[aero-deck]

and we're just soooo much smarter nowadays than we were 1000 years ago...

[burke]

I mean the average lifespan in the year 1000 was about 31, so we’re doing at least a few things right.

[albrewer]

From what I've read, if you filter out children under 5 in that statistic people lived into their early 60's pretty regularly.

[Tade0]

High child mortality is still a bad thing.

[albrewer]

Not saying it's not, but the implication that everyone was dying at 30 isn't true.

[Tade0]

That's not what's implied. Only thing that was said was that the average lifespan was 31. Could be any curve under that number, but it's bad however you cut it.

[euroderf]

Yes. Stats about average lifetimes are quite misleading & useless until you filter out child mortality.

[Night_Thastus]

Isn't that average lifespan? There was a lot of death either in childbirth or during early childhood years. If you filter that data out a bit, adults lived a more comparable age. Still not as good as today, but not 31.

[tomgp]

TBH I'm not sure the argument that only women and those under 5 were dying young in large numbers is a great rebuttal to the idea that we were better off in 1023.

[Night_Thastus]

I wasn't arguing that. Of course medical tech is better now. I was saying 31 is just not a good number to claim for that time period.

[jazzabeanie]

Lifespans got worse before they got better. Better to reference 10,000BC than 1023AD, and that’s not so clear.

[Tenoke]

>Excluding child mortality, the average life expectancy during the 12th–19th centuries was approximately 55 years

So still worse by whole decades than now.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy#:~:text=Excl....

[lostlogin]

Yes, although lots of places (mainly in Africa) have average life spans in the 50s.

https://www.worlddata.info/life-expectancy.php#by-population

[aero-deck]

all the correct observations about averages aside, quantity!=quality

[dekhn]

that's dominated by child mortality; people who survived to teen years typically lived much longer than 31