I'm guessing the author meant that the ancestral environment was one that many of us now would consider "worse than death" considering our higher standards of expectation for standard of living, whereas our ancestors were just perfectly happy to live in cold caves and die from unknown diseases and whatnot.

I guess the question is, how much higher are our expectations now, really? And how much better do we really have it now, really?

Some things, like material comfort and feelings of material security, have obviously gotten better, but others, such as positional social status anxiety and lack of warm social conviviality, have arguably gotten worse.