Life expectancy much longer than 40 is a modern thing for humans though. So where would the over 40s schedule have come from? Or do you mean the schedule basically says: once you hit 50 start falling apart?
No, it’s not a modern thing, you’re conflating average life expectancy at birth with how long people lived in general.
> Back in 1994 a study looked at every man entered into the Oxford Classical Dictionary who lived in ancient Greece or Rome. Their ages of death were compared to men listed in the more recent Chambers Biographical Dictionary.
Of 397 ancients in total, 99 died violently by murder, suicide or in battle. Of the remaining 298, those born before 100BC lived to a median age of 72 years. Those born after 100BC lived to a median age of 66. (The authors speculate that the prevalence of dangerous lead plumbing may have led to this apparent shortening of life).
Wouldn't those still be modern humans? Have we undergone significant evolution since then? I would think the earliest relevant comparison would be much earlier.
Life expectancy in the past was heavily depressed by high child and maternal mortality. For those who survived into adulthood (say, 20), dying in one's 30s or 40s was not the norm. Most lived into at least their 50s, and many reached their 60s or beyond. Hard labor and disease made very old age rarer than today, but old age itself is not a modern phenomenon. Skeletal remains and records confirm its presence throughout history.
The average life expectancy was low because of more deaths during childhood and wars. But the natural lifespan was more or less the same as it is today. For example, take a look at famous philosophers or politicians from Ancient Greece. Majority of them lived to about 70-80 years of age.
People keep repeating this, but my understanding is that low overall life expectancies historically were substantially about high infant mortality. If you made it out of childhood, your chances of living to be "old" were decent. It's not that the program used to say to start decaying at 40, it's that other exogenous forces would stop a lot of people from getting to that part of the program.
> Back in 1994 a study looked at every man entered into the Oxford Classical Dictionary who lived in ancient Greece or Rome. Their ages of death were compared to men listed in the more recent Chambers Biographical Dictionary. Of 397 ancients in total, 99 died violently by murder, suicide or in battle. Of the remaining 298, those born before 100BC lived to a median age of 72 years. Those born after 100BC lived to a median age of 66. (The authors speculate that the prevalence of dangerous lead plumbing may have led to this apparent shortening of life).
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20181002-how-long-did-anc...
Just one source