https://www.basicknowledge101.com/subjects/verticalfarming.h...
They researched the prevalence of cancer in ancient societies using a variety of methods - remains, reporting, etc. The goal was to determine whether the relative lack of cancer in ancient societies was driven by some sort of external factor such as inability to detect cancer in remains, poor reporting, lower life expectancies, etc or rather it was simply because cancer was simply much less common. The evidence available tends to point very much towards the latter which, in turn, suggests that we have created environmental conditions which are driving cancer. The paper references two papers which have pointed to general pollution as a major potential driver there.
Death rates are not a relevant measurement on this topic either since they're heavily confounded by increase in survival rates. You need to look at incident rates, which continue to increase worldwide. Even lung cancer is now on the rise among females.
If people are put off by the paywall: https://sci-hub.tw/#about
Based on their paper alone I can think of at least 5 other hypothesis that they didn't even cover.
1. Periods of fasting and lack of food decrease cancer. 2. Less sedentary lifestyles decrease cancer risks(this has actually been shown to have some promise, with HIIT workouts showing improved response rates and decreased reccurance) 3. Decreased infant mortality caused an increase in susceptibility to cancer because weaker physical specimens are surviving. 4. Firearms. Cancer rates have increased with the output of firearms. 5. Decreased prayer to the Egyptian gods. As these gods declined cancer rates increased.
Some of these are obviously less serious than others, however it doesn't excuse the plausible possibilities. These aren't oncologists, their paleontologists, also known as historians who guess about things based on what they dig out of the ground.
https://dceg.cancer.gov/research/what-we-study/drinking-wate...
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/may/01/california-t...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2782753/
To sum up - cancer is driven by our environment, not just random mutations. As commented by others - we are doing a lot more to our environment and food sources to drive cancer (and other health problems) than random chance.
This link is for fun: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVnMBGXVVUI
When it comes to environmental causes, tobacco smoke and diet make up the vast majority. Pollution barely registers.
Prostate cancer and breast cancer rates are low in Osaka, but in Japanese people living in Hawaii the rates match the Hawaiian population.
Japanese people living in Japan have high rates of stomach cancer, but those rates drop for Japanese people living in Hawaii.
Random mutation rates are linked to rates of cell division. There is an error every x number of times a cell divides. The faster cells divide (say, because of inflammation caused by cigarette smoke), the greater the risk of a random mutation that will disable the normal mechanisms of cell death.
Environmental mutagens and carcinogens play a part by damaging DNA or increasing cell division rates (asbestos, for example, which destroys immune cells come to engulf the invader, leading to a cycle of cell damage) but they are only a tiny part of the picture.
Cancer is caused by math, in a very real sense. Mutation rates * cell division rates = risk of cancer. You can absolutely get cancer without any adverse environmental exposure, which is why some children get cancer very early on--genetic factors increase risk.
The universe is chaotic. There is often no reason for what happens to an individual. It's just random chance. Man's search for meaning is often futile.