Did Your Stone Age Ancestors Grow Old?

In the Stone Age, you'd be dead by 30. Or so the joke goes. So why did hunter-gatherer adults most often die around 72? Did our ancestors really die young? We unpack the math trick inside the famous "dead by 30" number, then follow the evidence: hunter-gatherer data, a Bible poem and Greek thinkers who reached 70 and 90, Anglo-Saxon skeletons whose old age hid in a box marked 40 plus, fossil teeth showing when grandparents became common, Hadza grandmothers who out-gather their daughters, and record-healthy arteries in the Amazon. Then we ask what the modern world changed, and why your 30th birthday was never the dangerous one. In the Stone Age, you'd be dead by 30. Or so the joke goes. So why did hunter-gatherer adults most often die around 72? Did our ancestors really die young? We unpack the math trick inside the famous "dead by 30" number, then follow the evidence: hunter-gatherer data, a Bible poem and Greek thinkers who reached 70 and 90, Anglo-Saxon skeletons whose old age hid in a box marked 40 plus, fossil teeth showing when grandparents became common, Hadza grandmothers who out-gather their daughters, and record-healthy arteries in the Amazon. Then we ask what the modern world changed, and why your 30th birthday was never the dangerous one.