Unless I missed something, the word “telomere” doesn’t occur in the article or its source paper—rather, it discusses the rate of DNA methylation.
IMO, the key passage in the paper is this:
However, any genetic regulation for a species may potentially be a secondary factor as there may be other environmental selective pressures. This may be the case with species which have lifespans post reproductive age and therefore, there may be non-genetic factors that may be more predictive of their maximum lifespan.
I suspect that the methylation rate is actually tracking the end of the reproductive stage of the lifecycle, rather than the entire lifespan—it’s just that humans have an unusually long post-reproductive stage.
It’s saying 38 is the maximum lifespan of a human, determined by genetics, and the only reason we can live past 38 is due to unnatural interventions ie medicine
It’s saying 38 is the maximum lifespan predicted by their model—but it also says their model has an R2 of 0.76, meaning it only predicts about 76% of the variation in the actual measured values. And then they discuss other factors that could account for the remaining 24% of the variation, including post-reproductive-age lifespan.
I’m not sure what the difference between “lifespan” and “expectancy” is other than semantics, given the context of your questions. Regardless of what our DNA says, our life expectancy is typically in the 70s or 80s, and that hasn’t changed much throughout known human history, so it has nothing to do with modern technology.
Life expectancy can be affected by things like infant deaths, disease, etc.
lifespan is the age an animal is designed to live for. The study (which was published in Nature btw) implies that humans reaching past 38 is unnatural and only a result of luck and modern technology.
Logically, average life expectancy cannot be higher than average lifespan. For that to be true would mean that more people who made it out of childhood lived past their expected lifespan than didn’t, which doesn’t make sense.
If the expected lifespan is 38, than the average life expectancy before medical science advanced to the point where we could extend it should be lower than 38, but we in fact know that more often than not if you made it out of childhood in the past your chances of making it to 50+ were good, barring disease, war or what have you.
According to the article it’s not about life expectancy, but that the lifespan of 38 is hardcoded into our DNA/Telomeres
Unless I missed something, the word “telomere” doesn’t occur in the article or its source paper—rather, it discusses the rate of DNA methylation.
IMO, the key passage in the paper is this:
I suspect that the methylation rate is actually tracking the end of the reproductive stage of the lifecycle, rather than the entire lifespan—it’s just that humans have an unusually long post-reproductive stage.
It’s saying 38 is the maximum lifespan of a human, determined by genetics, and the only reason we can live past 38 is due to unnatural interventions ie medicine
It’s saying 38 is the maximum lifespan predicted by their model—but it also says their model has an R2 of 0.76, meaning it only predicts about 76% of the variation in the actual measured values. And then they discuss other factors that could account for the remaining 24% of the variation, including post-reproductive-age lifespan.
I’m not sure what the difference between “lifespan” and “expectancy” is other than semantics, given the context of your questions. Regardless of what our DNA says, our life expectancy is typically in the 70s or 80s, and that hasn’t changed much throughout known human history, so it has nothing to do with modern technology.
Life expectancy can be affected by things like infant deaths, disease, etc.
lifespan is the age an animal is designed to live for. The study (which was published in Nature btw) implies that humans reaching past 38 is unnatural and only a result of luck and modern technology.
That paper is garbage, then. People have been regularly living past 38 for thousands upon thousands of years.
And there’s no “design” for biology.
Outliers exist
They are only outliers if you’re factoring in infant deaths, which you already said you weren’t.
Humans lived past 38 long before modern technology.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2625386/
https://sc.edu/uofsc/posts/2022/08/conversation-old-age-is-not-a-modern-phenomenon.php
https://www.sapiens.org/archaeology/life-expectancy-measure-misperception/
Logically, average life expectancy cannot be higher than average lifespan. For that to be true would mean that more people who made it out of childhood lived past their expected lifespan than didn’t, which doesn’t make sense.
If the expected lifespan is 38, than the average life expectancy before medical science advanced to the point where we could extend it should be lower than 38, but we in fact know that more often than not if you made it out of childhood in the past your chances of making it to 50+ were good, barring disease, war or what have you.