The common held view that life for our ancestors was fairly short doesn't stand up well to evidence.

It never quite made sense to me when I would read about the age of famous ancient Greeks and Romans, who often lived until their 60s, if not 70s.

Aside from dramatic modern improvements in infant and childhood mortality, which makes life expectancy from birth much longer, life expectancy for people who survive childhood has not increased that much from ancient times. People then regularly lived into their 60s. In the Old Testament (Psalm 90:10) it is recorded that the age of men is 70 years old.

Although its difficult to know for sure how long people lived in prehistoric times, 30 years old is not considered an old man in contemporary hunter-gatherer societies, as some parodies assume.

All in all, perhaps we have not come as far as we would like to think.