26 ms·

I was really interested in seeing what's the % of years of human live lived in different historical periods. I wrote a script [0] and it turns out [1], 90% of t

I was really interested in seeing what's the % of years of human live lived in different historical periods. I wrote a script [0] and it turns out [1], 90% of time was lived after the agricultural revolution (last 10k years) and 50% of time was lived in the last 1000 years. 10% of time was lived in my lifetime! Now, when we talk about different measures of progress the number above understate the dominance of recent history. For most of human history average life expectancy was 10-12 years, so most of these years lived were as children. Also, ignoring the first 10% of hunter-gatherer years, most of the time most people were working in agriculture with very little surplus to do anything else. [0] https://gist.github.com/mmoskal/b6d8d2c73ec4fe56df9714d8435a234e https://gist.github.com/mmoskal/b6d8d2c73ec4fe56df9714d8435a... [1] https://gist.github.com/mmoskal/58e7c9ee4d716f91f1e7438660b7e715 https://gist.github.com/mmoskal/58e7c9ee4d716f91f1e7438660b7...

anbende 4y ago
Interesting, I've never thought about it in terms of % of years lived and when. I recently saw that 7% of all humans who ever lived are alive today. Wild. And I agree that it really does show the dominance of recent history. Small point, a life expectancy of 10-12 years does not necessarily mean that the majority of lived years were as children. It depends on infant mortality, which I believe drives those numbers pretty substantially. Example: if three infants die at age 1 and one person lives to 45, average life expectancy is 12 (48/4), but the majority of those years were not lived as children (one full childhood plus 3 additional years of infancy).
- whirlwin 4y ago
  Sapiens is a great book here. Long story short: The agricultural shift required more people to work in farms
  - xapata 4y ago
    And as _Against the Grain_ points out, working in farms was not always better for the farmers.
  - Jiocus 4y ago
    When wheat domesticated man, as Yuval Noah Harari put it.
- dzink 4y ago
  Infant mortality is also impacted by decisions of thresholds when to try to save a life. The US for example considers 24 weeks the cutoff, much earlier than other countries, which is why the infant mortality is higher - the % of babies who normally make it after being born at 24 weeks is about 50%. Same thing happens with cancer rescue statistics - the doctors who are considered best, risk doing invasive action when others would not, thus saving normally un-saveable people, and registering higher mortality than others who wouldn’t try. Thus anywhere mortality has a high % you have to also account for total # of cases and % of recovery from severe cases.
  - burlesona 4y ago
    Thanks for sharing, I had no idea about this. I have seen infant mortality numbers tossed out as evidence the US sucks and never realized the numbers were not so simply comparable between countries. I shouldn’t be surprised :/
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - connicpu 4y ago
      In terms of comparing how countries do at the basics it would probably make sense to only compare the infant mortality for babies that were carried to the full term, or within a few days at least. I'm not sure if there's global data on that specifically, but it would be interesting to see and compare.
      - kuhewa 4y ago
        The gestation age threshold doesn't really matter across Europe, but a birthweight threshold does somewhat. [1,2] The US doesn't look as bad for infant mortality when only comparing only births at 28 weeks or later, 2nd to last to Denmark in this [3] comparison of Canada, US and the Nordic countries rather than being almost twice as high as the rest if using 22wks as a threshold. However, my understanding is the US has higher pre-term birth rates which is certainly a confounding factor so the difference might not only be due to birth registration differences. [1] https://obgyn.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1471-0528.14273 https://obgyn.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1471-... [2] https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0064869 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal... [3] https://bmcpediatr.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12887-015-0430-8/tables/9 https://bmcpediatr.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12887...
- Gare 4y ago
  Another way to think about it: with 8 billion people alive, humankind collectively experiences more time in 2 years than the presumed age of the Universe.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
potatototoo99 4y ago
Agriculture actually gives ample time to do something else, even with labor-intensive crops like rice versus wheat. Ancient people probably worked fewer hours that we do nowadays.
- distances 4y ago
  I've also seen the meme of us working more than medieval/ancient people, but it's not a very clear cut comparison. AskHistorians has a good take on the topic again: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/mcgog5/how_much_time_did_premodern_agriculture_workers/gtm6p56/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/mcgog5/how_m...
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
bleuarff 4y ago
Where do you get that average life expectancy of 10-12? I never heard a figure that low, and I doubt humanity would have lasted that long if the average life expectancy was barely enough to reach sexual maturity. Also, I think these life expectancy in the past stats mostly do not distinguish between the extremely high death rate for infants, and the more normal life expectancy for those that survived past 2 y.o. The distribution is so skewed, I guess even the median expectancy would not be really useful.
duped 4y ago
> For most of human history average life expectancy was 10-12 years, so most of these years lived were as children. Age of death is bimodal, so its most like most people die as infants or live decent lives. > most of the time most people were working in agriculture with very little surplus to do anything else. I don't think that's actually true - subsistence farming has a lot of down time.

anbende 4y ago

Interesting, I've never thought about it in terms of % of years lived and when. I recently saw that 7% of all humans who ever lived are alive today. Wild. And I agree that it really does show the dominance of recent history. Small point, a life expectancy of 10-12 years does not necessarily mean that the majority of lived years were as children. It depends on infant mortality, which I believe drives those numbers pretty substantially. Example: if three infants die at age 1 and one person lives to 45, average life expectancy is 12 (48/4), but the majority of those years were not lived as children (one full childhood plus 3 additional years of infancy).

whirlwin 4y ago
Sapiens is a great book here. Long story short: The agricultural shift required more people to work in farms
- xapata 4y ago
  And as _Against the Grain_ points out, working in farms was not always better for the farmers.
- Jiocus 4y ago
  When wheat domesticated man, as Yuval Noah Harari put it.
dzink 4y ago
Infant mortality is also impacted by decisions of thresholds when to try to save a life. The US for example considers 24 weeks the cutoff, much earlier than other countries, which is why the infant mortality is higher - the % of babies who normally make it after being born at 24 weeks is about 50%. Same thing happens with cancer rescue statistics - the doctors who are considered best, risk doing invasive action when others would not, thus saving normally un-saveable people, and registering higher mortality than others who wouldn’t try. Thus anywhere mortality has a high % you have to also account for total # of cases and % of recovery from severe cases.
- burlesona 4y ago
  Thanks for sharing, I had no idea about this. I have seen infant mortality numbers tossed out as evidence the US sucks and never realized the numbers were not so simply comparable between countries. I shouldn’t be surprised :/
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - connicpu 4y ago
    In terms of comparing how countries do at the basics it would probably make sense to only compare the infant mortality for babies that were carried to the full term, or within a few days at least. I'm not sure if there's global data on that specifically, but it would be interesting to see and compare.
    - kuhewa 4y ago
      The gestation age threshold doesn't really matter across Europe, but a birthweight threshold does somewhat. [1,2] The US doesn't look as bad for infant mortality when only comparing only births at 28 weeks or later, 2nd to last to Denmark in this [3] comparison of Canada, US and the Nordic countries rather than being almost twice as high as the rest if using 22wks as a threshold. However, my understanding is the US has higher pre-term birth rates which is certainly a confounding factor so the difference might not only be due to birth registration differences. [1] https://obgyn.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1471-0528.14273 https://obgyn.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1471-... [2] https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0064869 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal... [3] https://bmcpediatr.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12887-015-0430-8/tables/9 https://bmcpediatr.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12887...
Gare 4y ago
Another way to think about it: with 8 billion people alive, humankind collectively experiences more time in 2 years than the presumed age of the Universe.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

potatototoo99 4y ago

Agriculture actually gives ample time to do something else, even with labor-intensive crops like rice versus wheat. Ancient people probably worked fewer hours that we do nowadays.

distances 4y ago
I've also seen the meme of us working more than medieval/ancient people, but it's not a very clear cut comparison. AskHistorians has a good take on the topic again: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/mcgog5/how_much_time_did_premodern_agriculture_workers/gtm6p56/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/mcgog5/how_m...

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

bleuarff 4y ago

Where do you get that average life expectancy of 10-12? I never heard a figure that low, and I doubt humanity would have lasted that long if the average life expectancy was barely enough to reach sexual maturity. Also, I think these life expectancy in the past stats mostly do not distinguish between the extremely high death rate for infants, and the more normal life expectancy for those that survived past 2 y.o. The distribution is so skewed, I guess even the median expectancy would not be really useful.

duped 4y ago

> For most of human history average life expectancy was 10-12 years, so most of these years lived were as children. Age of death is bimodal, so its most like most people die as infants or live decent lives. > most of the time most people were working in agriculture with very little surplus to do anything else. I don't think that's actually true - subsistence farming has a lot of down time.