I know there are many references in the Bible of people living to be hundreds of years old (such as Methuselah… i think 969 years?), but did this happen in reality? or was it just because their method of measuring years was different back then? It seems to me like these ages would be almost impossible, considering their limited knowledge and remedies of health and medical issues. I’ve always wondered this, but never got an answer worth noting. I need to know the straight dope!!
Learning about ancient history and science from reading the Bible is like learning about astronomy by watching Star Wars.
The fact is, that for much of human history, the natural lifespan of people was typically 30 - 40 years. It is only in the last 100-150 years or so that advances in medicine have allowed people to approach an average lifespan of about 70 years or so. The figures mentioned in Genesis have no bearing on reality, and are not to be taken literally. It’s my (admittedly limited) understanding that the long lifespans mentioned are meant to show what humans enjoyed before becoming sinful and subject to the ills and evils of the world.
I would not put much stock those 900-year lives. Later passages of the Bible give more realistic limits on the human lifespan:
Genesis 6:3 “And the LORD said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years.”
Psalm 90:10 “The days of our years are threescore years and ten [70 years]; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years [80 years], yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.”
Those medical advances were far more recent than one might realise.
Right now there’s a tv series running in the UK about some films made around 1900 or so, which was pioneering stuff.
Very many of those films showed ordinary people doing ordinary things like working, or just wandering around the city streets and stuff.
What was most sobering though, was that the average lifespan for women was 53 and for men it was 47 and this could be seen in the appearance of some of the subjects, at 40 men were old and looked it.
Up to WWII this hardly increased, but of course it was during WWII that antibiotics came into use, and this dramatically reduced infant and juvenile mortality.
Those people in the films had it much better than their forefathers, in the early 1800 in some industrial tons, life expectancy was down to just 17 years!
I’ve heard that a lot of other cultures in the same area tended to give ridiculous figures for the age of legendary individuals earlier in history, some considerably more extreme… that babylonians or someone talked about kings who ruled for fifty thousand years… as in that that was the reign of one particular mythological king.
take with grain of salt.
this is definitely a digression, but why does everybody think that jesus died so young? i’ve read that the average lifespan of a mediterranean man around 30 ad was right at 30. so jesus was a senior citizen!
More accurately, the average lifespan during preindustrial times was 30-40 years. Fortunate individuals who avoided disease and malnutrition could live to be a hundred or more, just as some people do today – it’s just that living long enough to be afflicted by “old age” is a lot more common now than it was then.
In any case, multi-century lifespans are the stuff of legend and mythology.
This being GQ and all, please don’t make the mistake of thinking that if the average lifespan was 30, anyone above 30 was old. The average lifespan was so low because of the high infant mortality rate. If you survived childhood, making it to a reasonably age even for today was not unusual.
As for the OP, since the existence of these people is far from proven, worrying about their age is like worrying if it was common for people 120 years ago to be the same height as Paul Bunyan.
Because that was the average. But what you’d like to know is the median (i.e. the age at which 50% of the people died.)
I’d say that, barring accidents or disease, most folk were expected to kick it around 70 years old.
Which, of course, was mentioned in the second reply. Reading comprehension: Needs Improvement.
A Biblical literalist might argue that, in the way old days, the things that kill us, age us, and wear us down (the bacteria and viruses and carcinogens and environmental factors and so forth) weren’t around as much or weren’t as fully developed, so people could live a lot longer.
Just out of curiosity, is such an explanation even remotely possible?
Um, I think it probably had more to do with the nails through his wrists and a spear through his ribs. 
Perfect. I must remember this.
The reason that I have heard given for the descending ages by some who accept the bible as literal is that as humanity became more wicked, the age to which any individual could live shortened. (This was not a direct progression, but a general trend, so that some men did live longer than their fathers.)
Name Age at Years after Age at
son's birth son's birth death
Adam 130 800 930
Seth 105 807 912
Enosh 90 815 905
Kenan 70 840 910
Mahalel 65 830 895
Jared 162 800 962
Enoch 65 300 365 ("taken by the Lord")
Methusaleh 187 762 969
Lamech 182 595 777
Noah 500+ 450? 950
Shem 100 500 600
Arpachshad 35 403 438
Shelah 30 403 433
Eber 34 430 464
Peleg 30 209 239
Reu 32 207 239
Serug 30 200 230
Nahor 29 119 148
Terah 70 130 205
Abram/Abraham 100 75 175
As one who does not believe that the bible is literally factual in all of its stories, I would tend to see the decreasing ages as a literary device to indicate the increasing wickedness of the world rather than that any man noted, above, actually lived those years (even if he actually existed).
From that perspective, it is probably true that humans have tended to live to around 70 or 80 years–when conditions permitted–throughout the life of humanity. The “old” appearing people in casdave’s movie were probably from among the working classes, living with questionable diets in smog-ridden cities and working 10 or 12 hour days for six days a week (unless they had a half-day off on Saturday). People who were better off often lived well beyond 60 or 70. The ages of 53 and 47, and the even worse “average” age of 17. that he reported are not the ages when most people died, but the median ages of people living (however uncomfortably) into their 60s and 70s in a society where very many children died before age 12 and a horrendous number of infants never survived to their first birthday.
That said, I suppose it’s it theoretically possible, so if you care to believe it, so be it. For all I know, the Lord hath wishethed it upon the world. Although frankly, I imagine it would be fairly dull; the early years were pretty much confined to looking for fruit.
Well there may have been fewer of some man made pollutants and carcinogens but bacteria and viruses have been around on earth far longer than man himself has. Of course biblical literalists have the luxury of simply dismissing any objective evidence that the earth is more than a few thousand years old so they may not be convinced.
I have read that some people posit that the atmosphere was different back then, that it contained more water vapor or something that protected the surface of the earth better from cosmic radiation that now causes people to die earlier than they used to. Again, from my understanding any objective analysis of the scientific evidence tends to refute this hypothesis.
Looking at it from another tack, the human body’s various parts have a planned obsolescence that seems to hover around 125 years. So no matter how well someone was cared for, no matter if they isolate themselves from all dangerous agents, they would be dead by 125. Also, several parts of the body that make life worthwhile would have already crapped out by then (Take age-related sensory decline to its logical conclusion).
So I’d imagine it’s really not plausible. It is interesting to look at longevity as a literary device, though.
You may wish to elaborate on what theory makes it possible. Outside of environmental influences our DNA breaks down after too many cell divisions which puts a practical limit on age.
True, but with a lucky enough roll of the dice, someone’s DNA might simply have avoided such breakdown. With enough improbable event (in this case the odds that no errors crop up at all), there’s no reason why someone couldn’t live for millenia. Aside from accidents.