[gampleman]

And very very importantly, this is taking the death ages of kings (i.e. people who lived long enough to actually become monarchs) compared to life expectancy at birth (i.e. people who lived long enough to be born).

Given that until roughly the 1700s infant mortality was brutal (according to [1] fully 50% of children died before reaching adulthood), this comparison becomes even starker, since average life expectancy of a crown prince at birth would be far lower (somewhere in their 20s).

[1] https://acoup.blog/2025/07/18/collections-life-work-death-an...

[rcxdude]

Given their position, kings and other members of a warrior elite generally would likely have downwards pressure on their life expectancy from that.

[psunavy03]

This "average life expectancy in the ancient world" thing is nothing more than an illustration of when to pick the median over the mean because the data is skewed by outliers.

[naniwaduni]

Quite the opposite in this case—the median is single-digit; adults are the outliers.

[bluGill]

how much of that early death was poison or in war?