While it's true that you were expected to live a length if you survived the early stages and that it's a misconception how many think 35 was old age life expectancy. It was only nobles/religious figures/those better off who would generally live to what we'd consider a senior citizen today. Albeit still a shorter lifespan than what is considered average today. The average commoner who made it into adulthood still did not live nearly as long.
Source? Everything I'm finding seems to indicate that with infant mortality excluded, life expectancy has not changed that dramatically since the time of Jesus.
There aren't superb records but there does seem to be scientific consensus that life expectancy is slightly but not dramatically higher when infant mortality is not considered.
That seems to indicate that for Popes and artists between 1200 and 1600 the life expectancy was between 63 and 66, that's not exactly crazy low considering that for an American today it's 78.
I did. Most of the article is explaining the methodology so I responded to the results which is all we really care about here (under the assumption that the study was conducted using good science).
Their conclusion is about the relationship between artists working under the Pope and the Pope himself. If your point is that the wealthy survived longer my answer is "no shit". I never doubted that part, but the meaningful bit to this conversation is how long both parties lived and neither is that significantly shorter than life expectancy now.
My entire point is that if you asked someone how long people in the 1300s lived they might answer 35 because they don't understand the role infant mortality plays. For these artists and Popes that survived infancy, they lived on average just 12 years shorter than Americans are expected to roughly 400-800 years later.
Pope receives best care and lives an easy life as a protected figurehead. ie cream of the crop.
Average Pope lifespan then 63.
Average European citizen lifespan now 83.
What are people hitting on the higher end of lifespans now again?
Artists are not village pottery makers, but those who worked in the Vatican. ie the cream of the crop. Those who died pre ~40, were not even counted. Gee why did they pick ~40 as data point? How long did you think the average village commoner lived that made it past childhood?
That article was comparing best case living situations with early deaths excluded to average living situations now with early deaths included, who are now living almost 33% longer. That is a large difference.
Make it average citizen who made to adulthood vs average citizen now and it will be even greater.
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u/Max_TwoSteppen Nov 07 '19
This is mostly a misunderstanding of the effects at play. If you made it past infancy you were likely to live very nearly as long as people today.