ArticlePhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2020
Ageing and physical function in East African foragers and pastoralists.
Article in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed, 13 citations in OpenAlex.
- Physical activity and cardiometabolic health across an extreme lifestyle gradient.Evolution, medicine, and public health · 2026Article
- Urbanization exacerbates age-associated declines in cardiometabolic health in Turkana and Orang Asli.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2025Article
- Low-to-Moderate Daytime Physical Activities Predicted Higher-Quality Sleep Among Habitually Active Agropastoralists.American journal of human biology : the official journal of the Human Biology Council · 2025Article
- Prevalence of mental health in relation to religious practices in a contemporary small-scale older Amdo Tibetans.PLOS mental health · 2025Article
- The Relationship between Sleep and Physical Activity by Age, Race, and Gender.Reviews in cardiovascular medicine · 2024Review
- Age-related physiological dysregulation progresses slowly in semi-free-ranging chimpanzees.Evolution, medicine, and public health · 2024Article
- Lifestyle and patterns of physical activity in Hadza foragers.American journal of biological anthropology · 2023Article
- Evolutionary Approaches in Aging Research.Cold Spring Harbor perspectives in medicine · 2022Review
- The active grandparent hypothesis: Physical activity and the evolution of extended human healthspans and lifespans.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2021Review
- Insights from evolutionarily relevant models for human ageing.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors at 5 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Human lifespans are exceptionally long compared with those of other primates. A key element in exploring the evolution of human longevity is understanding how modern humans grow older. Our current understanding of common age-related changes in human health and function stems mostly from studies in industrialized societies, where older adulthood is often associated with an increased incidence of chronic diseases. However, individuals who engage in different lifestyles across industrialized and non-industrialized contexts may display variance in age-related changes in health and function. Here, we explore aspects of physical function in a non-industrialized context using three objective measures of physical function. We assessed physical activity levels, walking endurance and muscle strength in two East African populations: Hadza hunter-gatherers in Tanzania and Pokot pastoralists in Kenya. Both Hadza and Pokot participants displayed significant age-related differences in most, but not all, functional measures. Our results suggest that some age-related differences in physical function seen in industrialized contexts could be consistently experienced by most humans, while other age-related differences may vary across populations. Studies of ageing should expand to include a broad range of populations so we can create a more comprehensive understanding of how senescence varies across different lifestyle contexts. This article is part of the theme issue 'Evolution of the primate ageing process'.
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