A healthy person today who avoids stepping in front of a moving truck can expect to live into their eighties. A century ago, average life expectancy was only 48. Most people did not live into their fifties back then. When I was young in mid-century, most people died in their fifties and sixties, hacking away from cigarettes.
Even scarier is a century earlier. In 1800, average life expectancy was 25 years old. Which means most people did not reach their thirties. Imagine that. Today we don't think of people becoming mature until the age when they died for most of human existence.
Another corollary to this startling fact is what we think of as "human nature," the qualities that define our species. For the entire existence of mankind until very recently, people lived and died in 25 years. How developed were they before Nature took them away? Can we really say qualities now associated with middle-aged maturity are innate to humans if they rarely existed before now? Most people during their short lives were undeveloped. As Hobbes noted, life in the state of Nature was "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short."
It's understandable that we're myopic in our view of humanity. When we look back in time, the reality of our animal species is surprising. Can you imagine a world where most people are under 25 and few older people are alive? Sounds like "Lord of the Flies" to me.
(P.S., The baby is me, many many years ago. They didn't have color film back then.)
My girlfriend says that, throughout most of history, we've been ruled by people without fully developed frontal lobes...
ReplyDelete...explains a lot, no?
Hmm, I think the stats are dramatically skewed by high rates of infant morality, which has (thankfully) decreased quite a bit since the 1800s and early 1900s. I believe the infant mortality rate in the early 1900s was close to 200 per 1,000 births, whereas today it’s around 6 per 1,000. Life expectancy is very dependent on the death rates of children, so this would explain the dramatic increase in this measurement. In the past, as long as you made it past the single-digit years, you had a pretty decent chance of living to 50, 60, or even 70. As for me, I’m planning on living to 112. :) - A
ReplyDeleteI was just going to say that! There is a table called "Frier's Life Table for The Roman Empire" that shows life expectancy changing as a person ages so that while life expectancy for a baby in the Roman Empire was only 21, if they survived to 1 year of age it would increase to 33, 42 if they made it to 5 years, and so on. I had some fun playing around with this site to see the differences in expectancy by age: http://mappinghistory.uoregon.edu/english/US/US39-01.html
DeleteI was going to make a comment about high infant mortality rates skewing the average life expectancy, but then I saw that Ashley and Cara made the same point only with much better citations. (Mine was going to be, "I heard in a podcast recently...")
ReplyDeleteIt is really scary when I stop myself thinking about it...yet in the past it seems young people achieved things more quickly, and now most of us are just surviving, not living fully...as if the fact we had more time would lead us to procrastinating ! You were a cutie as a kid and I can totally see it's you =) Kisses
ReplyDeleteFashion and Cookies - fashion and beauty blog
oh yes, it's so odd thinking about that but at the same time we do have some of tracks of the past life expectancy. For example woman is called 'old' as as she turns 25 in terms of baby
ReplyDeleteAge really is a weird thing... when I was younger I always thought "this or that I am going to do when I am older" now that I am older I think "oh I always thought I should do this or that now" but in the end its never about planning or thinking that you can only do a certain thing in a certain age but its just about doing things when you feel like it and enjoy life to the fullest at every moment :)
ReplyDeleteHave a great week dear!
Xx
Larissa
Ce n’est que de la Chance
You were an adorable baby! I am quite glad not to be dead at 48, though some days I feel rather dead. Today I am attempting a lively sort of dead. There are some good genes in my family and my grandparents all lived into their 90s so I'm expecting that I'm only half way through my life.
ReplyDeleteWhile we now consider people under thirty to be young, we also live in a culture that delays maturity in that people are encouraged to marry and start families later, to establish a career or go to school. Perhaps there was a more rapidly developing maturity in the past that came with life experiences.
xoxo
I love looking at baby pictures. I can definitely see that it is you. Once and always adorable. We may be living longer but it gets pretty darn expensive as soon as the warranty expires. The quality of life for so many older people these days is not that great. My mother is strong And fit but suffering from dementia. My step father is sharp as a tack but can barely stand up without support. I'm fully willing to check out as soon as my infrastructure starts to fail.
ReplyDeleteThere is something to be said about aging. Although it is said to loose one's youthful appearance, maturity, wisdom and life experience that came with getting older are things I wouldn't want to give up. I still remember how I felt when I was younger and hope that will help me relate to my kids later…
ReplyDeleteOh, and THANK YOU soooo much for the gorgeous mermaid card and the birthday card. I love them. You look like a real beautiful mermaid!
Daphne.
You were a picture perfect baby! I reflect on Hobbs' quote, and think about how life must have been for humans just a thousand years ago - nasty and brutish for certain. We're still a pretty young species in cosmic terms - I'd like to time travel and see how we're doing in another thousand years. xo
ReplyDeleteWhen I was a kid I had no idea how I'd become a teenager, as a teenager, adulthood was unthinkable. Now? I still don't see myself aging, but I guess I will!
ReplyDeleteIts incredibly thought provoking Ally -
ReplyDeleteFor example my great grandmother died at 40 and by then she had over 10 kids. If I compare it to my life its a totally different scenario!
And sadly there are several countries in Africa where life expectancy is about 30 :(
What a sweet picture! It's amazing to think of the times in history when people did not live as long as we do now.
ReplyDeleteExcellent post, dear Ally. As a lifelong student of history and a passionate family genealogist alike, this is a topic that I've thought about (and occasionally touched on in my writing) many times before. Granted the average life expectancy in the past was an average that was greatly reduced by the high infant/childhood mortality rate at the time, but even then, it was certainly considerably rarer for folks to make it beyond their fifties, let alone their seventies or greater. We're so fortunate to have made such epic strides in that area in recent decades and to know that many of us blogging today will live into our 70s, 80s, or perhaps even beyond. I certainly hope with all my heart that such rings true for you, my friend!
ReplyDelete♥ Jessica
This is too deep and sublime for my brain to process. For realz.
ReplyDeleteBut I wanted to add that what I see in that photo is a beautiful, bouncing baby girl. I wuv you and want to pinch your widdle cheeks.
What a little cutie you were! Since turning 50 I've been thinking a lot about aging & how my perspective has changed on so many things. I think the most difficult thing for me has been to reconcile what I look like with what u feel like....
ReplyDeleteDebbie
www.fashionfairydust.com
Tell me about it! That's the biggest struggle for all of us. In our minds we're young but then we look in the mirror and recoil in horror. Who is that?!
Delete