We were hunters and foragers. The frontier was everywhere. We were bounded only by the earth, the ocean, and the sky.
- Carl Sagan
There are biological imperatives for all living organisms.
Immortality or reproduction.
The former is more a human fantasy of the powerful who cannot accept the beautiful limitations of nature and seek to circumvent its dominion. In the orderly life cycles of our natural world, the absence of the former leaves only reproduction.
The clock always ticks on the opportune window in an organism’s life cycle for this process. Time is the one unbeatable constant shared by all living things. Some are more cognizant of its passing than others. For most species, biology does the timekeeping.
Time allows for adaptation, survival, reproduction, and death, which the unforgiving natural world doesn’t guarantee will arrive in any order, only that it is inevitable.
The average life expectancy for homo sapiens in the western world just two centuries ago was 33.
Science, habitat, disease, and lifestyle are significant factors that affect this number.
So are wars.
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