because of evolution.  we have to follow the rules of natural Earth.  wishing to live longer is like wishing there wasn't gravity.

eventually humans will live longer because of better medical technology/genetics.

I wish I could stick my 60 year old brain into my 26 year old body, but then I think : " OH God, you mean I have to witness at least 4 more major wars ?"  AND, I am actually happy not being fertile any more, so this 60 year old vehicle of flesh and bone will have to suffice. I plan to make it stick around long enough, (hopefully) to make the world somewhat more rational, and friendly. 

One explanation is that it's because most of our learning occurs in adverse life circumstances.

Another side of the same coin is to say that life is tough because when we try to go it alone we by our deluded and self interested ways make it that way. As in it's in getting back to God/learning to live through love that we can escape. Or put another way - the reality we create then will no longer cause suffering.

A world populated by superhumans (even if only living to 30yrs) seems as Betson says likely to be a world populated ego maniacs - most of us need some reverses in life to start to awaken. There's not that many of us that are awake from a young age.

Presuming of course that superhumans could handle the idea of death at 30 without getting all neurotic about it...

Hi George If everyone lived a long life,there would not be enough room in the world to fit us all in and we would never get to go home to the spirit world,which is where we all came from and it is our true home,earth is just a learning centre for us and when we have finished learning,we go home.

The bible says we are supposed to live 3 score and 10.thats why when we go over that age we are living on borrowed time,well thats what we say in England.

I would never want to be superhuman and live for years and years,i think that would be boring as you would never get to the spirit world and even though we are all afraid of the dieing process,we know that after death we are back home in the world of spirit where there is  unconditional love for us all.

Love and God bless    Love juditha

Interesting theory about the Biblical lifetimes - the maths certainly seem to work. I assumed it was just so as to make these legendary Old Testament figures sound impressive. Do you know of any evidence for it apart from the fact it seems to work well? I mean historical/archaeological evidence that the ancient Jews used to calcualte ages in months?

If it's right, it might mean that creationists need to revise down the age of the Earth even more, as I think it's partly worked out stuff like the ages of biblical characters!

Definitely - we assume we are wiser and cleverer just becasue we have computers and electric lights and cars and stuff (and I certainly can;t claim any credit for inventing any such things!). Well-translated old, or indeed ancient, writing often comes across as quite fresh and "modern" in my (fairly limited) experience. Of course it depends on the writer too. "Modern-minded" writers I remember enjoying included Montaigne (French, 15th Century), Seneca (1stC  AD), Socrates (5th C  BC?) - or at least PLato's accounts of him - and Epicurus (about 4th C  BC?). We should also not always assume we are morally superior either. Not all people in the past were biggotted racists and wife-beaters etc.

Mainly, people in the past just had somewhat less factual knowledge than us, and fewer comforts and inventions etc. But I'm not sure how much of any of those things you need to be wise or loving. Also, though we think we know a lot, no doubt our own knowledge and technologies will seem primitive to people in a hundred years' time and such things are not "essentials". I like humble people, like Socrates who said he was wise only in that he knew how little he knew; or Isaac Newton, who described himself as a small boy playing on the sands and delighting himself with pretty shells while the great ocean of truth lay undiscovered before him. Much wiser people than some self-satisfied modern know-it-all

Of course on the other hand, we should not assume writing is necessarily especially wise and meaningful JUST because its old, either. However I guess if something's stood the test of time for 2000 years or more, then it must have something going for it

OK, thanks. Interesting theory, and in any case, as I say - the maths seem to work. However I have read that the idea of a kind of prehistoric matriarchal age when we all worshipped a great Earth goddess and we venerated women and their ability to give birth and so forth and that this was replaced by worship of male sky gods, became popular in Victorian times, but is doubted by most historians these days. I understand there's not much evidence for widespread matriarchy or veneration of the feminine, and most prehistoric tribes were probably polytheistic, with various gods and goddesses and varying customs and were often fairly male dominated as in more recent times (which I think is partly explained by biological factors like women spending a lot of time pregnant, giving birth, caring for young children, and having the problem of monthly periods etc; and being physically less strong in an age when jobs outside the home often required this -- rather than a simplistic idea of evil patriarchyyou often hear about). Theories like a great matriarchal age moving into a patriarchal one sound nice, and are especially beloved of certain feminists/neo-Wiccans etc, but IMO real history is often less clear-cut. The Wikipedia article on Matriarchy discusses this (not that I just took my opinion from there). On a tangent, such people as I just referred to also like to wildy talk about "the burning times" as a period when 8 million women were burned for being independent-minded proto-feminists; when in fact most witches were hanged, and in Europe,  Prof Ronald Hutton (probably the expert on the history of witchcraft) says it was more like 40,000 in total; also he says they were mainly unpopular women who their neighbours denounced and who they often genuinely thought were casting spells on them, in a superstitious age (and there were quite a lot of men killed as well).

PS I'm not saying any of the above necessarily means your interesting explanation of the way the ancient Hebrews came by their huge ages for their legendary founders is wrong (or that the choice of stating ages by months wasn't due to the month being an important time scale at that time - after all it must be convenient, especially if you had no writing etc - you just look up and see what the moon looks like to see how far you are through the month) although I am not so sure about the matriarchy aspect. Also (if the matriarchy thing was correct in this particular context) the OT was not written in anything like the kind of periods you are talking about and I find it surprising if the writers had inherited legends, with precise ages attached, dating back another 8,000 years or so!

Come to think of it though, isn't it also a bit odd that prehistoric people might add up all the months in their lives to arrive at huge age figures? Why would they bother? And would they even have the maths?