4 ms·

Didn't most people live to their 60s if they survived childhood and pregnancies?

6502nerdface 5y ago
Yeah it depends whether you count all of the infant deaths in the average.
inglor_cz 5y ago
The bones from old burial sites up to and including the Middle Ages indicate that most people didn't live into their 60s. Not even those who reached 30 in good health. There always are old adults present, but they are rare. From your nickname, I gather you are a Czech. I can link an article about analysis of an early medieval cemetery in Rajhradice to you. 244 buried people, 220 skeletons were successfully analyzed for age. No one over 60, eight people over fifty (almost all women). https://karolinum.cz/data/clanek/5704/Praehist_34_1_0007.pdf https://karolinum.cz/data/clanek/5704/Praehist_34_1_0007.pdf
thfuran 5y ago
The child (<5 years) mortality rate in the US in 1800 was 46.29%. I can't seem to readily find US life expectancy at birth for 1800, but most places seems to have been 30-35, which would correspond to life expectancy at 6 years of age of at least 51-60. Life expectancy at birth was around 30-35 for at least the several preceding centuries in Europe.
- inglor_cz 5y ago
  This is a nice graph from the Modern Age (mid-1500s to late 1900s) in England. https://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/data/13030/tf/ft096n99tf/figures/ft096n99tf_00004.gif https://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/data/13030/tf/ft0... Basically, until the 19th century, between 25-35 % of people lived to be 60 or more. In the 20th century, this grew rapidly up to 90 per cent. 80 y.o.-s would be very rare even in the 19th century, while now about half of the population lives to be eighty. Note that this is the Modern Age. In the Middle Ages, survival would have been worse. A more primitive agriculture, less developed long distance trade and fewer staple foods (no potatoes etc. in Europe prior to the Columbian exchange) would result in frequent famines that took the infirm first. Things would be yet worse in the Early Middle Ages, the period of frequent nomadic incursions and warfare in most of Europe. At least the High Middle Ages were relatively peaceful compared to the period before.
  - extesy 5y ago
    This is a very fascinating chart! It seems that over the five centuries the healthspan (probability of survival within the lifespan) increased drastically but the lifespan itself is more or less fixed at 90-100 years. The healthy plateau is much longer now but the following drop is much faster.

Yeah it depends whether you count all of the infant deaths in the average.

The bones from old burial sites up to and including the Middle Ages indicate that most people didn't live into their 60s. Not even those who reached 30 in good health. There always are old adults present, but they are rare. From your nickname, I gather you are a Czech. I can link an article about analysis of an early medieval cemetery in Rajhradice to you. 244 buried people, 220 skeletons were successfully analyzed for age. No one over 60, eight people over fifty (almost all women). https://karolinum.cz/data/clanek/5704/Praehist_34_1_0007.pdf https://karolinum.cz/data/clanek/5704/Praehist_34_1_0007.pdf

thfuran 5y ago

The child (<5 years) mortality rate in the US in 1800 was 46.29%. I can't seem to readily find US life expectancy at birth for 1800, but most places seems to have been 30-35, which would correspond to life expectancy at 6 years of age of at least 51-60. Life expectancy at birth was around 30-35 for at least the several preceding centuries in Europe.

inglor_cz 5y ago
This is a nice graph from the Modern Age (mid-1500s to late 1900s) in England. https://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/data/13030/tf/ft096n99tf/figures/ft096n99tf_00004.gif https://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/data/13030/tf/ft0... Basically, until the 19th century, between 25-35 % of people lived to be 60 or more. In the 20th century, this grew rapidly up to 90 per cent. 80 y.o.-s would be very rare even in the 19th century, while now about half of the population lives to be eighty. Note that this is the Modern Age. In the Middle Ages, survival would have been worse. A more primitive agriculture, less developed long distance trade and fewer staple foods (no potatoes etc. in Europe prior to the Columbian exchange) would result in frequent famines that took the infirm first. Things would be yet worse in the Early Middle Ages, the period of frequent nomadic incursions and warfare in most of Europe. At least the High Middle Ages were relatively peaceful compared to the period before.
- extesy 5y ago
  This is a very fascinating chart! It seems that over the five centuries the healthspan (probability of survival within the lifespan) increased drastically but the lifespan itself is more or less fixed at 90-100 years. The healthy plateau is much longer now but the following drop is much faster.