alt Hacker NewsI do wonder if that life expectancy is dragged significantly down by all the ways you can die early on in life, so that it's not so much that 28 years is an old age for the time as it is a function of all things that prevent you from getting to old age.
And so if you went to a town square or market in that time (if it's a time that had such a thing), perhaps it might still be perfectly normal to see people in their 30s, 40s, 50s.
Replies
The website represents this well. My random person was born in the Neolithic and lived to 68. Not bad.
That's exactly what happens.
The life expectancy of a person who lives to 18 increases dramatically across the board.
You even see this today. If you live to 70, you can expect to live 14 to 17 more years. So to about 84 on the short side and 87 on the long side.
However, make it to 75, your life expectancy is 11 to 14 years. Which is 86 on the short side and 89 on the long side.
Basically, the longer you live, the longer you should live, but eventually the range collapses. And that's because people come in under the average all the time. Some people die at 71. And those people stop getting counted when determining life expectancy at 75.
Right, that 42% dying before age 5 means the survivors typically lived well beyond 28. There weren’t a huge number of people living into their 80s, but 28 wouldn’t have been “old man” territory.
That's exactly the case. Overall average life expenctancy as adult didn't change much from older times - about 15 years more.