Average life spans. People in ancient times didn’t drop dead at forty. They regularly lived to be advanced ages we would consider normal. It’s just that infant and young child deaths were so common it really drags down the average.
That’s not actually true. People died of a variety of infections and disease we treat easily today, many people were malnourished. The big historical boosts in lifespan were after antibiotic discovery, insulin, and GPCR cardiac meds.
Mid-adult deaths dragged down the average. Child deaths really dragged down the average. The point is that the interpretation of “40 year life expectancy” is caused by misunderstanding averages, not from some massively inferior physiology of prior humans. Yes, more things readily killed you, but it wasn’t a mid-life ticking time bomb. Excluding infant death bumps expectancy up around 10-20 years
Yes, 50% child mortality skews life expectancy statistics heavily, but any 40 year life expectancy estimate is clearly filtering out at least some portion of childhood deaths. By our best estimates: of the 48% of people who survived age 10, slightly less than half were dead by 45. Of those who clear 45, less than half reach 65.
Those early deaths aren’t driven by “inferior physiology”, but disease and malnourishment (as the previous commenter noted). It was possible to live into your 80s, but you had to be very, very lucky to pull it off.
I mean, there was a selectivity to it, yes. But also a whole lot of random chance, which is why it kept happening instead of fixing itself in a few generations.
It’s still how it works. We’re either going to artificially fix the problems or go back to that, and do so in an evolutionary eye blink - almost certainly in our lifetimes, by the look of it.
This is the biggest historical misconception. So much dumb stuff like “horribke histories” (children’s history books + tv show in britain) heavily reinforced this misconception
Average life spans. People in ancient times didn’t drop dead at forty. They regularly lived to be advanced ages we would consider normal. It’s just that infant and young child deaths were so common it really drags down the average.
Also a horrific amount of mothers dying in childbirth didn’t do wonders for the average.
This is just the typical modern misunderstanding of statistics.
To be fair, I doubt people understood statistics much better back in the day, either.
And there were poor or no records of birth, they guessed at people’s age of death.
I was thinking that when I wrote it.
But there is more people now. So more people to misunderstand it :-)
That’s not actually true. People died of a variety of infections and disease we treat easily today, many people were malnourished. The big historical boosts in lifespan were after antibiotic discovery, insulin, and GPCR cardiac meds.
No, people did not life longer before 1900.
Mid-adult deaths dragged down the average. Child deaths really dragged down the average. The point is that the interpretation of “40 year life expectancy” is caused by misunderstanding averages, not from some massively inferior physiology of prior humans. Yes, more things readily killed you, but it wasn’t a mid-life ticking time bomb. Excluding infant death bumps expectancy up around 10-20 years
A bit of column A, a bit of column B.
Yes, 50% child mortality skews life expectancy statistics heavily, but any 40 year life expectancy estimate is clearly filtering out at least some portion of childhood deaths. By our best estimates: of the 48% of people who survived age 10, slightly less than half were dead by 45. Of those who clear 45, less than half reach 65.
Those early deaths aren’t driven by “inferior physiology”, but disease and malnourishment (as the previous commenter noted). It was possible to live into your 80s, but you had to be very, very lucky to pull it off.
So common as in literally half of kids died.
Which is how evolution worked, those with diseases like diabetes etc (mutations thay arent beneficial) died and didn’t pass that gene on.
I mean, there was a selectivity to it, yes. But also a whole lot of random chance, which is why it kept happening instead of fixing itself in a few generations.
It’s still how it works. We’re either going to artificially fix the problems or go back to that, and do so in an evolutionary eye blink - almost certainly in our lifetimes, by the look of it.
Also wrong. WTAF this thread. Lemmy just loves to make up science.
This is the biggest historical misconception. So much dumb stuff like “horribke histories” (children’s history books + tv show in britain) heavily reinforced this misconception
also infections too. only the fat kings lived to things like 50-70s.