Now in retirement, much of how I look at the world is informed by insights and experiences gained over nearly 70 years of life. This leads me to wonder what insights and experiences might be available were human life span two or three times what it is now.
At the equivalent phase in such a life, I would be looking back with what had been gained from having lived nearly 200 years - not a mere 70! I could be looking at things today, remembering lessons learnt from a period beginning in the early Victorian era. It is not enough to know things through history books. What insights might I have now, had I had intimate experience of that time and those periods since?
Our lives last, on average, two or three times longer than our forebears a millennium or two ago. With much shorter lives, they must have had much less personal experience upon which to draw. (Presumably, they were able to draw upon other resources.)
It is our biology that gives us lives of a certain longevity. Subsequently, that longevity influences how much is available as we negotiate that very life.
