Might be related to this:
I can’t see anything else happening in Iceland in that timeframe that would have such an effect.
My guess: crop failures or vulcanism… or crop failures due to vulcanism.
When you’re out on an island in the middle of the North Atlantic, and something goes wrong, help is a long, long way away - at least until reliable phone connections and air travel come along. When the island is made of volcanoes that can pump out toxic gasses, well, things are going to go wrong from time to time.
The eruption of the Laki volcano in Iceland from 1783-1784 wiped out a quarter of the population and a larger portion of the country’s livestock, but I’m guessing that this event isn’t being captured by this “last 200 years” plot. Wikipedia suggests that most of the population drop in Iceland in the 19th century was emigration due to worsening climate and better opportunities in the New World.
Yes, but if you run the chart with Iceland isolated, there are 3 distinct and extremely sharp spikes (1846, 1860, and 1882) when the life expectancy dips below twenty. These do not appear to be obviously related to emigration over the course of a century.
Doing a little more googling, I found this article about measles epidemics in Iceland in 1846 and 1882. I wasn’t aware measles was so deadly, so I’m not certain of how strong this link might be.
I’m gonna do a GQ question about this.
I’d suspect that a one-time sharp drop to zero represents a lack of available data.
Life expectancy in the Philippines crashed to 13 in 1902. The guerilla war against the US occupation? I didn’t know casualties were that high.
From what I’ve been reading, life expectancy is much more related to infant mortality than adult mortality. Combat casualties would be hardly a blip. But if crops are destroyed and disease runs through the populations, and hits newborns,life expectancy for people born at that time drops through the floor.
I’m not certain how pregnancy or birth rates figure in. I would guess that there are a lot fewer pregnancies during times of tremendous social upheaval.
What was life expectancy in Cambodia in the 70’s under Pol Pot? 15?
Cambodia life expectancy during the 70’s bottomed out at about 33
The Irish Potato Famine, 1840s
Rwandan genocide, 1993
Great Chinese Famine - 1958-1961
Which, in my opinion, is poor graph design. No data should indicate as such, and extrapolate from most recent trend. I know this chart is computerized, but it ought to be able to handle that.
Though I haven’t looked at every year for every country, there are no instances where the life expectancy drops to zero. If there are data gaps it is being handled some other way. Possibly some of the dots representing countries just disappear off the chart in years when there is no data, though I haven’t noticed any such instances. Every sharp drop that I’ve looked at has a corresponding historical event that can explain the drop. I think the data is pretty solid.
But Vulcans are supposed to live long and prosper! I think it must have been klingonism.