This is an interesting website. It will randomly choose a birth year and area of the world for you, and tell you what kind of life you might have had, if you had been that human.
You can also choose your own birth year and/or location.
Interesting, though I died very young! I’ll have to play again another time.
I experienced but was not surprised by early deaths from diseases for which I’ve received vaccinations.
This guy’s taking Roy off the grid!!
I died at 3. Damn typhoid.
Doing selecting for year and close location, I was a girl who died at 20 in an accident. Rechoosing, I’m still alive (whew), still a girl (?) and they almost have my grandchildren right.
Yeah, I did that 3 times. All 3 died.
I tried it 4 times. The first two were males who lived around 500BC in modern-day Turkey, and 4900BC in western China, and died as young adults. The second two were girls, one born in 1878 AD in India (died at 34 of plague, with 3 of 3 surviving children) and the other born in Nigeria in 2024 and still living.
Thanks for the link!
It’s hard to be born in the United States. Just about all the time born in Asia. Only once in last three hundred years. Even when one chooses time and place the life is uneventful with early death or a life of manual labor even in the twentieth century.
My first go-round:
Mohan was born in Kalinjar, in what is now India, in 1787 CE. Kalinjar was at that time a town of some 5,500 people. Of four children, he was the first. The household he was born into lived on roughly $2.13 a day per person in today’s money, below the line the world now calls extreme poverty. He did not survive infancy, dying of birth complications. His body was buried rather than burned for a child who had not yet had the tonsure.
Not exactly a thrilling life story.
So I went around again and again, got three prehistoric pre-toddler deaths, and discovered their algorithm needs quite a lot of work. Because saying despite this:
Almost everyone who ever lived was born recently, because population grew exponentially, so a random birth is far more likely to fall near the present.
I repeatedly got BCE or early 1st Millennium birth dates when randomizing. So I deliberately chose 2000 CE for the birth year. Random location in the USA, I kept.
In 2000 CE, Henry was born in the countryside near Rolla. His village counts about 250 people. He lives in a timber-framed detached house. He grew up an only child. Henry eats largely wheat bread and maize meal, pork and river fish, and garden vegetables and greens, with seasonal apples and melons, and ice cream and confectionery besides. He is able to read and write. Henry’s height is about 174 cm (5 ft 9 in).
He has one child so far. His journeys have taken him no farther than about 390 miles, as far as Cincinnati. He speaks English, and is not religious. His work is that of a manual or construction labourer. He lives on a wage or salary. That comes to roughly $163 a day per person in today’s money, about the average where he lives. Today he is 26 years old, and living still.
It’s a nice toy, but I find something like Dollar Street more interesting and meaningful overall for insight into how others live.
I picked the year and location of my grandfather’s birth, 1882 and Poland-ish. My guy didn’t do as well as my grandfather who died from a heart attack at 92. My guy died at 72 from a stroke. He never emigrated like my grandfather.
My third try was born in 13,348 BCE. Good news: lived until 62. Bad news: all his children died in childhood.
There doesn’t seem to be any data for the prairies or great plains of North America. That makes it hard to model my life.
Didn’t try it (i will) would be cool if it took your occupation and trans posed that at well.
If you think about it, that’s pretty much an American diet, and just because we buy it ready-made at the grocery store doesn’t change the ingredients.
One of my scenarios was a boy in India, who was stillborn.
Clearly there is a bug in the “random” year assignments. I’ve done a few dozen runs now without getting a 20th century birthdate, although I had two from specifically the 84th century BCE!
I just had a Chinese woman born in 2600 BCE who lived to 86! It’s exciting to watch the line keep going and going after getting a bunch of child deaths.
That’s because he’s in America.
H
He doesn’t even have a social security number!
Here’s what I got randomly
ANY HUMAN EVER
ABOUT
No surviving name
This is not a real person, but her life story is created from the statistical reality of the Deccan Plateau in 1599 BCE.
A girl was born in 1599 BCE, on the Deccan Plateau, near present-day Hyderabad; history does not record what she was called. Her hamlet held about 100 people. Her dwelling was a round wattle-and-daub hut on a stone footing. Among four children, she was the second. She mostly ate sorghum (jowar) flatbread, lentils and horsegram, goat, and brinjal and gourds, with seasonal mango.
She was never a parent. Her longest journey was 2 days’ walk, to another village. She followed a local polytheistic religion and spoke a Dravidian language. She spent her days as a farmer and field labourer. She made her living on what her labour earned in grain and keep. At 16, she died in an accident.