>From: Spike Jones <spike66@ibm.net>
>Subject: Re: Werner's syndrome may have nothing to do with normal aging
>Date: Mon, 24 Jul 2000 20:54:06 -0700
>
>"Robert J. Bradbury" wrote:
>
> > With regard to the Bible, it was suggested to me by a Russian scientist
> > at one point, that the biblical longevities could be due to a
>translation
> > error. If ages were kept in "months" rather than "years", then the
> > numbers work out about right....
>
>Sounds about right except for the fairly linear decay in lifespans
>from the beginning to Moses, who was said to have lived 120 years.
>There were only a few early lucky ones that made it into the 900s.
>spike
And note, as I suggested, that this period - of the supposed references for
the great epics and myths - roughly coincides with the expansion of
Cro-Magnon man into the northern areas of Europe and Asia and the first
large cities, suggesting that temporarily at least the pioneers had broken
free of the deadly cycle of expansion-then-collapse caused by the endemic
tropical diseases. The exponential increase in generally available
knowledge that accompanied the larger population concentrations would have
provided an equally exponential advantage to long-lived individuals,
especially as written language was still in the future.
________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Oct 02 2000 - 17:35:25 MDT