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by zephyr9 1680 days ago
>> That 30-40 year lifespan is also a myth. High mortality brings down the average, but people's lifespan has been around 70 throughout history.

> Yeah, mortality tends to bring down the lifespan average. I don't see how you can meaningfully measure lifespan while removing people who died from the pool. Women dying in childbirths, which was not exceptional at all, should lower the estimated lifespan. People dying from accidents that could be saved today too.

Whoops, should be *child mortality. So yeah a lot of kids used to die, but we can't really blame them now can we. The way I've seen it measured is as life expectancy after a certain age, e.g. in preindustrial eras, once a person reached 30 they could expect to live to at least 60.

As for people measuring psychological stressors, yeah that's really only since the inception of the profession. Not too many 12th century psych majors...

1 comments

> once a person reached 30 they could expect to live to at least 60

First not true. Looking at wikipedia, "If we do not take into account child mortality in total mortality, then the average life expectancy in the 12–19 centuries was approximately 55 years. If a medieval person was able to survive childhood, then they had about a 50% chance of living up to 50–55 years."

Also, 30 is quite a lot. It means, you survived childbirth if you are woman. First one is the most dangerous. It means, you did not got injured in accident with animal or tool in your teens and twenties - when you are at your physical prime and do heavy work the most.

> As for people measuring psychological stressors

I think that child mortality is yet another stressors they faced. But also, if your relative is bipolar or has schizophrenia and whole family lives in one room cabin, I can only imagine things to become super stressful for everyone.