We were always tribal and social animals, so I wonder if the security from communal living played a very important role in moderating stress and building resilience.
Much much lower actually. We use the same stress response for seeing a lion that we do to stress about making a mortgage payment. That's why we get ulcers and zebras don't
On top of that Homo sapiens also just had much more freetime and the median lifespans were actually not too far off from what they are today (~72 years[0]). Yes there was a huge dip in lifespans in (some) agricultural societies and when the industrial revolution started and there's definitely a lot of variation in difficulties faced but overall on average prehistoric peoples were healthier and much less stressed out than the average American is today. Also peoples that lived on islands and certain other ecosystems didn't really have to deal with predators at all. Predators are very unlikely to be the biggest source of stress in general as even the most dangerous of all predators, big cats, are very unlikely to attack a group of humans. As long as you're with your tribe you generally don't have much to fear.
[0] https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20181002-how-long-did-anc...
Don't have a source on hand though, may have come from a book by Robert Sapolsky
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_Zebras_Don%27t_Get_Ulcers
The book is about stress and the impact of glucocorticoids on the body. The chemical stress response used in "the wild" by animals is actually the same as the stress response we have when worrying about losing our job, not being able to complete a paper for school, dealing with poverty, etc. It's a partial explanation for why modern humans have so many chronic diseases that are rarely seen in other animals (or even archeological/anthropological evidence of non-industrial societies but he doesn't really go there much in the book)
I also highly recommend Sapolsky's Human Behavior Biology course which he taught for Stanford but published on YouTube:
Carrying this forward, we humans will have to work on better systems, because it's about to get worse/weirder. Our brains aren't designed to be good at detecting lies visually -- we have mental processes for speech, but visually, what you saw was always real. Now with AI in the mix, it's gonna get... messy.
But you also knew that you had to go on the hunt again tomorrow.
And you still have to worry about traffic/accidents, performing well, getting fired or laid off, getting berated by customers/clients/bosses, plus any number of additional anxiety-inducing events.
Most of us would probably still take that trade, though: at least sitting all day kills you slowly relative to a mountain lion.
If they made it to at least 15, then probably on average somewhere between the 40s and late 50s from estimates I’ve seen.
(1,000 generations being probably < 30kya; there appears to have been a fairly radical expandsion in lifespan around 30kya, before that most estimates I've seen would have adults, by thrbsame definition, averaging sonewhere in the mid-30s or so.)
Huh? Humans can live upwards of 3 generations worth of humans. It's not uncommon for humans to remain functional enough to raise their grandchildren!
Highly recommended listening.
As a neuroendocrinology researcher, much Robert Sapolsky’s life work revolves around the questions your pondering on. He has spent years studying wild baboons in Kenya, “ .. specifically, Sapolsky studies the cortisol levels between the alpha male and female and the subordinates to determine stress level.” [2]
[1] https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/the-peter-attia-drive/...
You... wonder? It's a well known fact that tribal societies are hypersocial. Rugged individualism and loneliness are very modern things.
if you can, read Sapolsky's book about it "Why zebras don't get ulcers"