# What has been the leading cause of death for humans? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 3, 2017, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-been-the-leading-cause-of-death-for-humans/785820 "2017-05-03T21:53:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Mr.Kobayashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4af34b/32.png) [@Mr.Kobayashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Kobayashi)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2017, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-been-the-leading-cause-of-death-for-humans/785820/1 "2017-05-03T21:53:30Z")
Anatomically modern humans, I should say, since we first appeared circa 200,000 years ago. Imagine a chart of all the causes of death from for every human who has died, from ski-jumping Niagara Falls to myocardial infarction. Which causes of death are likely to have the most notches next to them? Will it be prehistoric causes of death due to the tens of thousands of years they had to accumulate or will more modern causes of death due to the human population explosion that came with civilisation? I’ve tried JFGI but all I can find is likely causes of death for humans around today. ---
**Author:** ![snfaulkner](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snfaulkner/32/433_2.png) [@snfaulkner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snfaulkner)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2017, 10:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-been-the-leading-cause-of-death-for-humans/785820/2 "2017-05-03T22:01:27Z")
Lack of usable oxygen to the brain. ---
**Author:** ![Leaffan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leaffan/32/299_2.png) [@Leaffan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaffan)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2017, 10:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-been-the-leading-cause-of-death-for-humans/785820/3 "2017-05-03T22:08:47Z")
People are living longer these days and cancer is probably in the lead, but obviously it wasn’t always this way. If I had to guess, I’d say Influenza. People, especially very old and very young, still die from it today. It must have been a bitch to deal with before modern medicine and especially if you had to engage in physical labour with a high fever. Sent from my XT1635-02 using Tapatalk ---
**Author:** ![jebert](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ec9cab/32.png) [@jebert](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jebert)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2017, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-been-the-leading-cause-of-death-for-humans/785820/4 "2017-05-03T22:09:39Z")
I seem to remember a TV show that claimed that half of all people who ever lived and died died of malaria, but I have never found any source to back this up. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2017, 10:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-been-the-leading-cause-of-death-for-humans/785820/5 "2017-05-03T22:13:14Z")
Malnutrition must be up there, too. And violence. ---
**Author:** ![Banksiaman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banksiaman/32/3334_2.png) [@Banksiaman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banksiaman)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2017, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-been-the-leading-cause-of-death-for-humans/785820/6 "2017-05-03T22:14:05Z")
Good question. If you atomise the selection too much then its going to get down to low numbers very quickly, eg ‘killed by tortoise dropped from eagle - 1’ [extra points if you give us the victim’s name], ‘killed by turtle dropped by eagle - 0’. Therefore tortoises are far deadlier. In broad categories - say death by: Infectious disease Misadventure / accident Fatalities in war [inc non-combatants] Chronic diseases and lifestyles Starvation Diseases of old age ?? or some other taxonomy, I’d probably give it to infectious diseases, but it would be a complete guess. ---
**Author:** ![Ethilrist](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ethilrist/32/4604_2.png) [@Ethilrist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ethilrist)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2017, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-been-the-leading-cause-of-death-for-humans/785820/7 "2017-05-03T22:17:02Z")
> [@jebert](#): > > I seem to remember a TV show that claimed that half of all people who ever lived and died died of malaria, but I have never found any source to back this up. I found this… > **[Malaria Killed Half the People Who Have Ever Lived](http://rdparasites.blogspot.com/2014/04/malaria-killed-half-people-who-have.html)** > > Malaria killed half the people who have ever lived. This surprising statement pops up from time to time; in fact, I found a variation of it ... ---
**Author:** ![snfaulkner](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snfaulkner/32/433_2.png) [@snfaulkner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snfaulkner)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2017, 10:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-been-the-leading-cause-of-death-for-humans/785820/8 "2017-05-03T22:21:26Z")
> [@Banksiaman](#): > > Good question. If you atomise the selection too much then its going to get down to low numbers very quickly, eg ‘killed by tortoise dropped from eagle - 1’ [extra points if you give us the victim’s name], ‘killed by turtle dropped by eagle - 0’. Therefore tortoises are far deadlier. > > In broad categories - say death by: > > Infectious disease > Misadventure / accident > Fatalities in war [inc non-combatants] > Chronic diseases and lifestyles > Starvation > Diseases of old age > ?? > > or some other taxonomy, I’d probably give it to infectious diseases, but it would be a complete guess. What’s a tortoise? ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2017, 10:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-been-the-leading-cause-of-death-for-humans/785820/9 "2017-05-03T22:24:05Z")
These questions always depend on how thin you slice your categories. At the broadest level, we could divide deaths up into accidents, misadventure, and natural causes. But we could divide up “misadventure” into suicides, murders, judicial killings, and war. Alternately, we could divide it up by the cause of death: Gun, sword, poison, etc. Or both. And we could still divide it up further than that: For instance, we could count the number of people killed in warfare from machine gun fire. Similarly, “natural causes” could include cancer, heart disease, stroke, and infectious diseases. Or maybe we divide up “infectious diseases” into bacterial diseases, protistic diseases, fungal diseases, viral diseases, and prions. Or divide up each of those. In the end, which one is biggest will depend on how we’re slicing those. For instance, we could say that cancer kills more people than H1N1 influenza. Or we could say that viral diseases kill more people than squamous cell carcinoma. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2017, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-been-the-leading-cause-of-death-for-humans/785820/10 "2017-05-03T22:25:46Z")
> [@](#): > > Quoth **Banksiaman** : > > Good question. If you atomise the selection too much then its going to get down to low numbers very quickly, eg ‘killed by tortoise dropped from eagle - 1’ [extra points if you give us the victim’s name] Was that Archdeacon Vorbis? ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Kobayashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4af34b/32.png) [@Mr.Kobayashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Kobayashi)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2017, 10:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-been-the-leading-cause-of-death-for-humans/785820/11 "2017-05-03T22:35:02Z")
> [@snfaulkner](#): > > Lack of usable oxygen to the brain. I think you are technically correct, the best kind of correct. Fair points about how you slice up exactly how specific the cause has to be, I was thinking in terms of what a coroner would list as the cause of death on a death certificate, which the [CDC](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/misc/hb_me.pdf) says should include; > [@](#): > > An important feature is the reported underlying cause of death determined by the medical examiner or coroner and defined as > (a) the disease or injury that initiated the **train of morbid events** [_bolding mine - good band name_] leading directly to death, or > (b) the circumstances of the accident or violence that produced the fatal injury. ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2017, 11:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-been-the-leading-cause-of-death-for-humans/785820/12 "2017-05-03T23:29:16Z")
If you google “Bills Of Mortality” you can find a lot of data on causes of death in the U.K. in the years before modern medicine. Tuberculosis (consumption) seems to be consistently high on the list. But I wonder if infectious diseases caused such a large proportion of deaths when population density was lower? Childbirth has killed a lot of mothers and babies throughout our history. Dental problems as a direct of indirect cause of death were probably also high on the list: > [@](#): > > Surprisingly, one of the biggest problems in Europe, before the Middle Ages was dental wear. Many foods were tough and abrasive and required so much chewing that by the time people were in their thirties they had lost much of the enamel from the chewing surfaces of their molars, exposing and infecting the dental pulps and leading to jaw infections. By the time people were sixty many of their back teeth had worn away or come out anyway. It was not until the seventeenth century that milling techniques dramatically improved and reduced the amount of grit in the everyday diet. Now we have reached a state where many would argue that we do not work our teeth hard enough to keep our jaws healthy. > > We take relatively clean teeth for granted, but before the invention and manufacture of toothbrushes most people had thick layers of dental plaque (a layer of bacteria and food debris) covering the side surfaces of many teeth. The constant presence of thick dental plaque with its multitude of organisms generating harmful toxins led to swelling and destruction of the gums and to shrinkage of the jaw bone away from the teeth which then became mobile. The older one became, the more likely it would be that your teeth would become loose and painful. The 10% of the population who are always especially prone to gum disease would have lost all their teeth even earlier than the main population. [http://www.digitiseddiseases.org/dental\_health\_and\_disease\_in\_the\_past.php](http://www.digitiseddiseases.org/dental_health_and_disease_in_the_past.php) Before antibiotics, a tooth infection could easily lead to septicemia and death. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2017, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-been-the-leading-cause-of-death-for-humans/785820/13 "2017-05-03T23:30:20Z")
As I understand it, a “train of morbid events” would be something like “lacerations to leg became infected with staph bacteria, leading to gangrene of the leg, leading to sepsis, leading to poisoning of the heart, subsequent heart failure, and resultant loss of blood flow to the brain”. Which is a different train than “lacerations to leg resulting in excessive loss of blood, resulting in insufficient blood flow to brain”, even though both start from the same basic cause. On the other hand, the train of morbid events would be mostly the same if those lacerations came from an enemy soldier with a bayonet, a hunting lion’s claws, or a car that slipped off of its jack while the victim was working on it. ---
**Author:** ![Weisshund](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/ba8739/32.png) [@Weisshund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Weisshund)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2017, 11:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-been-the-leading-cause-of-death-for-humans/785820/14 "2017-05-03T23:42:47Z")
Leading cause of death for modern humans Death by human. ---
**Author:** ![engineer\_comp\_geek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/engineer_comp_geek/32/504_2.png) [@engineer\_comp\_geek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/engineer_comp_geek)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2017, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-been-the-leading-cause-of-death-for-humans/785820/15 "2017-05-03T23:54:21Z")
> [@snfaulkner](#): > > What’s a tortoise? You know what a turtle is, Leon? Same thing. ---
**Author:** ![engineer\_comp\_geek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/engineer_comp_geek/32/504_2.png) [@engineer\_comp\_geek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/engineer_comp_geek)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2017, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-been-the-leading-cause-of-death-for-humans/785820/16 "2017-05-03T23:59:48Z")
Leading causes of death today: • Heart disease: 614,348 • Cancer: 591,699 • Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 147,101 • Accidents (unintentional injuries): 136,053 • Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 133,103 • Alzheimer’s disease: 93,541 • Diabetes: 76,488 • Influenza and pneumonia: 55,227 • Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 48,146 • Intentional self-harm (suicide): 42,773 Leading causes of death in 1950: heart disease, cancer, stroke, accidents, infant death, influenza/pneumonia, tuberculosis, arteriosclerosis, kidney disease, and diabetes. Leading causes of death in 1920: influenza/pneumonia, heart disease, tuberculosis, stroke, kidney disease, cancer, accidents, diarrhea/enteritis, premature birth, and childbirth related conditions. Leading causes of death in 1900: influenza/pneumonia, tuberculosis, diarrhea/enteritis, heart disease, stroke, kidney disease, accidents, cancer, senility, and diphtheria as the leading causes of death. From here: [Historical Leading Causes of Death | NCHStats](https://nchstats.com/2007/07/06/historical-leading-causes-of-death/) ---
**Author:** ![watchwolf49](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9c0ed/32.png) [@watchwolf49](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/watchwolf49)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2017, 1:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-been-the-leading-cause-of-death-for-humans/785820/17 "2017-05-04T01:07:15Z")
… wolves … ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2017, 1:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-been-the-leading-cause-of-death-for-humans/785820/18 "2017-05-04T01:20:22Z")
It all comes down to cardiac arrest in the end… ---
**Author:** ![kk\_fusion](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kk_fusion/32/15276_2.png) [@kk\_fusion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kk_fusion)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2017, 6:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-been-the-leading-cause-of-death-for-humans/785820/19 "2017-05-04T06:53:50Z")
If we lump together by symptoms, I’d say gastro-intestinal disease followed by starvation. Keep in mind that up until quite recently, most humans died in infancy. Honorable mention goes to drowning. While probably not up there in total numbers, tropical rain has swept away quite a lot of babies over the millennia. ---
**Author:** ![eburacum45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eburacum45/32/8690_2.png) [@eburacum45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eburacum45)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2017, 8:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-been-the-leading-cause-of-death-for-humans/785820/20 "2017-05-04T08:40:00Z")
[QUOTE=Banksiaman] If you atomise the selection too much then its going to get down to low numbers very quickly, eg ‘killed by tortoise dropped from eagle - 1’ [extra points if you give us the victim’s name [/quote] > [@Chronos](#): > > Was that Archdeacon Vorbis? I think it was Aeschylus who started this trend; [Aeschylus - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeschylus#Death) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-been-the-leading-cause-of-death-for-humans/785820.md?page=2)