Want to live longer? There are places in our world where living a long time is commonplace. If you think that modern science, medicine and lifestyle changes make this possible, you are wrong. These things may increase your enjoyment of life but they certainly don't guarantee that you will live longer. Also, your descendants may experience maladies that are new to your ancestral tree.
   Most discussions, debates and arguments about evolution are generally about animals, birds and insects. Discussion of homosapiens evolution tends to be focused on origin of our species and not those realities associated with continuing to evolve.
    Basically, this current evolutionary stage is going unnoticed, yet it produces both good and bad contributions to our gene profile . This is not surprising since mankind has never been aware of changes he was undergoing. Advances in medicine, science and engineering may make life better but some aspects of our last 250 years are taking their toll or, at least, contributing their own variants.
    International travel, intermarriage, resettlement and life-style changes have almost contaminated those gene pools that have supported mankind for 20 million years.
 
Stick to it!
    A secret for longer life is to create a successful formula . . . and then stick to it! Your problem, of course, is that you really don't have a choice as time passes unless, of course, you can make certain that your formula will be unfailingly employed for at least 1,000 years.
    If there is anything wrong with your formula, you won't have any descendants 1,000 years from now.
    Also, there will be new factors that your descendants cannot control but will influence your formula's success. For example, no tribes have experienced serious global warming. Which gene pools will survive and strive remains a mystery. This is what evolution is all about – survival of the fittest!
     In our past, unknown strengths have allowed some to survive plagues, diet change and resettlement while they populated our earth. The others died, or at least, did not make babies.

Here is how to create a formula
     Do not allow intermarriage or life style changes to contaminate your gene pool. If your people have survived for thousands of years having to walk ten miles a day, don't buy a car. It will shorten your life. It will also shorten lives of your children. That ten-mile walk may be the very reason your ancestors survived and made babies.
    If fact, if your ancestors followed any specific practice for more than 1,000 years, a change may be foolhardy. You may be replacing temporary personal comfort for longevity.
    If your ancestors lived on a diet of fish, don't become a meat eater. If they survived on grains and fruit, don't switch to fats and proteins. If your ancestors lived on a mountain, don't move to the seashore. If your ancestors thrived on physical activity, don't become a couch potato. Tough luck if your gene pool has already been corrupted. You have lots of company if that fact makes you feel comfortable.

Do you know why you are here?
     Most of us don't. Generally, we are too busy focusing on a good life in our future rather than lives of those thousands in our past. Oh, we like to talk about our ancestors but we do not have an intimate knowledge of what permitted them to survive and make babies while others did not.
    So far, I have benefited from a formulæ that permitted my ancestors to survive and have babies. The odds were fairly good that I would. Three of my grandparents lived into their nineties. Their habits, diets and life styles were almost identical to those practiced by their ancestors for hundreds of years. I was lucky. My grandparents survived several bouts of cancer and one of them lived 46 years after a serious illness that usually kills its hosts in less than a year.
    They were hardy people. Both grandfathers worked physically well into their nineties. My grandmothers were always working,
    One pair were Finnish.
    Relatives would prefer to believe the others were Ukrainian. They may have come from Ukraine and we have a Ukrainian name, but they weren't Ukrainian. I owe some of my survival to their being part of a despised minority. In other words, they had not been allowed to make babies with other races and had to keep to their own for more than a 1,000 years. Consequently, that minority has a gene pool that supports living a long time.
    For most of my cousins, those gene pools ended with our generation as my aunts and uncles married into other gene pools . Some of these new gene profiles supported a long, healthy life – others did not.
    It was only lifestyle changes that took their toll on my parents who only managed to make it into their eighties. My father smoked heavily -- my mother drank and smoked heavily. Fortunately, neither of these lifestyle choices affected my gene pool. I am seventy. I neither smoke or drink. I have no idea what my future holds for me but I am optimistic since I have survived several maladies that tend to drastically shortens other people's lives.

It will shorten your life
     Yes, some of us have benefited by advances made in pasteurization, disease control, immunizations and medical practices, but if living a long life is a criteria for success, have you realized that some of us were not meant to have children? These advances permit us to pass on faulty genes as they keep us alive long enough to make babies. Those babies are affected by our gene pool. And, if our offspring survive and have a problem, medical science may provide temporary solutions for them like they have done for many of us, but that won't improve their gene profile. They, too, may have babies.

   Many of us enjoy our junk food, energy drinks, and travel. These things will kill some of us, or worse still, allow us to make babies that may be more susceptible to weaknesses found in their resulting gene pool.
    Because our evolutionary process is slow, we fail to recognize that homosapiens are presently going through the biggest evolutionary stage to occur in the last 100,000 years. This stage has been stimulated by a human melting pot resulting from people spreading all over our world. Considering that it took us more than 20 million years to evolve from an animal state, these 100,000 years are but very tiny stages in our evolutionary history and our last 250 years when most of this has taken place is nothing more than a second in time.
    If religions persist in their belief that our world is less than 100,000 years old, they can hardly provide us with advice on how to strive and survive. That is why some of us choose to live . . . without gods!