[ETH_start]

We can see in markers of extreme poverty in remains of people who died in pre-modern times:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_bioarchaeology#

>>Anne L. Grauer, Professor of Anthropology at Loyola University Chicago, assessed the presence of porotic hyperostosis and periosteal reactions in the population (n=1,014) from St. Helen-on-the-Walls in York, England. She used porotic hyperostosis and periosteal reactions to examine health and disease in urban medieval England. Grauer discovered that 58% of the population displayed evidence of porotic hyperostosis and 21.5% displayed evidence of periosteal reactions.[6]

Without industrial civilization, the amount of labor people do is not sufficient for most of the comforts of modern life, like insulated and waterproof shelter, sanitary pads, diapers, vaccines, bandages, regular laundrying of clothing, etc etc.

[swatcoder]

This would be more useful with detail on what share of the population lived in urban environments, as well as insight into what life was life for the share that didn’t.

Do you know that? Do you have that?

[simonh]

We have the Domesday Book from the 11th century which was a complete survey of the entire country, and we have parish and monastic records, wills, town charters and tax accounts from later periods. Of course there are gaps and ambiguities but we’re far from blind about those times.