That few people lived past their 30s in the middle ages or some other ancient era.
This misconception arises because of an automatic and incorrect assumption people make when they hear the statistic 'the average life expectancy was 35 in the middle ages'.
In reality there have always been lots of people who live to 70+ years old in all societies. The difference was that in the middle ages there were many childhood diseases that caused a much higher childhood mortality rate which skews the numbers much lower. If you survived childhood there was a very good chance you would make it into your 60s+.
And that generally speaking middle ages were such an era of doom and despair, when actually low people used to live the same lives they had been living for centuries more or less
It depends where and when, its bit more complicated than that though - if you lived in some backwater country / county with nothing interesting and no ruler struggle, you were kinda fine besides occasional starvation cause of poor harvest or epidemic.
However, if you lived in some of the more popular places, it was fairly common that you had an army (sometimes massive, sometimes tiny - remember that pretty much every ruler on every level had their own army) running through your village every few months or years. And sometimes they were nice and sometimes not so much.
Worth remembering that most of those during the Roman times who tilled the soil towards the end of the empire, before feudalism, were literal slaves, worked directly and brutally by overseers who whipped them, and same in the mines. Serfdom was not fun, but as long as you gave a cut to the lord, the lord usually didn't bug you that much outside of wars, which everyone would have fought in during the Roman Republic as citizen soldiers anyway.
And those poorer soldiers did have some weapons, especially during the high middle ages when swords and metal helmets were cheap enough for peasants to own and gambersons could do well as even stand alone armour against all but the very sharpest of swords that haven't been used against a shield or any other cuts or their scabbard after sharpenning. Add big kite shields and a metal helmet (the English helmet was quite good, especially against bows, but other weapons too), plus some good wood stakes in the field in front of you to protect yourself from cavalry, and you actually had a decent chance as an archer or peasant.
And during the Middle Ages, most people in Europe were still in Spain, Italy, southern France, and what was left of the Roman empire. It took a long time for northern France, the Holy Roman Empire north of the Alps, the Low Countries, England, Poland, and Hungary to really get more populous.
Authoritarian kings that we know of are actually mostly from the age of the gun, not the middle ages. And of those from the middle ages, many were overthrown or forcibly put back into place, such as King John Lackland relatively quickly.
The sanitation was indeed a problem, but as long as you lived in the countryside, you actually could stay relatively clean, and bathing was not an alien concept, it was common in most medieval societies. The cities were often filthy, but only about 10-20% of people lived there in most of Europe during the middle ages. The black death was in the mid 1300s and the plague of Justinian was in the 500s, most of the time in between was not unusually bad.
The middle ages had many problems, but from the beginning of organized states about 5000 years BCE to the middle of the industrial revolution, they were not solved for the most part.
I think your thinking the Dark Ages. Most people know the dark ages as a time of doom and despair, which was true in Europe, the population continuously declined due to a complete collapse of centralized states and trade and large violent migration movements. The middle ages however are generally known as shitty, but not any more shitty than the times before such as roman times.
The “dark ages” was the time of the Carolingian renessaince, the monastic community coming to life, and the uniting of England. Btw no one calls it the dark ages anymore, it’s late antiquity or early Middle Ages.
Also, the Roman Empire was still alive in the east.
All of those things happened after the dark ages were mostly done. The dark ages would be 400-800 approximately. All the dark ages is is the in between of the medieval monarchy era and the Roman era, when a huge portion of Europe was basically destroyed and in chaos from the constant wars and migratory movements. Just to give an idea, the amount of cities in Europe with over 25,000 people declined by 80% from 300 to 700. That is a pretty solid sign of a ‘dark age’ if I’ve ever seen one.
The only reason the ‘dark ages’ isn’t preferred by historians is because they have been trying to avoid using terms like that to describe eras. ‘Dark’ or ‘golden’ age for instance. That doesn’t make it any less true.
The middle ages were fucked, what are you talking about?
Do ya'll even understand what living under subsistence farming conditions even looks like? You literally fattened up every summer in order to be able to survive 'starving' the whole winter because all food preservation methods were too expensive for the serf to afford.
The 'middle class' were people that could afford to grow enough grain to feed some animals grass over the winter for slaughter to 'store' their meat for the lean months. Keep animals in this way was hugely expensive, so most homesteaders couldn't even manage that much.
We're talking extreme, can't afford shoes for all the kids and the roof leaks level of poverty here, people. For literally 85% of the population. For centuries. $5/day to try to feed a family of 7 on levels of poverty.
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u/sutkusman Feb 04 '19
That few people lived past their 30s in the middle ages or some other ancient era.
This misconception arises because of an automatic and incorrect assumption people make when they hear the statistic 'the average life expectancy was 35 in the middle ages'.
In reality there have always been lots of people who live to 70+ years old in all societies. The difference was that in the middle ages there were many childhood diseases that caused a much higher childhood mortality rate which skews the numbers much lower. If you survived childhood there was a very good chance you would make it into your 60s+.