[saalweachter]

The question is also "Did they live longer?". The article gave the ages of some individual knights as being greater than the average lifespan at the time, which is not incompatible with the average knight's lifespan being the same as the average peasant.

[reaperducer]

The whole first half of the article was about the knights living longer than the average peasant.

The very first paragraph of the article:

>For even wealthy landholding males, average life expectancy was about 31 years, rising to 48 years for those who made it to their twenties. The Knights Templar, then, must have seemed to have some magical potion: Many members of this Catholic military order lived long past 60.

[saalweachter]

That exact paragraph is the one I'm complaining about. 31 and 48 are qualified averages (for wealthy landowning males and the same who survived to age 20). "Many lived long past 60" is talking about the outliers of the Templar population. What was the average?

[dredmorbius]

There likely is no average available, as coronors, undertakers, public health departments, and general statistics were poorly kept. So if rigorous comprehensive data are your requirement, you'll likely be disappointed.

What data were available favoured the wearthly, and from them and other, nonstatistical, contemporaneous accounts, it is apparently clear enough to note that the wealthy lived longer lives than the bulk of the population

Many of the poor who died, particularly infants, children, and women, may have left no documentary trace at all.

[reaperducer]

I think it's a reading comprehension problem.

The average lifespan for all people was 31.

The average lifespan for a subset of those people who lived to age 20 was 48.

The reason for the distinction is infant mortality and other childhood diseases which lingered much longer than they do today because we now have more treatments.

[saalweachter]

Yes, that is clear.

What was the average lifespan for a wealthy landowning male who survived to the age of 20 and was a member of the Knights Templar?

[reaperducer]

Zero, since they didn't exist.