[rjf72]

The BBC ran a phenomenal article here [1] detailing a wide array of data on the longevity of people through the ages. How long did higher class Ancient Greeks live? Ancient Greece dates back to starting around 3,300 years ago. In spite of their remarkable technological achievements they remained almost entirely ignorant of medicine. They relied on a system based around the 'four humors' - blood, phlegm, yellow/black bile. They had no clue about germs or any other basic fundamentals of modern medicine. Vaccines? You need to wait about 3,000 years. And their hygenic habits are the sort we'd find pretty questionable. For instance they obviously did not have rolls of 2 ply at their toilets. Instead what they had were sponges - butt brushes. One guy'd do his business. You'd come in, and give the well used sponge a swirl about in some water. For the fancy toilets, you might give it a swirl in some vinegar. And then you'd have your go.

So how long did they live? The BBC article mentioned a 'census' of the longevity of individuals we now are familiar with. The median life expectancy was 72 years. Pythagorus - 75, Hippocrates - 90, Plato - 80, etc. Of course there's some some selection bias there, but there is also other evidence of their longevity as well. For instance in Ancient Rome one could not hold the office of Consul until reaching the age of 43, first office was not available until age 30. Another mildly intriguing part anecdote there is that the life expectancy declined pretty substantially for those born in the latter part of the civilization (after 100BC) to only 66 years. The likely culprit there is the installation of significant public piping systems... made out of lead. They inadvertently poisoned themselves for centuries.

The article also goes on to analyze numerous other sources than tend to paint a recurring picture: there was high infant and youth mortality, but people who made it to adulthood tended to have a life expectancy not all that different than we do today. It seems to suggest that a large part of our increased life expectancy is not from the trillions of dollars we've spent on trying to find a [profit making] pill for everything, but instead from very simple things like access to clean water and food.

[1] - http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20181002-how-long-did-ancien...

[idoubtit]

This BBC article intends to surprise the reader, and I think the reader has to be extremly cautious with its content. Yet, it briefly mentions that the Roman longevity concerned only the nobility.

> all working-class people who were buried in common graves. The average age of death was 30, and that wasn’t a mere statistical quirk

Back to the BBC article, some of its source are dubious, and I suppose they were selected only because of their "selling power". For instance, the paper on Victorian life expectancy was debated here[^0] with much skepticism.

[^0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14586145

[rjf72]

There was no magic longevity potion those of means had. All they had over the common class are the things we all have and take for granted today - protection from the consequences war and mostly stable access to clean food and water. The upper class of times back then arguably less so on both accounts than even a lower class individual today. This was the whole point. It's not like you could attribute their longevity to sophisticated medicine, because it literally did not exist at the time.

[gowld]

> It seems to suggest that a large part of our increased life expectancy is not from the trillions of dollars we've spent on trying to find a [profit making] pill for everything, but instead from very simple things like access to clean water and food.

That's a massive leap.

Other things that killed a lot of young people are:

* childbirth

* infection

* disease, including the occasional plague that decimates a population.

Not to mention the quality of life difference of not losing non-fatal body parts and function to disease and infection.

[rjf72]

Of course you're correct that these also had higher, and probably much higher, mortality rates. But what matters is overall impact. Let's say that x% fewer people die in childbirth today. What would that mean? What you'd start by doing is seeing the cause of death for a large sample of people in times past. So let's say you look at 100,000 people. How many would have had mortality caused by childbirth? It'd be extremely negligible and almost certainly in the single digits if not fractional. Keep in mind you're looking at all deaths, not just deaths of women who gave birth. And so that x% improvement results in a comparably small gain - childbirth being safer does not have a major quantitative impact because its rate as a general killer was, and is, very low.

What would be killing people? All the way up until the mid 20th century famine was one of the biggest causes of death. Famine and related issues all the way up until the mid 20th century was a huge killer. For instance in the early 1900s around 27 million people died in famines with a world population of about 1.7 billion. [1] That's 1.6% of the entire world dying of famine in one year! Now go back 3000 years with all the difficulties that entails.

And then consider things like food poisoning. We consider it, as a cause of mortality, mostly eradicated in the developed world. Yet it was such a pernicious killer that "eradicated" translates to 3,000 deaths from foodborn disease per year in the United States alone [2]. And now once again, go backwards in time to imagine how radically worse things would have been. To give that number some contrast consider measels. The vaccination was introduced in 1963. In the decade leading up to the immunization 400-500 died per year from it. [3] In other words foodborn disease is a bigger killer today than measels was before there was a vaccination for it. This isn't some anti-vax thing, but trying to give perspective to how and why people have died throughout the ages.

[1] - http://www.thegwpf.com/the-era-of-great-famines-is-over/

[2] - https://www.cdc.gov/foodborneburden/index.html

[3] - https://www.cdc.gov/measles/about/history.html

[ghi5goio3qno4i3]

True but I was referring specifically to a line in the article attributed to one of the director's of the study:

"Robert Waldinger, the current director of the study, summarized – in what is now one of the most viewed TED Talks to date – the findings from decades of research. The main result, he concluded, is that social connections are one of the most important factors for people’s happiness and health. He said: “Those who kept warm relationships got to live longer and happier, and the loners often died earlier”."

Hence why I was musing about whether it was conclusive to actually say that the whether it was that act of having close relationships itself that made him see this result, or if the longevity he was seeing was a result of the inherent monitoring and support that occurs with peers. For instance, a spouse may notice a lump on her partner's back, or friends pitching in after someone is let go from a job. If we could somehow control for that support network, would that equalize the life spans of people in a study like this?

To be fair, this is just useless speculation. I doubt very much that it would be possible to run an experiment like this.