A useful corrective, but perhaps also misleading. Humans didn't peacefully keel over at 60, let alone 30, that's true. And death before 20 was indeed so horrify

A useful corrective, but perhaps also misleading. Humans didn't peacefully keel over at 60, let alone 30, that's true. And death before 20 was indeed so horrifyingly common that it couldn't help but bias the average hard. But mortality was higher at every age, be it from disease, injury, or childbirth. A person of the past would have understood a death at 40 or 50 to be young, but not all that unusual. Most people would know quite a few who died in that range.