Really? Do chimps have heart beat rates significantly different from humans? They routinely live into their 30s in the wild. Similarly for gorillas.
The Howard Foundation did indeed encourage endogamy among the beneficiaries of the Howard trust. By the 22nd century, the Families had a serious problem with reinforcement of bad recessives.
Not true; if the extended lifespan person does things that increase the likelihood of their genetic line continuing, they can still have an evolutionary effect.
I confess that I don’t know the answer to that one. I would expect that our closest relatives are themselves somewhat remarkable in their longevity, but they still aren’t even close to ours.
Yep, and this includes both raising offspring and continuing to reproduce, since the OP implies genes that don’t just increase lifespan, but minimize ageing.
Men remain fertile for much of their lives, so (especially) if they have a youthful physique too, there’s nothing stopping them from continuing to reproduce.
In the case of women it depends whether the hypothetical includes them having a greater supply of eggs. Nonetheless, without ageing, there would be a larger “window” in a woman’s life for producing children with low risk of miscarriage / birth defects.
In the famous story “The Epic of Gilgamesh”, Gilgamesh succeeds in his trip (to see the only human couple that were granted immortality by the Gods.
To his chagrin, they appear to discourage Gilgamesh (from seeking his own immortality)-why was this?
Were they in effect, saying “eternal life ain’t worth it”?
Recall the Jewish story of the garden of Eden-immortality was forever lost (to humans), because Adam and Eve ate the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge-presumably, God agreed with this destiny.
again and again, the ancients were told: “do NOT seek immortality, if you do, you will anger me”-why does God discourage us from it?
In the Oddysey, Achilles boasts:“the Gods eny us, because we are not immortal”.
Does posessing eternal life lead to eternal unhappiness?
Your question is academic. Eternal life is impossible and so one cannot know if eternal life causes eternal unhappiness. The question under discussion is actually longevity and not immortality.
[Moderator Note]
I think this is getting out of GQ territory. If you want to discuss this, it would be better to do so in GD.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
OK. But that’s a different statement than the one you originally made.
It’s a truism that “why not” questions about evolution are not answerable. “Why” questions are. That is, the only real answer to “how come evolution didn’t do this, that, or the other” is, “it just didn’t.” It is, at the bottom, based on random processes, and sometimes there are solutions to problems that seem obvious, but just never happened to pop up.
Yes, I should have said something like “most mammals”.