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> To put it another way, pre-civilization life expectancy was somewhere around 30 years.

You probably mean life expectancy at birth. The birth and childhood were pretty tough, but if you lived to adulthood, life expectancy was just a bit smaller.

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I think the point still stands. In the Paleolithic era, life expectancy for the 60% reaching age 15 averaged 39 remaining years [1], so you could have expected to live into your mid 50s, compared to mid 80s today in developed countries [2]. That's a 30 year difference, so it's more than "a bit smaller".

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy

[2] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy-at-age-15

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