Indigenous populations who survived to older ages likely had better health than modern populations when accounting for factors like infant mortality, infectious disease, sanitation issues, famine, and accidental death.

“and when we get rid of that data and we sort of re-qualify or recalculate the data looking at a more level playing field or a reason of a landscape we see something quite interesting which is this squaring of the mortality curve this compression of morbidity there's something very very interesting there as well so that's important to point out and and it's often something that I want to express in rebuttal to those who would argue that caveman life that you know cavemen didn't live a long time and it's like well if we're using indigenous peoples as any indication if they got 250 years old without getting eaten by a saber-toothed tiger falling off a cliff having an infectious disease or dying in infancy or childbirth they were probably going to be pretty darn healthy healthier than us”