Growing Old Is Nothing New for Humans. So Why Are We So Bad at It Now?

Aging is inevitable, but it hasn’t always looked the same throughout the long history of humankind. That’s one of the core premises behind Michael Gurven’s just-released new book, Seven Decades: How We Evolved to Live Longer.

Gurven is an anthropologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who has spent much of his career studying and living alongside communities like the Tsimané of South America, indigenous groups who largely subsist off a combination of farming small crops,…