There’s extensive literature on the lack of modern disease in hunter gatherers. Frontier doctors could get a case report published when they found cancer.
Some lived long but on average their lives were short because they didn’t have antibiotics or emergency medicine and lived in harsh environments that few of us would be able to survive today.
Their wisdom appropriately coupled to a modern less harsh environment might lead to greater longevity. But the harshness is what ensures exercise, movement, unprocessed food, etc.
Do you have any evidence you can point to for this assertion? The book Good Calories Bad Calories has a section that reviews the literature on the subject. Disease and Western Civilization reviews specific populations in detail. Nutrition and Physical Degeneration for a geographically diverse primary source although it’s not about cancer or longevity.
The assertion that older people get cancer more than young people? You could try any medical source whatsoever that deals with cancer or longevity, instead of picking one that doesn't, e.g. [0]
> Advancing age is the most important risk factor for cancer overall and for many individual cancer types. The incidence rates for cancer overall climb steadily as age increases, from fewer than 25 cases per 100,000 people in age groups under age 20, to about 350 per 100,000 people among those aged 45–49, to more than 1,000 per 100,000 people in age groups 60 years and older.
That study doesn’t include hunter gathers. Certainly cancer rates increase for them as they age as well. The point is the rate is orders of magnitude less than we experience today.
Frontier doctors diagnosed cancer in hunter gatherers the same as with non-hunter gathers. Except the hunter gatherer diagnosis was so rare that they could write a case report about it.
Sorry for your loss. We all have lost loved ones to cancer today. It didn't used to be that way. Cancer is one of the many afflictions known in academic literature as "Diseases of Civilization". It's incidence is increasing in our society at any given age, so it's not because we are living longer.
You can look to the Amish for some answers. They aren't hunter gatherers but they do live a more primitive lifestyle. Some studies seem to show they have lower rates of cancers. It's not really a secret that if you are active, eat fairly healthy, aeent obese, and don't drink or smoke that you will be significantly healthier than the baseline rates in the US.
Could be that that "more primitive lifestyle" could fall victim to some of the same issues that lead us to see the cancer rates throughout history as much lower. (E.g., lack of diagnosis)
I took a look at the Hutterites in Canada because while they live a simpler lifestyle with a more traditional diet, no smoking, and minimal alcohol consumption, they are generally much less averse to modern conveniences where they supplement their lifestyle. Combined with Canada's public health system, that means they have few barriers in the way of receiving modern medical care.
It's a bit old, but I found a study from the 80s[0] that found men have significantly lower rates of lung cancer (yep, not smoking helps) but they found an increased risk of stomach cancer and leukemias. Women had lower rates of uterine cancer. This was fairly consistent across all three traditional groups in North America.
Other sources seem to show their life expectancy is in line with the general population, removing that as a factor.
So not smoking helps. If I had to take a wild guess, the lower rate of uterine cancer could potentially be explained by lower rates of HPV as we now know that's the main risk factor for developing cervical cancer. I can't find any reports on the rates of STDs among the Hutterites, but I would hazard a guess it's "lower".
Which, on the surface, makes it look like the lifestyle and diet (besides not smoking!) isn't having a lot of impact.
I'm definitely less familiar with the Amish, so I did some looking beforehand. What I was finding that their willingness to use modern medicine, or to use it preferentially, is said to vary a lot from community to community.
As well, I found they self-fund access to healthcare, and I have no idea what the dynamics would be like with that--would you decide not to see a doctor so you're not placing a burden on your neighbours?
Neither's a factor with Hutterites in Canada. They're very willing to use and rely on modern technology (they probably have some of the most technologically advanced farming setups you've seen, have cell phones, etc) and there's no cost barrier to accessing healthcare.
I was curious, shared what I found. Take from it what you'd like!
And note that it's not "get cancer" but "find cancer".
In a harsh environment how many die of a tumor that saps their energy before causing any specific effect that causes them to seek out a doctor and presents with something the doctor can find without the million-dollar machinery?
Let's grab our Mr. Fusion and head back a quarter century. My father came to visit. He had definitely declined since the last time we saw him but had no known major health issues. There wasn't anything in particular, yet what my wife saw was enough that she said we wouldn't see him again. Half a year later the big machines found the cancer. Would he have made it that half year in a harsh environment? No.
And on your "had a life expectancy of about 45 years", you have a math problem. The average life span was closer to 25 years but was dragged down but the huge amount of infant mortality which is normal in humans.
The Tsimané of the Amazon are know to live well into their 70s.
> The Tsimané of the Amazon are know to live well into their 70s.
Some of them do, but those are filtered to the most healthy if the lot. It's not really surprising that if you lose the sickly ones while they're infants the ones who make it to adulthood are less likely to get sick.
This is further confounded when you have generations that have lived longer, as we do in the first world, because now not only do the sickly ones live long enough to get modern diseases, they also live long enough to reproduce and pass on the previously-non-viable genes. So generation after generation gets added that would never have survived without modern medicine.
I consider it to be a good thing that we can optimize our evolution for different traits now besides raw survivability, but it does mean that we should expect our disease numbers to be higher.
My point was that when someone says the "life expectancy is 45" that does not mean that everyone dies at 45.
> I consider it to be a good thing that we can optimize our evolution
We cannot "optimize" our evolution for different traits. Evolution is optimization to the environment. We cannot use human thought to optimize evolution, and that is eugenics anyway so no thanks.
Some lived long but on average their lives were short because they didn’t have antibiotics or emergency medicine and lived in harsh environments that few of us would be able to survive today.
Their wisdom appropriately coupled to a modern less harsh environment might lead to greater longevity. But the harshness is what ensures exercise, movement, unprocessed food, etc.