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.
Talonflame@lemmy.cafe 1 day ago
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.
missingno@fedia.io 1 day ago
Humans lived past 38 long before modern technology.
Tenniswaffles@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2625386/
sc.edu/…/conversation-old-age-is-not-a-modern-phe…
sapiens.org/…/life-expectancy-measure-mispercepti…
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.