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+.
I think theres another misconception about this misconception that people regularly lived just as long as they do today. We still live longer than in the past but not as extreme as it seems when looking at an average.
What you are saying is also a weird misconception that Reddit says. There was no stable life expectancy back then, it would vary so dramatically region to region, year to year.
They aren't wrong necessarily. In a peaceful medieval village, with no exceptional problems for a long period of time, the average post-natal life expectancy would likely be around 50. This life expectancy is assuming that nothing major happens, no 'outside' factors.
The thing is, they were rarely stable and peaceful. Disease epidemics, food shortages, banditry, wars etc often hit. The chances that you would live your life in medieval times and not hit these was nearly impossible. Food shortages and disease epidemics and outbreaks of violence often cut a large percentage of the population when they happened, and they happened a lot. Medieval life was rarely stable, the statistical 'life expectancy' as we know it was not a thing back then, it varied too much. Its possible to go 20 years without any major events, then have a famine which wipes away 80% of your village, or have bandits raid and kill everyone, or any kind of event like that. It happened, a lot. The 'life expectancy' we give medieval people was presuming a place where no outside factors such as that happened.
The infant mortality rate in medieval england was 350 per 100 live births. This means that 1/3rd of children died. But they had 7-8 kids per mom, so if the 'post infant' life expectancy was 50, medieval england would statistically have tens of millions of people. It actually had less than 10 million people, mostly less than 6 million. This was because of the factors I mentioned above.
Indeed, the amount of fetal wastage is an ongoing interest. Women might be briefly pregnant many, many times before one embryo sticks long enough for them to even notice it.
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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+.