3 ms·

Here you go. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longevity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longevity Human Longevity has been around 70-80 years for thousands of years

by dahart 5y ago

Here you go. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longevity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longevity Human Longevity has been around 70-80 years for thousands of years we know about, and possibly forever. It’s one of the common misunderstandings we get by learning about life expectancy.. I misunderstood it for a long time until my brother, an anthropologist, explained that there are historical records of people living to be 80 years old from a thousand and even 10,000 years ago. Life expectancy averages in a bunch of causes of early death, so it skews the average down. Longevity is what you’re left with when you factor out all the causes of early death. Life expectancy is going up because we’re eliminating the causes of early death mostly via basic medicine, clean water, washing hands, anti-bacterials. Not having wars helps. Vaccines help. Safer houses & jobs help. Etc. Longevity appears to have been increasing a little in the last century, possibly because life expectancy and longevity aren’t cleanly separable (nobody dies of old age, they eventually die of a disease or injury).

watwut 5y ago
"Most adults" fall under "life expectancy after reaching adulthood" rather then "longevity". Adult young people and middle aged people died a lot more then today. Whether due to incidents that were more common and harder to treat or sicknesses. If you limit the stats to "adults never never got seriously sick and never got injured" then the comparison is completely meaningless. Yeah, people did evolved to live longer, but we do expect more treatment and health.
- dahart 5y ago
  Sure, all adults fall under life expectancy from their current age. It’s always a Bayesian statistic. The comment you replied to might be off by ~10 or even ~20 years -- depending heavily on what year and location we’re talking about -- but it’s still a valid point and it has always been true that surviving childhood to be 20 years old gave you a dramatically higher probability of leading a long life. The plot @kqr posted demonstrates this over the last 300 years.
  - watwut 5y ago
    > dramatically higher probability of leading a long life Yes, but not that much. Mythology on HN makes them live basically as long as we do live. Completely ignoring adult accidents rates, ability to fix them or sicknesses and deaths while giving births. Ignoring sicknesses from stuff missing in food. And of course using nebulous "past" as if forrest communities in 240 had same lifespan as 1950 city middle class. You imply deep past and all people. Then you argue by recent past excluding most common causes of death. If you look at estimated length of life after adulthood, it is still lower then what was written here. If we were in the past, some of us would fall from roof, died of minor wound infection, tetanus, whatever we get vaccines for now, got tuberculosis or other now treatable sickness. Some of us would die while giving birth.
    - dahart 5y ago
      Why do you say not that much? How much, exactly, do you mean? I did already look at length of life after adulthood. Life expectancy at birth was 20-40 years at times in the past, and life expectancy for an 18 year old jumps to 60+ in the data posted here. I’m not sure what you’re arguing now. I gave you an out by noting that the comment you initially replied to could be off by 10-20 years for some locales and time periods, and for some definitions of “adult”, what more do you want than that? The gist of the comment you objected to is true, even if the numbers don’t hold for all places & times. You’ve complained about my examples without providing any evidence of your argument at all. I’m not sure what your argument is either. Plato wrote about people living to be 80 years old. Bone samples from ancient native Americans show people living to 80 years old. It’s an actual fact that surviving childhood before the last century produced a posterior probability that was dramatically higher than the at-birth life expectancy, where dramatically means 20-30 years longer life expectancy, precisely because something like 50% of people died between birth and adulthood. 50% is obviously a proxy for a number I don’t know exactly but could be anywhere from, say, 10% to 90% depending on when and where. “Until the middle of the 20th century, infant mortality was approximately 40–60% of the total mortality. Excluding child mortality, the average life expectancy during the 12th–19th centuries was approximately 55 years. If a medieval person survived childhood, they had about a 50% chance of living 50–55 years, instead of only 25–40 years.” “Paleolothic : Based on the data from modern hunter-gatherer populations, it is estimated that at 15, life expectancy was an additional 39 years (total 54), with a 60% probability of reaching 15.” “Classical Greece : Based on Athens Agora and Corinth data, total life expectancy at 15 would be 37–41 years. Most Greeks and Romans died young. About half of all children died before adolescence. Those who survived to the age of 30 had a reasonable chance of reaching 50 or 60. The truly elderly, however, were rare. Because so many died in childhood, life expectancy at birth was probably between 20 and 30 years.” “Early Middle Ages Europe : Life expectancy for those of both sexes who survived birth averaged about 30—35 years. However, if a Gaulish boy made it past age 20, he might expect to live 25 more years while a woman at age 20 could normally expect about 17 years. And anyone who survived till 40 had a good chance at another 15 to 20 years.” “Medieval Islamic World : Average age of scholars was 56–84.3 years” Etc., etc., etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy

by dahart 5y ago

watwut 5y ago

"Most adults" fall under "life expectancy after reaching adulthood" rather then "longevity". Adult young people and middle aged people died a lot more then today. Whether due to incidents that were more common and harder to treat or sicknesses. If you limit the stats to "adults never never got seriously sick and never got injured" then the comparison is completely meaningless. Yeah, people did evolved to live longer, but we do expect more treatment and health.

dahart 5y ago
Sure, all adults fall under life expectancy from their current age. It’s always a Bayesian statistic. The comment you replied to might be off by ~10 or even ~20 years -- depending heavily on what year and location we’re talking about -- but it’s still a valid point and it has always been true that surviving childhood to be 20 years old gave you a dramatically higher probability of leading a long life. The plot @kqr posted demonstrates this over the last 300 years.
- watwut 5y ago
  > dramatically higher probability of leading a long life Yes, but not that much. Mythology on HN makes them live basically as long as we do live. Completely ignoring adult accidents rates, ability to fix them or sicknesses and deaths while giving births. Ignoring sicknesses from stuff missing in food. And of course using nebulous "past" as if forrest communities in 240 had same lifespan as 1950 city middle class. You imply deep past and all people. Then you argue by recent past excluding most common causes of death. If you look at estimated length of life after adulthood, it is still lower then what was written here. If we were in the past, some of us would fall from roof, died of minor wound infection, tetanus, whatever we get vaccines for now, got tuberculosis or other now treatable sickness. Some of us would die while giving birth.
  - dahart 5y ago
    Why do you say not that much? How much, exactly, do you mean? I did already look at length of life after adulthood. Life expectancy at birth was 20-40 years at times in the past, and life expectancy for an 18 year old jumps to 60+ in the data posted here. I’m not sure what you’re arguing now. I gave you an out by noting that the comment you initially replied to could be off by 10-20 years for some locales and time periods, and for some definitions of “adult”, what more do you want than that? The gist of the comment you objected to is true, even if the numbers don’t hold for all places & times. You’ve complained about my examples without providing any evidence of your argument at all. I’m not sure what your argument is either. Plato wrote about people living to be 80 years old. Bone samples from ancient native Americans show people living to 80 years old. It’s an actual fact that surviving childhood before the last century produced a posterior probability that was dramatically higher than the at-birth life expectancy, where dramatically means 20-30 years longer life expectancy, precisely because something like 50% of people died between birth and adulthood. 50% is obviously a proxy for a number I don’t know exactly but could be anywhere from, say, 10% to 90% depending on when and where. “Until the middle of the 20th century, infant mortality was approximately 40–60% of the total mortality. Excluding child mortality, the average life expectancy during the 12th–19th centuries was approximately 55 years. If a medieval person survived childhood, they had about a 50% chance of living 50–55 years, instead of only 25–40 years.” “Paleolothic : Based on the data from modern hunter-gatherer populations, it is estimated that at 15, life expectancy was an additional 39 years (total 54), with a 60% probability of reaching 15.” “Classical Greece : Based on Athens Agora and Corinth data, total life expectancy at 15 would be 37–41 years. Most Greeks and Romans died young. About half of all children died before adolescence. Those who survived to the age of 30 had a reasonable chance of reaching 50 or 60. The truly elderly, however, were rare. Because so many died in childhood, life expectancy at birth was probably between 20 and 30 years.” “Early Middle Ages Europe : Life expectancy for those of both sexes who survived birth averaged about 30—35 years. However, if a Gaulish boy made it past age 20, he might expect to live 25 more years while a woman at age 20 could normally expect about 17 years. And anyone who survived till 40 had a good chance at another 15 to 20 years.” “Medieval Islamic World : Average age of scholars was 56–84.3 years” Etc., etc., etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy