News | Redefining Aging: A Major Achievement of Evolution
In modern society, aging is often viewed as a process to avoid. Popular culture celebrates youth and uses it to define trends and beauty, while the anti-aging industry thrives, with billions of dollars spent on creams, pills, and cosmetic surgery. Yet aging is an undeniable reality. People are living longer than ever, while fertility rates in more than half of the world's countries have fallen below replacement level, making population aging a major issue for economies and health systems.
In his new book Seven Decades: How We Evolved to Live Longer (Princeton University Press, 2025), Michael Gurven, professor of anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, argues that “humans evolved to live to age seventy.” In his view, longer life expectancy over the past century has not simply extended the upper limit of the human lifespan; it has enabled more people to reach older age.
Gurven notes that humans already had the potential for a longer life thousands of years ago in hunter-gatherer societies. Unlike most species, which decline rapidly after their reproductive years, humans can live for decades after menopause. This life beyond reproduction is a rare evolutionary success.
Aging from an evolutionary perspective
In the book, Gurven examines aging through an evolutionary lens and looks back across human history and global cultures. Drawing on his long-term field research among the Tsimané, a forager-horticulturalist population in the Bolivian Amazon, he shows how lifestyles and physiology in nonindustrial societies reflect the ecological realities of early humans.
He explains that although average lifespans in these societies may appear short, high infant and child mortality lowers the overall figure. People who survive childhood often live into their seventies or even eighties. Longevity, therefore, is not exclusively a modern achievement but part of the basic human evolutionary pattern.
The key to longevity: intergenerational cooperation
“Our survival beyond the reproductive years is not an accident,” Gurven emphasizes. Cooperation and resource sharing across generations were key to overcoming the limits of natural selection. In hunter-gatherer societies, older people may have less physical strength, but they contribute uniquely to group survival and reproduction by caring for grandchildren, resolving conflicts, passing on knowledge, and making tools. This multilayered social cooperation increased the biological fitness of the entire population and helped extend the human lifespan.
He notes: “At a certain stage of evolution, helping children and grandchildren survive became more beneficial to the continuation of one's genes than continually producing more offspring.”
What does it mean to be old?
In many traditional societies, becoming old is not defined by a number, but by whether a person can still contribute to the community. Gurven asks humorously: “If someone never knew their age, how old would they feel?” In groups whose languages lack words for large numbers, people are usually considered old only when they can no longer work. Continued participation in community affairs and the passing on of knowledge and skills keep older adults active later in life.
This sharply contrasts with industrialized societies, where retirement often symbolizes withdrawal from mainstream life. Gurven believes this view underestimates the potential of older people. He calls on society to reconsider old age and recognize the important roles of older adults in education, culture, and community building.
“The prospect of global aging may seem concerning,” Gurven concludes, “but the broad contributions of middle-aged and older people are precisely what have allowed human civilization to endure. Being old is largely a state of mind. If we continue learning, exploring, and connecting, we never truly grow old.”
News | Redefining Aging: A Major Achievement of Evolution
News | Redefining Aging: A Major Achievement of Evolution
In modern society, aging is often viewed as a process to avoid. Popular culture celebrates youth and uses it to define trends and beauty, while the anti-aging industry thrives, with billions of dollars spent on creams, pills, and cosmetic surgery. Yet aging is an undeniable reality. People are living longer than ever, while fertility rates in more than half of the world's countries have fallen below replacement level, making population aging a major issue for economies and health systems.
In his new book Seven Decades: How We Evolved to Live Longer (Princeton University Press, 2025), Michael Gurven, professor of anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, argues that “humans evolved to live to age seventy.” In his view, longer life expectancy over the past century has not simply extended the upper limit of the human lifespan; it has enabled more people to reach older age.
Gurven notes that humans already had the potential for a longer life thousands of years ago in hunter-gatherer societies. Unlike most species, which decline rapidly after their reproductive years, humans can live for decades after menopause. This life beyond reproduction is a rare evolutionary success.
Aging from an evolutionary perspective
In the book, Gurven examines aging through an evolutionary lens and looks back across human history and global cultures. Drawing on his long-term field research among the Tsimané, a forager-horticulturalist population in the Bolivian Amazon, he shows how lifestyles and physiology in nonindustrial societies reflect the ecological realities of early humans.
He explains that although average lifespans in these societies may appear short, high infant and child mortality lowers the overall figure. People who survive childhood often live into their seventies or even eighties. Longevity, therefore, is not exclusively a modern achievement but part of the basic human evolutionary pattern.
The key to longevity: intergenerational cooperation
“Our survival beyond the reproductive years is not an accident,” Gurven emphasizes. Cooperation and resource sharing across generations were key to overcoming the limits of natural selection. In hunter-gatherer societies, older people may have less physical strength, but they contribute uniquely to group survival and reproduction by caring for grandchildren, resolving conflicts, passing on knowledge, and making tools. This multilayered social cooperation increased the biological fitness of the entire population and helped extend the human lifespan.
He notes: “At a certain stage of evolution, helping children and grandchildren survive became more beneficial to the continuation of one's genes than continually producing more offspring.”
What does it mean to be old?
In many traditional societies, becoming old is not defined by a number, but by whether a person can still contribute to the community. Gurven asks humorously: “If someone never knew their age, how old would they feel?” In groups whose languages lack words for large numbers, people are usually considered old only when they can no longer work. Continued participation in community affairs and the passing on of knowledge and skills keep older adults active later in life.
This sharply contrasts with industrialized societies, where retirement often symbolizes withdrawal from mainstream life. Gurven believes this view underestimates the potential of older people. He calls on society to reconsider old age and recognize the important roles of older adults in education, culture, and community building.
“The prospect of global aging may seem concerning,” Gurven concludes, “but the broad contributions of middle-aged and older people are precisely what have allowed human civilization to endure. Being old is largely a state of mind. If we continue learning, exploring, and connecting, we never truly grow old.”
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