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I don't think that looking at lifespans for the industrial revolution has any bearing on what lifespans used to be 'historically'. It was pretty clear to me, f

by ColanR 7y ago

I don't think that looking at lifespans for the industrial revolution has any bearing on what lifespans used to be 'historically'. It was pretty clear to me, from reading the GP that they were talking about pre-industrial revolution times.

philipkglass 7y ago
Remaining life expectancy at age 18 was even lower in 1800 or 1700, from what I can tell. You can find small exceptions (like aristocrats in particular countries) but I'm not aware of any large (50,000 people or more) preindustrial population where the average teenager could expect to die older than age 60. I would be delighted to see counterexamples. EDIT: This was interesting. "Lifespans of the European Elite, 800–1800". It examines the lifespans of European aristocrats over the thousand years prior to the Industrial Revolution. It limits its analysis to people who reached at least 20 years of age. Per Figure 8, the average lifespan remained below 60 in the entire time period. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-economic-history/article/lifespans-of-the-european-elite-8001800/BE252C4B25C4AAC29ED62D591A1675AC/core-reader https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-economic-...
- andai 7y ago
  I wonder what pre-agricultural lifespans were like? I read recently that humans were significantly taller and healthier before agriculture, due to getting nutrition from many sources rather than a few crops. I expect they were much lower than in the cities, despite the nutritional advantage.
  - JumpCrisscross 7y ago
    > pre-agricultural lifespans Probably short. Putting aside predation, disease and starvation, there is evidence (see Pinker) that violent death was a common way to go in nomadic tribes.
    - chrisweekly 7y ago
      Violent death was common, sure, but not necessarily more so in pre-agricultural times. See e.g. the early chapters of "Sapiens" (Yuval Harari). Agricultural revolution led to lower standard of living, increased risk of starvation (feast-or-famine dependence on fragile harvest), increased health issues (less-varied diet, also disease rampant in denser populations), and whereas in the presence of potentially hostile competition nomadic hunter-gatherers could choose to move, farmers would logically choose to stay and fight rather than leave the farm and almost certainly die. The agricultural revolution was a pretty bad deal for most people for most of the time since it began.
      - chrisco255 7y ago
        The farmers won. Why would they choose to farm if there were no advantages? What happened was that farming was so successful that the human population boomed. When famine did occur, it caused more deaths because there were more humans.
        legulere 7y ago
        Farming societies are more hierarchical and have more people. For the ones in charge that is for sure advantageous. Also it’s a bit of a trap: as soon as you switch over you cannot go back, as foraging cannot sustain as many people. You will have to constantly expand to feed the growing population.
      - thaumasiotes 7y ago
        > whereas in the presence of potentially hostile competition nomadic hunter-gatherers could choose to move, farmers would logically choose to stay and fight rather than leave the farm and almost certainly die You might think this, but the historical pattern -- everywhere -- is that farmers stay where they are and get conquered by more mobile non-farmers. They don't so much fight as submit.
      - littlestymaar 7y ago
        > See e.g. the early chapters of "Sapiens" (Yuval Harari). This part of Harari's book have been debunked quite a few times already: his views of pre-agricultural are romanticized and doesn't match with the work of the specialists of this period. (While Harari is indeed an historian, he's a specialist of medieval times and has little authority on early-humans history). Btw, I'm not even disagreing with you about agriculture, I just wanted to point out that quoting Harari on that has really little value.
  - saberdancer 7y ago
    Problem with that is that pre-agriculture you cannot sustain a large number of people, so it is very doubtful that the population could sustain themselves better than with agriculture. Why would a super healthy pre-agricultural society move to agriculture if it was doing worse than before.
    - allovernow 7y ago
      Because for individuals making rational decisions, tending to crops and livestock is easier than hunting and gathering, and it won't necessarily be obvious over the timescale of a lifeapan that such a lifestyle is detrimental to health, especially if you're talking about a pre-scientific, pre-literate society with no real form of record keeping. Plus, the shift is going to be gradual - you start by supplementing with a small garden, a handful of captive prey animals during hard times, then after some number of generations you come to rely more and more on agriculture without necessarily realizing why or even if your tribe is showing minor signs of mysterious illness. And then if you do realize that something is up, you're probably cursing the earth/gods/demons for your illnesses, rather than coming to understand the true variety required in a healthy diet and abandoning the convenience of your farming practices, which are in no way an obvious problem.
      - chrisco255 7y ago
        Tending crops is not easier than hunting. Especially in the early Neolithic when bronze hasn't even been discovered yet. But even today, farming is tougher than hunting. The difference is that farming and animal husbandry scales tremendously well. Predators regularly die off in the prey-predator cycle. Agriculture when done right and under favorable climates is predictable and scalable.
        allovernow 7y ago
        Pick between spearing a bison or gazelle with a rock tip, or harvesting from a small plot of not quite domesticated, hardy crop that you just scattered somewhere fertile, and putting off the hunt for a few more days. Or a proto-goat you keep tied up somewhere where it can graze. It's a gradual process and has immediate benefits even on a small scale with relatively low investment. Consider also that women were probably not hunting, and probably had some spare time when they weren't gathering/taking care of kids or what have you. It's pretty easy for a community of Hunter gatherers to have occasional free time, if you look at data from more recent tribes from the last hundred years or so. Plus there's all kinds of art and such...simple crop rearing and basic animal raising isn't hard to imagine.
  - mc32 7y ago
    Can’t we derive some idea from uncontacted tribes and peoples in the Amazon and Papua New Guinea?
    - azernik 7y ago
      There's a strong survivorship bias here - the uncontacted tribes tend to be in places that are isolated, and are unsuitable for agriculture or mining. I'm not sure we can infer much about the pre-agricultural lives of people in more normal environments from observing these groups.
      - mc32 7y ago
        Wouldn't we at least be able to derive some data about child mortality and spread of disease and such? Admittedly some of this would be guesswork if they are truly uncontacted and only surveilled and surveyed remotely.
  - svedlin 7y ago
    "The sample of premodern populations shows an average modal adult life span of about 72 years, with a range of 68-78 years (Table 4). While modal age at death is not the same as the effective end of the life span, because modal age refers to a peak in the distribution of deaths, it may reflect an important stage in physiological decline. [...] "Our approach is to assess and analyze available demographic data on extant hunter gatherers and forager-horticulturalists (i.e. peoples who mix hunting and gathering with swidden agriculture). In order to understand the processes that shaped the evolution of our life course, it would be useful to have data on mortality and fertility profiles across populations and over evolutionary time. Given that these data do not exist, we utilize and critically evaluate data on modern groups, as one ‘imperfect lens’ into our past." [1] [1] Gurven, M., & Kaplan, H. (2007). Longevity among Hunter-Gatherers: A Cross-Cultural Examination. Population and Development Review, 33(2), 321-365. Retrieved from www.jstor.org/stable/25434609
- jly 7y ago
  I think you need to move further back. Civilization accounted for a sharp decline in life expectancy due to disease and other factors like extreme agricultural labor. Humans have only gained back what was lost since the industrial and technological revolutions. Extant hunter gatherers, living without access to modern medicine, have been studied to show life expectancy closer to 70.
  - ColanR 7y ago
    Why are you being downvoted? You're talking about relevant periods of history, and providing a much more interesting counterpoint.
    - philipkglass 7y ago
      I couldn't downvote jly's reply to me even if I wanted to. I didn't upvote it either though. It doesn't cite any evidence and it appeared to be incorrect when I searched for evidence on my own. See for example: Gurven, M., & Kaplan, H. (2007). Longevity Among Hunter-Gatherers: A Cross-Cultural Examination. Population and Development Review, 33(2), 321–365. doi:10.1111/j.1728-4457.2007.00171.x [1] It was discussed here [2]: https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/12o4py/what_was_the_average_life_expectancy_of_a_native/ https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/12o4py/what_... For the longest living group estimate, 5 year olds can expect to live to ~54, 10 year olds to 55, and even 20 year olds only have a life expectancy of 60. Life expectancy only starts approaching 70 for a hunter-gatherer who survived into his 40s. This would put life expectancy of young adult hunter-gatherers ahead of that of young adults living in historical agricultural societies, but behind that of those living in highly developed countries in the last several decades. The life expectancy of people living in developed countries today has more than "gained back what was lost since the industrial and technological revolutions." [1] Enter DOI into sci-hub for full text. [2] The link to the full text of the PDF in that Reddit post is now broken, which is why I noted the DOI.
  - sunstone 7y ago
    Yes, and not only that but current hunter gatherers are restricted to the most marginal environments so they are the worst case.

by ColanR 7y ago

philipkglass 7y ago

Remaining life expectancy at age 18 was even lower in 1800 or 1700, from what I can tell. You can find small exceptions (like aristocrats in particular countries) but I'm not aware of any large (50,000 people or more) preindustrial population where the average teenager could expect to die older than age 60. I would be delighted to see counterexamples. EDIT: This was interesting. "Lifespans of the European Elite, 800–1800". It examines the lifespans of European aristocrats over the thousand years prior to the Industrial Revolution. It limits its analysis to people who reached at least 20 years of age. Per Figure 8, the average lifespan remained below 60 in the entire time period. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-economic-history/article/lifespans-of-the-european-elite-8001800/BE252C4B25C4AAC29ED62D591A1675AC/core-reader https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-economic-...

andai 7y ago
I wonder what pre-agricultural lifespans were like? I read recently that humans were significantly taller and healthier before agriculture, due to getting nutrition from many sources rather than a few crops. I expect they were much lower than in the cities, despite the nutritional advantage.
- JumpCrisscross 7y ago
  > pre-agricultural lifespans Probably short. Putting aside predation, disease and starvation, there is evidence (see Pinker) that violent death was a common way to go in nomadic tribes.
  - chrisweekly 7y ago
    Violent death was common, sure, but not necessarily more so in pre-agricultural times. See e.g. the early chapters of "Sapiens" (Yuval Harari). Agricultural revolution led to lower standard of living, increased risk of starvation (feast-or-famine dependence on fragile harvest), increased health issues (less-varied diet, also disease rampant in denser populations), and whereas in the presence of potentially hostile competition nomadic hunter-gatherers could choose to move, farmers would logically choose to stay and fight rather than leave the farm and almost certainly die. The agricultural revolution was a pretty bad deal for most people for most of the time since it began.
    - chrisco255 7y ago
      The farmers won. Why would they choose to farm if there were no advantages? What happened was that farming was so successful that the human population boomed. When famine did occur, it caused more deaths because there were more humans.
      - legulere 7y ago
        Farming societies are more hierarchical and have more people. For the ones in charge that is for sure advantageous. Also it’s a bit of a trap: as soon as you switch over you cannot go back, as foraging cannot sustain as many people. You will have to constantly expand to feed the growing population.
    - thaumasiotes 7y ago
      > whereas in the presence of potentially hostile competition nomadic hunter-gatherers could choose to move, farmers would logically choose to stay and fight rather than leave the farm and almost certainly die You might think this, but the historical pattern -- everywhere -- is that farmers stay where they are and get conquered by more mobile non-farmers. They don't so much fight as submit.
    - littlestymaar 7y ago
      > See e.g. the early chapters of "Sapiens" (Yuval Harari). This part of Harari's book have been debunked quite a few times already: his views of pre-agricultural are romanticized and doesn't match with the work of the specialists of this period. (While Harari is indeed an historian, he's a specialist of medieval times and has little authority on early-humans history). Btw, I'm not even disagreing with you about agriculture, I just wanted to point out that quoting Harari on that has really little value.
- saberdancer 7y ago
  Problem with that is that pre-agriculture you cannot sustain a large number of people, so it is very doubtful that the population could sustain themselves better than with agriculture. Why would a super healthy pre-agricultural society move to agriculture if it was doing worse than before.
  - allovernow 7y ago
    Because for individuals making rational decisions, tending to crops and livestock is easier than hunting and gathering, and it won't necessarily be obvious over the timescale of a lifeapan that such a lifestyle is detrimental to health, especially if you're talking about a pre-scientific, pre-literate society with no real form of record keeping. Plus, the shift is going to be gradual - you start by supplementing with a small garden, a handful of captive prey animals during hard times, then after some number of generations you come to rely more and more on agriculture without necessarily realizing why or even if your tribe is showing minor signs of mysterious illness. And then if you do realize that something is up, you're probably cursing the earth/gods/demons for your illnesses, rather than coming to understand the true variety required in a healthy diet and abandoning the convenience of your farming practices, which are in no way an obvious problem.
    - chrisco255 7y ago
      Tending crops is not easier than hunting. Especially in the early Neolithic when bronze hasn't even been discovered yet. But even today, farming is tougher than hunting. The difference is that farming and animal husbandry scales tremendously well. Predators regularly die off in the prey-predator cycle. Agriculture when done right and under favorable climates is predictable and scalable.
      - allovernow 7y ago
        Pick between spearing a bison or gazelle with a rock tip, or harvesting from a small plot of not quite domesticated, hardy crop that you just scattered somewhere fertile, and putting off the hunt for a few more days. Or a proto-goat you keep tied up somewhere where it can graze. It's a gradual process and has immediate benefits even on a small scale with relatively low investment. Consider also that women were probably not hunting, and probably had some spare time when they weren't gathering/taking care of kids or what have you. It's pretty easy for a community of Hunter gatherers to have occasional free time, if you look at data from more recent tribes from the last hundred years or so. Plus there's all kinds of art and such...simple crop rearing and basic animal raising isn't hard to imagine.
- mc32 7y ago
  Can’t we derive some idea from uncontacted tribes and peoples in the Amazon and Papua New Guinea?
  - azernik 7y ago
    There's a strong survivorship bias here - the uncontacted tribes tend to be in places that are isolated, and are unsuitable for agriculture or mining. I'm not sure we can infer much about the pre-agricultural lives of people in more normal environments from observing these groups.
    - mc32 7y ago
      Wouldn't we at least be able to derive some data about child mortality and spread of disease and such? Admittedly some of this would be guesswork if they are truly uncontacted and only surveilled and surveyed remotely.
- svedlin 7y ago
  "The sample of premodern populations shows an average modal adult life span of about 72 years, with a range of 68-78 years (Table 4). While modal age at death is not the same as the effective end of the life span, because modal age refers to a peak in the distribution of deaths, it may reflect an important stage in physiological decline. [...] "Our approach is to assess and analyze available demographic data on extant hunter gatherers and forager-horticulturalists (i.e. peoples who mix hunting and gathering with swidden agriculture). In order to understand the processes that shaped the evolution of our life course, it would be useful to have data on mortality and fertility profiles across populations and over evolutionary time. Given that these data do not exist, we utilize and critically evaluate data on modern groups, as one ‘imperfect lens’ into our past." [1] [1] Gurven, M., & Kaplan, H. (2007). Longevity among Hunter-Gatherers: A Cross-Cultural Examination. Population and Development Review, 33(2), 321-365. Retrieved from www.jstor.org/stable/25434609
jly 7y ago
I think you need to move further back. Civilization accounted for a sharp decline in life expectancy due to disease and other factors like extreme agricultural labor. Humans have only gained back what was lost since the industrial and technological revolutions. Extant hunter gatherers, living without access to modern medicine, have been studied to show life expectancy closer to 70.
- ColanR 7y ago
  Why are you being downvoted? You're talking about relevant periods of history, and providing a much more interesting counterpoint.
  - philipkglass 7y ago
    I couldn't downvote jly's reply to me even if I wanted to. I didn't upvote it either though. It doesn't cite any evidence and it appeared to be incorrect when I searched for evidence on my own. See for example: Gurven, M., & Kaplan, H. (2007). Longevity Among Hunter-Gatherers: A Cross-Cultural Examination. Population and Development Review, 33(2), 321–365. doi:10.1111/j.1728-4457.2007.00171.x [1] It was discussed here [2]: https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/12o4py/what_was_the_average_life_expectancy_of_a_native/ https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/12o4py/what_... For the longest living group estimate, 5 year olds can expect to live to ~54, 10 year olds to 55, and even 20 year olds only have a life expectancy of 60. Life expectancy only starts approaching 70 for a hunter-gatherer who survived into his 40s. This would put life expectancy of young adult hunter-gatherers ahead of that of young adults living in historical agricultural societies, but behind that of those living in highly developed countries in the last several decades. The life expectancy of people living in developed countries today has more than "gained back what was lost since the industrial and technological revolutions." [1] Enter DOI into sci-hub for full text. [2] The link to the full text of the PDF in that Reddit post is now broken, which is why I noted the DOI.
- sunstone 7y ago
  Yes, and not only that but current hunter gatherers are restricted to the most marginal environments so they are the worst case.