I’m reading Mysteries of the Middle Ages by Thomas Cahill and in the prelude about Christianity and Greco Roman society, he makes this assertion.
For some reason this doesn’t seem accurate to me. Sure, plenty of people died in infancy, of various diseases and conditions, childbirth and violence/war. But only one in four making it to the great five oh, it seems a little “low” to me. I could see 4 out of 100 making it to 70 and beyond.
So, those of you who know more about the ancient world then I, is this right?
As you pointed out, infant mortality has a massive impact on the average lifespan figure, with a historical rate being repeated of roughly one in three children dying before the age of 5 in pre-modern times. This page has a graph showing infant mortality rates from 1750 to the present day and illustrating how dramatically they have been reduced.
Wikipedia has a chart with a few historical life expectancy figures. They are taken from a few sources and they demonstrate a general pattern that that if one made it to adulthood one had a good chance of living a few more decades.
This review of a book dedicated to the subject of old age throughout history repeats a couple of relevant figures: in 1AD, over-60s made up 6 to 8% of the Roman empire; in 17th-century Europe they comprised 10%.
So I think the figure’s quoted from the book in the OP look rather low. Although it could depend on where and when in the Middle Ages one was talking about. The Black Death plague in 1347 killed 30-60% of Europe’s population.
Sounds like crap to me if only because we know the term of service with the Legion was 25 years, foreign auxiliaries who served that term were rewarded with Roman Citizenship. It wouldn’t be much of a carrot if that period of time is longer than you expect to live.
It wouldn’t be, though, would it? Assuming you could join the legion at, say, 15, a 25-year term of service would take you to 40. Since you are now part of the cohort that didn’t die in infancy or childhood, or in battle, or of the diseases of middle age, your life expectancy is well above the average for your society. You have an excellent prospect of being among those who survive to past 50.
Its true that many people lived long lives if they survived into adulthood, and the statement in the OP is bunk.
However, lots of people died of middle age illness, like heart, diabetes, cancer etc. These days medical management permits people to live with diseases at a tolerably good quality of life level for decades, which did not happen then.
Well exactly, which is why the stat is misleading - if only 4% of men reached 50 and the average life span was 20 years who would accept a term of service that is 25 years for any sort of reward? It would be much more likely that you’d never live to reap the supposed benefits that were promised you.
No, no. First of all, by the time you’re of an age to accept the offer, you’re already part of a cohort whose average life expectancy is considerably greater than 20 years (because you haven’t died in infancy or childhood), and considerably more than 4% of that cohort will see 50. Secondly, the reward for serving isn’t just citizenship after 25 years; it’s pay, rations, promotion opportunities, travel, etc while you serve, plus citizenship (and, if I recall correctly, a land grant) as a kind of retirement gratuity if you survive to retirement. And the citizenship is something you will pass to your children, so it’s not something that only you can enjoy or benefit from.
Seems unlikely to me. The lowest modern life experience today is Sierra Leone at 46.
With about 0.02 doctors per 1,000 people, the people of Sierra Leone aren’t getting a lot of benefit from modern medicine. They do have limited access to black market medicine, which may give a small bump. But not 20 years worth.
Not necessarily, no. Since slaves had a capital value, you didn’t want them to die before their time. Slaves might actually enjoy a higher standard of living, and/or more security in life, than the very poorest freemen. That’s why selling yourself into slavery was an option occasionally taken by freemen whose options were limited.
About 10% of the populace at any time were 50 or older. Your chances of making it to 50 at birth however were appalling. Your chance of even making it to your first birthday were pretty grim. A 15 year old could reasonably expect to make 46, and if he did, had a good chance of living out past 60. Basically the longer you keep living, the longer you expect to live.
This implies that Sierra Leone was a slave owning society. Freetown, the capital and a large natural harbour, was named because that’s where the British took the slaves they took from ships bound for the Americas. It was originally a slaving centre but by the time we abolished slavery in 1807 it was already established as a place to send freed slaves who probably had no idea where they had originally come from.
I’d be very surprised if pre-European contact the indigenous population were not slave-owning. The nearby Ashanti certainly were, as was the Mali Empire.
It’s my understanding the ancient world in general, and Rome in particular, were pretty quick to deal out death through war, justice, or entertainment. Such an attitude about death is pretty much the opposite of ours. I wonder if the roots of that go right back to child bearing, where you really need to NOT get attached to babby because odds are your heart is going to get broken. Also, when death comes easily anyway I suppose there is some comfort in knowing battle, execution, or gladiator school will bring you a swift one.
I tend to be a bit cynical about a lot of modern views of the level of wilful death in ancient times. Without some solid numbers I worry these are more an artefact of modern tendencies to emphasise the dramatic more than the mundane.
Certainly over the course history there does seem to be a correlation between life expectancy and the value given to life. The causes of death in pre-medical science days are remarkably different to now. So much so it is hard to relate to. Sepsis was probably one of the worst once you had passed the rigours of the first few years of life.
I doubt chronic disease management was a real factor. I suspect many, many more people died of stuff like dysentery, cholera, pneumonia, various infections, gangrene, etc… the vast majority of which are no longer an issue due to public sanitation, antibiotics and immunizations.
But yeah, the mortality of infants and small children was staggering, and people continued to die at a higher rate than modern-day people do.
I’d think if chronic disease management came into it, it would mostly be pushing the numbers who lived from say… 55 to 80 down pretty hard.
Sort of. You’ll notice that the age cohort of 50 made up 4% of the population. This is probably exactly where the confusion comes from for the OP’s source. It’s not that only 4% made it to 50 as per the OP’s source, it’s that at any given time only 4% of the population was 50. Obviously modifying for different areas and conditions.