definition of "normal" includes bread, rice, pasta and stuff like potatoes. Even whole grain.

The main problem with this is how you conceptualize "hunter-gather" exercise. Hunter-gatherers comprise ancient societies spread across the planet in a huge range of ecosystems, from the Arctic shore to African deserts. Most of the remaining hunter-gatherers live in very marginal or sensitive environments that are difficult to sustainably convert to agriculture, like deserts or deep rainforest. As with most articles of this type, I fear that the authors are assuming an overgeneralized and not-very-empirically-grounded overview of "the" hunter-gatherer lifestyle and exercise regimen. Their sources to characterize hunter-gather lifestyle include things like The Paleolithic Prescription (and some paywalled journal articles).

There were hunter-gatherers where everyone walks thousands of miles over the course of the year, and hunter-gatherers where people stay near their villages, and hunter-gatherers where everyone travels great distances, and hunter-gatherers where the women stay at home, and societies where everybody stays at home and just pulls some fish or brazil nuts out of the river/forest when they're hungry, and hunter-gatherer societies so rich that they had hierarchical proto-states with leisured elites and slavery. And most hunter-gatherer societies disappeared so long ago that we simply have no real information about them, as far as questions like this go.

And frankly, looking at their Table 2, while it is true that the actual activities people may do on day-to-day basis may be different (carrying logs vs. carrying groceries) at the same level of activity, the premise that hunter-gatherers had very different exercise patterns may be exaggerated. Compare the discussion here: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-human-beast/200910/...

"Detailed research on two hunter-gatherer societies (or "foragers") allows us to calculate how active they are. These are the Ache of Paraguay and the !Kung of the Kalahari Desert in southern Africa. The !Kung are rather smaller (at about 100 lbs) and have comparatively low activity levels whereas the Ache are bigger (at about 130 lbs) and highly active thanks to their high birth rate.

A !Kung male uses about 2,200 (kilo)calories per day in total, almost exactly the same as a male office worker... Out of their respective total daily energy consumption, the !Kung use about 894 calories on physical activity (compared to 607 for office workers) whereas the Ache use a whopping 1772 calories this way.

Since the !Kung and Ache are so much lighter than Americans, it is important to take body weight into account. ...If Americans wanted to be as active as the !Kung, they would need to add the equivalent of 3.8 miles of walking to their daily activity. ...An hour-and-a-half of shopping with a cart uses about the same amount of energy as walking 5 miles."

Sure, the !Kung are exercising more, but only on the scale of say, walking/cycling instead of driving for short trips. Not on the scale of running daily marathons. It seems like an exaggeration to say: "Humans remain genetically adapted for a very physically active hunter-gatherer lifestyle. Many of the health problems endemic today result from lifestyle that is at odds with this evolutionary milieu."

Although to be fair they do insist that the difference does just imply a need for some more low- to moderate-intensity exercise.

It's a pdf

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