5 ms·

> life expectancy was usually lower than today Life expectancy at birth was lower than today. However those who survived to adulthood had a life expectancy con

by User23 3y ago

> life expectancy was usually lower than today Life expectancy at birth was lower than today. However those who survived to adulthood had a life expectancy considerably closer to modern ones than most people think. It turns out the massive infant and childhood mortality rates greatly dragged down the average overall life expectancy.

pjmlp 3y ago
If we forget how war was a common "sport" and how much court decisions were done.
DC-3 3y ago
This is true, but true in the sense of 'actually adults tended to live into their 60s not into their 40s'. In western countries today if someone dies in their 60s it seems very young.
hist_thr 3y ago
No they really didn't. This is what the age pyramid looks like for a first world nation: https://www.populationpyramid.net/finland/2022/ https://www.populationpyramid.net/finland/2022/ It's a column until you reach 70 then people start dying. This is what the age pyramid looks like for a society stuck in the Malthusian trap: https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-XfdbjKDGvT0/Ti49-5r5EyI/AAAAAAAABVE/KiDAwxps_DY/s1600/medieval_pop_demo.JPG https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-XfdbjKDGvT0/Ti49-5r5EyI/AAAAAAAAB... Notice how people have a half life, the chance of dying when you reach 20 years in any year is 5% regardless of age.
- Dah00n 3y ago
  Finland though. Try Africa: https://www.populationpyramid.net/africa/2022/ https://www.populationpyramid.net/africa/2022/
  - twelve40 3y ago
    try the world(google), it's actually closer to finland
    - Dah00n 3y ago
      Yes, because much of the world export our slave-like labour to poor regions of the world. Those poor people clearly need to be counted in our life expectancy if we are to compare to a time when slaves where in the household etc. Export of misery does make the numbers look nice though.
  - hist_thr 3y ago
    Africa does not have a 50% child mortality rate. What it has is an an average of 5 children born per woman. In short: not even the worst place in Africa today is as bad as the best place any time before 1900.
- legulere 3y ago
  A middle age rural village in Germany is not the same as an ancient roman city.
  - qwytw 3y ago
    > middle age rural village in Germany Especially after the plague would have been a much nicer place to live for most people than an average ancient Roman city (or even Rome itself given that's its population was only sustainable because of immigration)
twelve40 3y ago
> had a life expectancy considerably closer to modern ones than most people think there are quite a few weasel words in there, but no, they didn't have life expectancy I would envy, even if they survived adulthood.
n8henrie 3y ago
I think the detractors of your comment would have less ground if you compared the life expectancy at 10 yo in Pompeii to that of a 10 yo from, say, 100 years ago, in which case at least I find it surprising that the difference is not far greater.
- truculent 3y ago
  The Middle Ages is not Rome. I think it’s plausible that Roman society would fare better
  - mcpackieh 3y ago
    100 years ago was not the Middle Ages, that ended about 500 years ago. 100 years ago is the late modern period.
    - truculent 3y ago
      I think I replied to the wrong comment. My mistake.
  - qwytw 3y ago
    Why? There is evidence suggesting that the number calories available and the general quality of nutrition for median person increased after the collapse of the Roman empire. Both because of a significant decrease in taxation but mostly because the plague, climate change and warfare killed half or so killed half of the people living in Europe at the time. The same thing happened in the 1300s and 1400s as the number of people decreases significantly the quality of life for those who remained increased (more land per capita). Additionally there were significant technological developments during the middle ages which resulted in higher crop yields (especially in northern Europe) (heavy plow, horse collars, wind mills, more water mills, 3 and later 4 field crop rotation, general improvements in metallurgy...
- riffraff 3y ago
  100 years ago we had barely started doing vaccinations at scale, germ theory was accepted but basically a "modern" theory and surgery was still barely better than the previous millennia. The 20th and 21st century havd been revolutionary from a medical point of view.
inglor_cz 3y ago
"However those who survived to adulthood had a life expectancy considerably closer to modern ones than most people think." Nope. I see this consistently repeated all over HN or Reddit, but it just isn't true. Only the high clergy routinely reached their late 60s, and trying to analyze general mortality from the relatively sparse ancient records that mostly concerned the richest and most important people introduces enormous biases. It is the burial grounds that tell the full story without major biases (there still are biases caused by, say, sailors drowning and their bones not being buried on land - a nontrivial cause of death in a maritime imperium). And the bones of average people indicate that over half didn't live to see their 60th birthday until the 19th century. In some really bad periods (the Dark Ages in Europe), the average buried adult person is in their early forties - a tale of food insecurity and constant raids. Rome, at least, was mostly food secure and had long periods of peace, so celebrating your 50th birthday was very thinkable for a free Roman citizen of non-pauper status. Edit: someone downvoting this. People, just take any paper about an archeological excavation of an old burial ground and the detected age distribution of the skeletons found. People over 60 are untypical, though always present in all periods until well into the industrial revolution. And early Medieval cemeteries skew a lot younger than either Rome at its height, or the Late Middle Ages with their better agriculture and more capable governments.
- Dah00n 3y ago
  How is this different to today in countries not living the good life because they have exported slavery to other countries? Africa for example seem worse off than what you wrote. Around 1% at 60: https://www.populationpyramid.net/africa/2022/ https://www.populationpyramid.net/africa/2022/ To compare to a time when slaves were near, surely we must add our poor regions, where people work in mines and factories for us, to our life expectancy. Otherwise we are as much comparing Modern Capitalism to feudalism, etc.
  - hist_thr 3y ago
    Now look at population growth. The Roman empires population was largely stagnant between the 1st century AD to the 3rd. Africa's population has increased 10 fold in the same period.
tlogan 3y ago
That is just not true. Do you have paper proving that? As far as I know, life expectancy for somebody who reached age of 10 was 36/37. If you include child mortality then life expectancy was in 20s [1][2]. [1] https://www.jstor.org/stable/3184767 https://www.jstor.org/stable/3184767 [2] https://www.ucl.ac.uk/museums-static/digitalegypt/age/roman.html https://www.ucl.ac.uk/museums-static/digitalegypt/age/roman....
0xDEF 3y ago
>Life expectancy at birth was lower than today. However those who survived to adulthood had a life expectancy considerably closer to modern ones than most people think. This is not true and the source of this misconception is a misleading BBC article that only cited sources about the rich privileged elites of ancient Rome and Middle Age England. The vast majority of people in the past had significantly lower life expectancy than the rich elites of their time.
qwytw 3y ago
Even for males in the 20 to 30s in pre modern societies the chance of death (ignoring violence etc.) was several times higher than now. For females the risk of death during childhood was about 1% per event. So if you had 8+ children (half of whom died). Divided per 20 years that alone is 5 times or so higher chance to die per year than a 30 year old woman has today (from all causes). > However those who survived to adulthood had a life expectancy considerably closer to modern ones than most IIRC based on the data we have that was only the case in parts Colonial New England where a majority of 20 year olds could expect to reach 60+. But that was a huge exception compared to every other agricultural society that we know of.

by User23 3y ago

pjmlp 3y ago

If we forget how war was a common "sport" and how much court decisions were done.

DC-3 3y ago

This is true, but true in the sense of 'actually adults tended to live into their 60s not into their 40s'. In western countries today if someone dies in their 60s it seems very young.

hist_thr 3y ago

No they really didn't. This is what the age pyramid looks like for a first world nation: https://www.populationpyramid.net/finland/2022/ https://www.populationpyramid.net/finland/2022/ It's a column until you reach 70 then people start dying. This is what the age pyramid looks like for a society stuck in the Malthusian trap: https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-XfdbjKDGvT0/Ti49-5r5EyI/AAAAAAAABVE/KiDAwxps_DY/s1600/medieval_pop_demo.JPG https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-XfdbjKDGvT0/Ti49-5r5EyI/AAAAAAAAB... Notice how people have a half life, the chance of dying when you reach 20 years in any year is 5% regardless of age.

Dah00n 3y ago
Finland though. Try Africa: https://www.populationpyramid.net/africa/2022/ https://www.populationpyramid.net/africa/2022/
- twelve40 3y ago
  try the world(google), it's actually closer to finland
  - Dah00n 3y ago
    Yes, because much of the world export our slave-like labour to poor regions of the world. Those poor people clearly need to be counted in our life expectancy if we are to compare to a time when slaves where in the household etc. Export of misery does make the numbers look nice though.
- hist_thr 3y ago
  Africa does not have a 50% child mortality rate. What it has is an an average of 5 children born per woman. In short: not even the worst place in Africa today is as bad as the best place any time before 1900.
legulere 3y ago
A middle age rural village in Germany is not the same as an ancient roman city.
- qwytw 3y ago
  > middle age rural village in Germany Especially after the plague would have been a much nicer place to live for most people than an average ancient Roman city (or even Rome itself given that's its population was only sustainable because of immigration)

twelve40 3y ago

> had a life expectancy considerably closer to modern ones than most people think there are quite a few weasel words in there, but no, they didn't have life expectancy I would envy, even if they survived adulthood.

n8henrie 3y ago

I think the detractors of your comment would have less ground if you compared the life expectancy at 10 yo in Pompeii to that of a 10 yo from, say, 100 years ago, in which case at least I find it surprising that the difference is not far greater.

truculent 3y ago
The Middle Ages is not Rome. I think it’s plausible that Roman society would fare better
- mcpackieh 3y ago
  100 years ago was not the Middle Ages, that ended about 500 years ago. 100 years ago is the late modern period.
  - truculent 3y ago
    I think I replied to the wrong comment. My mistake.
- qwytw 3y ago
  Why? There is evidence suggesting that the number calories available and the general quality of nutrition for median person increased after the collapse of the Roman empire. Both because of a significant decrease in taxation but mostly because the plague, climate change and warfare killed half or so killed half of the people living in Europe at the time. The same thing happened in the 1300s and 1400s as the number of people decreases significantly the quality of life for those who remained increased (more land per capita). Additionally there were significant technological developments during the middle ages which resulted in higher crop yields (especially in northern Europe) (heavy plow, horse collars, wind mills, more water mills, 3 and later 4 field crop rotation, general improvements in metallurgy...
riffraff 3y ago
100 years ago we had barely started doing vaccinations at scale, germ theory was accepted but basically a "modern" theory and surgery was still barely better than the previous millennia. The 20th and 21st century havd been revolutionary from a medical point of view.

inglor_cz 3y ago

"However those who survived to adulthood had a life expectancy considerably closer to modern ones than most people think." Nope. I see this consistently repeated all over HN or Reddit, but it just isn't true. Only the high clergy routinely reached their late 60s, and trying to analyze general mortality from the relatively sparse ancient records that mostly concerned the richest and most important people introduces enormous biases. It is the burial grounds that tell the full story without major biases (there still are biases caused by, say, sailors drowning and their bones not being buried on land - a nontrivial cause of death in a maritime imperium). And the bones of average people indicate that over half didn't live to see their 60th birthday until the 19th century. In some really bad periods (the Dark Ages in Europe), the average buried adult person is in their early forties - a tale of food insecurity and constant raids. Rome, at least, was mostly food secure and had long periods of peace, so celebrating your 50th birthday was very thinkable for a free Roman citizen of non-pauper status. Edit: someone downvoting this. People, just take any paper about an archeological excavation of an old burial ground and the detected age distribution of the skeletons found. People over 60 are untypical, though always present in all periods until well into the industrial revolution. And early Medieval cemeteries skew a lot younger than either Rome at its height, or the Late Middle Ages with their better agriculture and more capable governments.

Dah00n 3y ago
How is this different to today in countries not living the good life because they have exported slavery to other countries? Africa for example seem worse off than what you wrote. Around 1% at 60: https://www.populationpyramid.net/africa/2022/ https://www.populationpyramid.net/africa/2022/ To compare to a time when slaves were near, surely we must add our poor regions, where people work in mines and factories for us, to our life expectancy. Otherwise we are as much comparing Modern Capitalism to feudalism, etc.
- hist_thr 3y ago
  Now look at population growth. The Roman empires population was largely stagnant between the 1st century AD to the 3rd. Africa's population has increased 10 fold in the same period.

tlogan 3y ago

That is just not true. Do you have paper proving that? As far as I know, life expectancy for somebody who reached age of 10 was 36/37. If you include child mortality then life expectancy was in 20s [1][2]. [1] https://www.jstor.org/stable/3184767 https://www.jstor.org/stable/3184767 [2] https://www.ucl.ac.uk/museums-static/digitalegypt/age/roman.html https://www.ucl.ac.uk/museums-static/digitalegypt/age/roman....

0xDEF 3y ago

>Life expectancy at birth was lower than today. However those who survived to adulthood had a life expectancy considerably closer to modern ones than most people think. This is not true and the source of this misconception is a misleading BBC article that only cited sources about the rich privileged elites of ancient Rome and Middle Age England. The vast majority of people in the past had significantly lower life expectancy than the rich elites of their time.

qwytw 3y ago

Even for males in the 20 to 30s in pre modern societies the chance of death (ignoring violence etc.) was several times higher than now. For females the risk of death during childhood was about 1% per event. So if you had 8+ children (half of whom died). Divided per 20 years that alone is 5 times or so higher chance to die per year than a 30 year old woman has today (from all causes). > However those who survived to adulthood had a life expectancy considerably closer to modern ones than most IIRC based on the data we have that was only the case in parts Colonial New England where a majority of 20 year olds could expect to reach 60+. But that was a huge exception compared to every other agricultural society that we know of.