Natural selection is also “going natural”
Those make sense to me, but I’ll be honest with you, where I struggle is with the idea of sunscreen. How did our ancestors live outside constantly without any sunscreen but if I’m outside for more than 2 hours in the summer without it I come home looking like a burnt lobster?
I’m sure the answer is that I’m ignorant, or the “natural causes” of yesteryear were really just undiagnosed skin cancer or something, but I have to admit it does seem like a real negative adaptation here from the viewpoint of my uneducated mind.
Have you ever seen an Australian rancher? They look like boiled lobsters
When you get old and spend a lot of time outdoors, you look like a dried up prune. Regardless of skin color, typically
If they lived in areas with a lot of sunshine, they developed dark skin. If they didn’t, they developed light skin. Beyond that, if they were light skinned and moved to areas with a lot of sunshine they wore long sleeves and wide brimmed hats even in hot weather, and their face and neck skin turned to leather. They typically didn’t live long enough for skin cancer to be a concern.
As I said in a other comment, I think “they didn’t live long enough” is a bit of misconception. I’ll repeat my comment here rather than writing it out again:
"So I’m no expert, so take this with a grain of salt, but it’s my understanding that while average ages were much lower in the past, this number is heavily skewed by infant mortalities and deaths due to preventable disease. As I understand it, the expected age of an otherwise healthy individual was pretty comparable to us today. More people died young, but those who didn’t lived about as long as us. So I don’t think not living long enough for skin cancer to take effect really jives with my understanding of history.
But again, I’m not an expert and the likelihood that I’m just an idiot who is wildly misunderstanding things is, frankly, high."
It’s the “more people died young” part that meant it wasn’t an ever present problem like it is today. We might have had more ozone to protect people too, although that’s just wild conjecture.
Maybe people didn’t live long enough for skin cancer to make a difference?
You have to remember that people generally wore long sleeve clothing and hats. They did not expose much skin to the sun historically
We need sunscreen becuase we’re indoors 8 and months of the year, then run out naked to sunbathe.
If we were outside more and naturally built up a tan it really wouldn’t be that much of an issue for most people.
I mean I definitely see your point, but as I understand it even field workers are encouraged to use sunscreen and farmers and others who spend a lot of time outdoors are at greater risk of long-term damage, not lesser, despite this supposed acclimation.
It’s all relative. Sunscreen itself has carcinogens. It’s kind of like blood pressure medication. It’s easy and works. But obviously exercising and eating better would be better.
Same with the sun. Gradual exposure and not baking deliberately in the sun would be better, but sunscreen is easier.
At the end of the day we’re extremely well adapted to the sun for the most part, within reason.
I’ll say that I think if the situation was truly as simple and non-nuanced as you describe, I wouldn’t have any reason to be confused or uncertain on the topic.
But as stated, since even those who adhere to best practices seem to be at higher risk with compound exposure, I think your claim of simple acclimation is a little lacking. I think there is truth in what you say, but far from the whole truth and it is what is missing which eludes me as well.
Old school sun block was mostly zinc oxide in paste form, so not really cancerous
Back in the day it was normal to die of skin cancer at 30. These days, we prefer to avoid it.
Source? This is my point, that I think we lack evidence for that claim.
Sunscreen was invented in 1946, it looks like. Our ability to diagnose cancer has come a long, long way since then. So it would likely be difficult or impossible to answer this question, since 50 year old data about skin cancer incidence will be lower than modern level simply due to diagnostic advances.
copied from a similar question
That’s a great question! We didn’t really need sunscreen in prehistoric time because we adapted to the environments that we lived in and we didn’t migrate to new environments as quickly as we could in later times. Those adaptations are getting more tan more easily and growing thicker skin. We can still see this now in people who don’t use sunscreen and their skin looks tougher and more leathery. Also, there were some ancient sunscreens ranging from simple mud to pastes made from ground plants.
Well there is that protective layer in the atmosphere that we fucked up.
The ozone layer is slowly healing itself, but we still have a long way to go before it is stable again.
Also as others pointed out, we don’t work the fields and spend most of our time outside any more…so the natural protection isn’t building up like it did in the past.
Where’s that tweet where an anti-vaxxer used the bubonic plague as an example of a disease that went away on its own.
Yeah you know what else is all natural? Air. But guess what you don’t inject into your blood?
Heroin. I don’t inject heroin into my blood.
small rocks? no. wood? … a witch!
You haven’t lived until you’ve experienced the thrill of watching an air bubble go down the tube and in through your IV!
It’s not super dangerous in a normal IV unless it’s a lot of air, fortunately.
Walk into any old graveyard and notice all the tiny little tombstones of children who died before the age of two. Before vaccines were in use.
Now notice how almost NONE of those tombstones are recent.
Smaller graves fit more efficiently into the cemetary, AND they stimulate the economy via the funeral industry, which Im heavily invested in!
- Some political ghoul, probably
Obviously they aren’t recent, it’s an old graveyard.
You know why nobody living in a town gets buried in its cemetery? Because they are living.
deleted by creator
my grandad used to buy fresh milk from a farmer around the corner - until he got salmonella from it and almost died
Looks like diphtheria is back on the menu boys
Malaria has killed a quarter of all humans who ever lived.
Obviously we need to abandon our tools for fighting disease.
Indeed. Only death will cure what ails our society. /s
Make Papa Nurgle proud!
I mean, they all died. Just as we will all die.
I saw one on Tiktok today, who worked those jobs before immigrants?
Slaves. Slaves worked those jobs. Then former slaves treated like slaves. Then immigrants. Literally right into the 1940s and then Mexican labor was imported.
As the former slaves’ descendants were increasingly shoehorned into the new industrial prison complex
ask any old-timer about polio, and why we don’t worry about it as much now.
Well, maybe not any old-timer…a lot have fallen into that conspiracy black hole
Look up an old newspaper from say 100-120 years ago and check out the obituaries.
Or just walk through an old graveyard. There’s a pioneer cemetery near my old place with so many children’s graves. One family gravesite has the mother’s name, the father’s name, a couple of their kids, some young, some adults… and one is just titled ‘babies’.
Like, so many babies died for that mother and father they just put them all in one grave, not even names to remember them by…
SEWARD, Mark – Died at Gooseberry Cove, Trinity Bay, on the 2nd inst. [January 1891], Mark, youngest child of Thomas and Rosanna Seward, aged 4 years.
SEWARD, Peter – Died on the 10th inst., Peter, second youngest son of Robert and Mary A. Seward, aged 2 years.
SEWARD – Died on the 14th inst., infant child of James and Mary A. Seward.
SEWARD, Richard – Died on the 15th inst., Richard, youngest son of Joseph and Louisa Seward, aged 4 years.
SEWARD, James – Died on the 19th inst., James, second youngest child of James and Mary A. Seward, aged 2 years (Evening Telegram, January 29, 1891)
“let’s ask them”
A world population graph from 1900 til now would be an adequate answer for that question.
No, graph of life expectancy would.
Right, like uhh you know the average life span for a healthy male used to be 25 years right? Did you think that was for no reason? Smfh.
Did you think 90 years passed and suddenly the life span tripled?
The idiocy
25, that is quite a historical extreme, isn’t it?
In the wild, average live span was around 40 to 50 years. There’s even studies about the evolutional reasons why we live longer than other primates/why we are the only hominide with grandparents.
Sure, it is an extreme. As in my edit I stated: this is due to sanitation. It is all over the board throughout the 15th-18th century world because pandemics/diseases/epidemics came and went and sanitation was so low and medicine was so bad that people dropped like flies, and thus did the life expentency average.
25 was a shortened life span due to agriculture. We live longer than cave men now, but it hasn’t tripled.
Yeah, only (almost) doubled. Why the downvotes, they’re right.
I think everybody else was inferring a healthy 25 year old man, not life expectancy from birth (counting children).
Or their idea of “natural” is 18th century France.
It was an average largely brought down by childhood mortality. If you made it to ten you’d probably see thirty, if you made it to 25 you’d probably see 50ish.
Are the other time periods not counting that?
No they are, that is why we have an average lifespan of around 75 now.
This (at least I think) exactly. There were so many deaths at birth/during childhood from things that are easily fixed now. I’ve also seen some places say if you made it to the teens, you’re pretty likely to hit 50ish.
No? Medical care and sanitation. Unless youre speaking of a specific event in time. But yes it has tripled in the 25yo cases? Avg life span now is in the 70s.
I’m speaking of natural humans, not humans during the 18th century. And I’m counting children.
Nearly doubling is still very good! In case this needs to be said, I’m on team science, not team antivax.
I’m not entirely sure what you mean by natural humans - are there artificial ones?? 🤔
As in the way humans lived for most of the time we’ve been humans.
