[miramba]

_Examination…put his likely age to be around 45. This was a good age considering the short life expectancy 5300 years ago.

I think this is an urban myth.

Edit: Seems like I was thinking wrong, see below.

The average life expectancy 200 years ago (ie the time we did comprehensive and complete records of births and deaths of a population) was indeed much lower than today. But a huge part of that was a high child mortality rate of around 50% until adolescence was reached. Once a person grew beyond that age, it‘s life expectancy was just a few years below of where we are today. There is no reason to believe that this was different a few millenias ago. The reason that child mortality dropped substantially around the end of the 19th century was 1. the discovery of the importance of hygiene and 2. antibiotics.

[inglor_cz]

" Once a person grew beyond that age, it‘s life expectancy was just a few years below of where we are today."

I strongly disagree. Every single archeological study that I read and that examined ages of skeletons excavated from normal European cemeteries (= not kingly burials etc.) indicated that people over 60 used to be fairly rare (less than one in 10), even in the Early Modern Era, much less so in the Middle Ages. In the Early Middle Ages, with their hunger and frequent raids, even 50 was untypical.

Even the most important people of the past, for whom we actually know their ages at death, died way earlier than we do today.

Try enumerating the English or the French kings who lived to be 70. Not many, a few individuals over a span of a millennium. It only started getting better post 1750, and really better since 1900.

[miramba]

Interesting! I admit that I never saw a study like that. I tried googling it unsucessfully so I asked chatgpt:

Caclculate the average life span of french kings who died on natural causes in the last 1000 years. Please return a single number.

* The average lifespan of French kings who died of natural causes over the last 1000 years is approximately 58 years.

This number reflects those kings who did not die in battle, through assassination, or from other violent causes, focusing instead on those who died due to illness, old age, or other non-violent factors. *

Assuming that chatgpt can read wikipedia pages correctly, it seems that you are right, thanks! If you happen to have links for those archeological studies, I‘d gladly read them.

[qwytw]

You could check actual actuarial tables and population wide statistics from the 1700s and 1800s directly. You'll see that young people were many times more likely to die in their 20s and 30s than they are now. e.g. as late as mid 1800s almost ~30% of those who reached 20 died before they were 50. The proportion is about 10x lower these days.

> Assuming that chatgpt can read wikipedia pages correctly

I gave it a pdf of the Wikipedia page, it wrote a Python script and calculated that it was:

37 years all causes and 46 only natural.

(https://chatgpt.com/share/679aafa9-7ac8-800a-8f4c-3ba67f4502...)

Of course I'm too lazy to check if it's correct.

However I don't think this data is necessarily at all that meaningful because it only includes who lived long enough to become king.

e.g. Louis XIV died at 76, his first son died at 49, next son who reached adulthood died at 16. His first grandson died when he was 29. Finally he was succeeded by the third son of his grandson (first to reach adulthood). So naturally the "sample" overrepresents those who had an average than longer lifespan.

[buildsjets]

Ask it to show you the list of kings and their ages and calculate the average yourself. I'll bet the answer is not 58 years. Regardless of the accuracy of the source data, ChatGPT is terrible at arithmetic. I asked the same question, and it told me the answer was 55 years.

I once asked ChatGPT how high a stack of floppy disks that holds 1TB would be. It returned 1.5 meters, which is clearly implausible to anyone who remembers how high a stack of floppy disks to install Windows 95 was. Obvs the model has improved over time as it now returns a more plausible 2.65 kM.

[inglor_cz]

A somewhat related comment:

a. Until the 12th century or so, dates of birth even for kings are somewhat fuzzy, sometimes not even the year is certain. Deaths are usually better recorded, but anyway, there will be some systemic uncertainty there.

b. When evaluating whether a particular king's death was natural or not (the GP wanted to exclude non-natural deaths), we must take into account that a successful poisoning might look like sudden-onset gastritis or so, and that kings were absolutely a plausible target for such attacks. It works both ways; Ladislaus the Posthumous (died 1457) was widely suspected to have been poisoned, only a detailed scientific examination of his skeleton in the 1980s proved that cause of his death was a non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

[qwytw]

I had it extract the data from the page directly and actually calculate it:

https://chatgpt.com/share/679aafa9-7ac8-800a-8f4c-3ba67f4502...

It claims it's ~47 (only natural causes). I'm too lazy to verify it of course...

[inglor_cz]

So, one example. If you translate the following book into English using some online service, ages of the skeletons excavated near the Prague Castle are being discussed on pages 41 and 42

https://www.arup.cas.cz/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/CP_12_2_2...

Of 95 adult people buried there, three men were in the category senilis (over 60). Women could obviously live longer, as 16 of them were in the category senilis (quite a lot! 29 per cent of all adult women in fact), but there was also a visible cluster of female dead aged 20-30, which probably indicates the danger of dying at childbirth or soon after.

The people buried at Lumbe's Gardens were probably members of the "better off" part of the society. It is located right next to the seat of the Bohemian King (then, Prince), after all. So this is how age profiles looked like in the "upper middle strata" of the medieval Czech society around year 1000 or so. Still pretty bad, by current standards. Quite a lot of deaths in the < 35 age bracket.

==================================================

Incidentally, I just read an article about famous Czech personalities of the 19th century. Many were rather short-lived as well:

https://www.idnes.cz/xman/styl/narodni-obrozeni-historie-ces...

Karel Hynek Mácha, the national Romantic poet, died in 1836 at 26 years of age, either pneumonia or cholera

František Ladislav Čelakovský, translator, died in 1852 at 53 years of age.

Václav Matěj Kramerius, publisher, died in 1808 at 55 years of age.

Jindřich Fügner, sportsman, died in 1865 at 43 years of age, blood poisoning.

Miroslav Tyrš, his friend, died in 1884 at 52 years of age, drowning, possibly suicide.

Josef Mánes, painter, died in 1871 at 51 years of age, syphilis.

Bedřich Smetana, composer, died in 1884 at 60 years of age, syphilis.

Božena Němcová, writer, died in 1862 at 41 years of age, tuberculosis.

Karel Havlíček Borovský, journalist, died in 1856 at 34 years of age, tuberculosis.

Josef Kajetán Tyl, director and theatrist, died in 1856 at 48 years of age, probably tuberculosis.

These are about the most famous Czech cultural icons of the 19th century and most of them didn't even see their 60th birthday. Smetana did (barely), but he was broken by so many diseases that he might not have been aware of it anymore.

[qwytw]

> life expectancy was just a few years below of where we are today. There

I don't think that's really true. e.g. IIRC back in ~1900 mortality rates even for people in their 20s and 30s were more than twice as high as now.

Life expectancy at 20 currently in the US is ~60 years, back in 1850s it was about ~40 and mid 30s in the 1700s. But we must consider that that US/Thirteen Colonies were an exceptionally nice place to live compared to pretty much anywhere else back in those days.

England was a few years lower but e.g.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsde...

Look at Figures 4 and 5. A relatively huge proportion of the population died in the 30s - 50s. Very few people die that young these days. Back in the 1850 70% of reached age 20 and 50% reached 50. NOw it's >99% and 96% respective..

Young people died all the time from various rampant communicable diseases many which are treatable these days. Just consider the cultural significance Tuberculosis had back in the 1800s..