[PenultimateManStanding]

29 years old. That's it. Sure, some lived long, but the average was 29. I got this grim factoid from James Burke in the second season of Connections.

[Alcassin]

In cities life was shorter than in countryside due to obvious reasons.
Child mortality was also very high thus the average was much lower.

[strider3700]

yep remove the child deaths from the average and it should go up a fair amount. That 50% child mortality rate really drags down the average.

My first is a few weeks out. I hope to have another on it's way
shortly after that simply because I want them older before things completely melt down.

[PenultimateManStanding]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Alcassin', 'I')n cities life was shorter than in countryside due to obvious reasons.
Child mortality was also very high thus the average was much lower.

[PenultimateManStanding]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('strider3700', ' ')
My first is a few weeks out. I hope to have another on it's way
shortly after that simply because I want them older before things completely melt down.

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PenultimateManStanding', 'W')e mostly live in cities now and the numbers are up in the 70's.

[dunewalker]

Benjamin Franklin lived to be 84(1706-1790) but he had access to the best medical care of the day, hehe. At the ripe old age of 70 he had enough vitality to help draft the Declaration of Independence; at age 79 he was healthy enough to withstand another voyage across the Atlantic. I guess if you're healthy, you're healthy. Perhaps one of the greatest contributors to the global overpopulation we're experiencing now, is medical science, that has kept the unhealthy alive. As we experience diminished access to medical care, we'll see the population decline drastically, aside from violence.

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('dunewalker', 'B')enjamin Franklin lived to be 84(1706-1790) but he had access to the best medical care of the day, hehe.

[PenultimateManStanding]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('dunewalker', 'B')enjamin Franklin lived to be 84(1706-1790) but he had access to the best medical care of the day, hehe.

[Pretorian]

Seriously.. there are were plenty of people who lived their 80-90 years in 18th centuary, 2000 years ago, they do so now. What, someone here thinks people were dying like flies once they hit 29?

[Tanada]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pretorian', 'S')eriously.. there are were plenty of people who lived their 80-90 years in 18th centuary, 2000 years ago, they do so now. What, someone here thinks people were dying like flies once they hit 29?

[vision-master]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('dunewalker', 'B')enjamin Franklin lived to be 84(1706-1790) but he had access to the best medical care of the day, hehe.

[firestarter]

Go back to pre-civilization and you get a life expectancy apprx double the 1769 number. Throw out infant mortality and it's even better. Guess which lifeway is more sustainable?

If given the choice I'll take the 50 or so years of ludic conviviality that was present before man TAMED the earth, over the 70 plus years given in our contemporary mass psychology of misery. Hell, I'll even settle for a synthesis of sorts, sprinkled with a good dose of Stirneristic egosim to pep things up.

[Pretorian]

[quote="Tanada] All your genes care about is reproduction before you stop breathing.[/quote]

before you done growing your children/ helping some with grankids. After that they make sure you won't last much. Not all genes act for the benefit of an individual.

[bobaloo]

Actually I've done a lot of research on this subject. The "great advance" of modern medicine is in reducing childhood mortality and childbirth mortality of moms, but particularly that of infectious diseases in kids.

The "average life expectancy number" is incredibly misleading. The average was pulled way, way, down by childhood mortality. The real number you should look at is the MEDIAN age of death. That's the number where half the population dies older and half the population dies younger. The median age of death in colonial America in 1770 was around 70 years of age. In other words, half the population died at an age greater than 70 years. If you survived childhood, and were male, you had an excellent chance to live to old age.

Just walk through any old cemetery, you'll find it full of kids and women in their late teens and 20's, with a pretty fair number of older men and women mixed in.

[PenultimateManStanding]

Makes sense to me, bobaloo. Just one thing though, isn't the number of years where half the population dies older and half the population dies younger the mean? The median is the number of years half way from the youngest to the oldest with no regard for the distribution on either side. It would be expected that the median hasn't changed much. It was probably somewhere around 45 then as now. But the mean has changed radically, and getting to the point of this thread, looks to change radically again.

edit: actually, we hear stories now and then of people who live to 110 or even 120, so that would place the median at 55 or 60, assuming that some folks lived that long in 1769.

[mos6507]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('firestarter', 'G')o back to pre-civilization and you get a life expectancy apprx double the 1769 number. Throw out infant mortality and it's even better. Guess which lifeway is more sustainable?

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mos6507', '
')If pre-civilization was sustainable, we'd still be doing it.

[firestarter]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mos6507', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('firestarter', 'G')o back to pre-civilization and you get a life expectancy apprx double the 1769 number. Throw out infant mortality and it's even better. Guess which lifeway is more sustainable?

[Tyler_JC]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('firestarter', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mos6507', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('firestarter', 'G')o back to pre-civilization and you get a life expectancy apprx double the 1769 number. Throw out infant mortality and it's even better. Guess which lifeway is more sustainable?