It's Likely Our Ancestors Lived Longer Than We Thought
By Stephen Luntz
04 Jan 2018, 10:39
Modern medicine and plumbing have greatly extended humans' average life-expectancy. However, a study of teeth from ancient English burial sites suggests we might have overestimated this effect by failing to realize how common it was for people in previous centuries to reach an advanced age.
Christine Cave, a PhD student at the Australian National University, developed a new method for determining age of death by looking at teeth wear, after recognizing the problem with current estimates of ancient life expectancies. “When you are determining the age of children you use developmental points like tooth eruption or the fusion of bones that all happen at a certain age," she explained. "Once people are fully grown it becomes increasingly difficult to determine their age from skeletal remains, which is why most studies just have a highest age category of 40 plus or 45 plus.â€
http://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/its-likely-our-ancestors-lived-longer-than-we-thought/