> but also because people aren’t dying of other things as much. Historical life expectancies were usually not that bad. The shortness of pre-modern life is gen

> but also because people aren’t dying of other things as much. Historical life expectancies were usually not that bad. The shortness of pre-modern life is generally grossly exaggerated, with the raw numbers being dragged down by things like infant mortality. See, for example: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2672390/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2672390/ > Analysis of the mid-Victorian period in the U.K. reveals that life expectancy at age 5 was as good or better than exists today, and the incidence of degenerative disease was 10% of ours. In times of great calamities like massive, prolonged wars and plagues - which some societies are more susceptible to than others [1] - things certainly turned grim, but by-and-large things weren't so bad. One way you can get a picture of this yourself is by looking at your genealogical history, which effectively lets you calculate "life expectancy from teens/early 20s", since all your ancestors were old enough to have kids. It's a somewhat selective picture, but if you fill out enough branches to the early 1700s, you can get a probably reasonable sample. [1] And actually, Victorian England was particularly unsanitary and subject to disease - it really says something that even a plague-ridden society of people who ate arsenic and mercury still lived just as long or longer than us.