[caf]

Low life expectancies in the past weren't because most people died in their 40s / 50s. They were heavily depressed by infant and child mortality - if you survived to adulthood, you had a reasonable chance of living to a ripe old age.

[smitherfield]

I'm already adjusting upwards for that; life expectancies didn't reach 50 (in the US) until the 1920's[1], and the posts I'm responding to are talking about the Medieval period or earlier, when life expectancy at birth would've been 30 or so. Some people did live into their 60's or longer but they were very much the exception, even among adults.

[1] https://www.seniorliving.org/history/1900-2000-changes-life-...

[naasking]

That's incorrect. The average age of adult death was much higher, around 60 [1], ie. if you lived to 5 years old, you could expect to live another 55 years.

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/life-expectancy/

[smitherfield]

That was in the mid-19th century, which was a very different world from the Medieval period. From your own link, during the 18th century Swedish 10-year-olds lived on average into their mid-50’s. From that it can be reasonably extrapolated that 10-year-olds lived on average into their 40’s in (civilizations at the level of development of) Medieval and Classical-period Europe.