Medieval lifespans.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Mon Jan 19, 2004 5:34 pm

Most books i've read say the average lifespan in medieval times was somewhere from 35-40.

however, my history teacher had an interesting theory: yes the "average was 35, but that included all the kids that died from dieaseses before they were 5, and according to him there were lots of those. He said, if you lived to 5 in medieval europe, you had a good chance of living to 30, and if you lived to 30, you had a good chance of living to 60.

I think its a reasonable theory, cuz i have read elsewhere that many little kids died from diseases.

What do you all think?

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Gabriel Morgan · Post by **Gabriel Morgan** » Mon Jan 19, 2004 5:44 pm

This same theory is proposed in 'Daily Life in Chaucer's England'. It certainly seems to make a great deal of sense.

Marshal · Post by **Marshal** » Mon Jan 19, 2004 9:51 pm

That's essentially correct: the enormous infant and child mortality rates drag the averages way down. One does read about a lot of people dying in their 40s and 50s, though, so the number of people lasting into the upper age ranges was smaller, due to the prevalence of disease and unsophisticated medical care ( if any ) available.

RandallMoffett · Post by **RandallMoffett** » Mon Jan 19, 2004 10:22 pm

I think it also has to do with class for age. It would seem after doing some basic studies of royal families that a number of monarchs lived into 60's,70's some to 80's. They could not avoid all illness but a good diet and good living appears to help. Frederick I of HRE and Edward the III of England are a few examples of these long lived men. I imagine many more. you also have to account for war and disease also. Crecy and Poitiers I imagine really messed up the average that generation for high borns and draftees. Of course whats the average today? Depends in part to where you live even today, maybe 80-85 in the US? I think that I may find a few more royals and nobles that lived to a good age but lesser borns ar harder to find due to little documantation and since 90% perhaps fit in this catagory that's a study in itself. I will look around,
RPM

HugoFuchs · Post by **HugoFuchs** » Tue Jan 20, 2004 1:41 am

Yes, first you had the childhood diseases without the benefit of modern medicines. Not to mention the general varieties of plauges and diseases that affected both young and old. Then you hit the younger adult ages that were most apt to be drafted for military service, which could really cut your lifespan short. People then I think had developed a damned good immune system by then and would, given a halfway decent supply of food, live to a ripe old age.

Red Simon · Post by **Red Simon** » Tue Jan 20, 2004 4:46 am

Given that the medieval person was exposed to a lot more hardship than the average modern person, it stands to reason that they were more likely to expire sooner. But still, in dutch towns for instance, you were eligible for military duty up to 60. That says something about what 'old' really meant in the medieval mind.

Marc.

ULTRAGOTHA · Post by **ULTRAGOTHA** » Tue Jan 20, 2004 9:12 am

It depends on when you lived. In some of the early Saxon cemetaries in England (6th century) there are almost no burials of anyone over 50. Which means, of couse, that not even 'healthy' people were living past 50 (or that they were burying them somewhere else, which I doubt).

Children that survived child birth and were healthily nursing, had a very good chance of surviving to the weaning stage.

I've read studies that the death rate for children spikes at near birth, then levels off. It spikes again at weaning age, presumably as children come in contact with impure water instead of sterile mother's milk.

It levels off again after the spike at weaning.

Interestingly enough, in some of those Saxon cemetaries, older women outnumber older men. Was death in battle of men (especially during the migration from the Continent) outnumbering death in childbirth of women? The two would kind of go together--more men dying in battle means fewer men to get women pregnant.

The Norsefolk-2 list is having this same discussion. It's very interesting.

HugoFuchs · Post by **HugoFuchs** » Tue Jan 20, 2004 4:06 pm

There are also other factors. Higher populated areas as well as areas of warmer climate will have a greater number of deaths regardless of age. If you live in a relatively remote area of a cooler climate, your odds of not catching something nasty go up.

Egfroth · Post by **Egfroth** » Tue Jan 20, 2004 4:41 pm

A few years ago, in the inner London suburb of Spitalfields, they carried out an interesting experiment which cast doubt on nearly all the conventional methods of determining the age of skeletons.

The crypt of a church was being emptied of the remains of the people who'd been deposited there, mostly in the late 18th century, and re-used as a gym or something. The bodies were to be re-buried in a graveyard. There were scores of skeletons investigated.

The interesting thing about this was that they knew the ages of all the people whose bodies were held there, as each coffin bore a little brass plaque with name, birthdate and date of death.

So they decided to carry out a test to check the accuracy of their methods of determining age at death, using things like wear on joints, tooth enamel etc.

The investigators were not told the ages of the bodies, but were to work them out using the standard methods. Routinely, the ages were seriously underestimated - by as much as twenty years or more!

The only technique that produced results of a decent accuracy was cutting teeth open to check the level of enamel (or something - not sure of the exact technique). But that is the most expensive and time consuming method, and consequently, the least used in general archaeological work.

In my view this throws doubt on all our commonly held views about how everybody seems to have died young in the Middle Ages. If you can't rely on the accuracy of the scientific results, it could well be that many people lived considerably longer than archaeology has led us to believe.

It would be instructive to re-test skeletons on which we base our age estimates of mediaeval remains, and see if the estimates change.

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Marshal · Post by **Marshal** » Tue Jan 20, 2004 11:15 pm

Interesting!

I had understood that one of the main ways of dating skeletal remains was to look for evidence of arthritis. Does this mean that arthritis was typical at much younger ages in earlier times?

It should still have been possible to distinguish the remains of children from those of adults, so only the upper age ranges would be affected, I take it?

Steve S. · Post by **Steve S.** » Tue Jan 20, 2004 11:47 pm

"Which means, of couse, that not even 'healthy' people were living past 50...

Or...once you made it to 50 you lived forever! [img]http://forums.armourarchive.org/ubb/wink.gif[/img]

Highlander is real! [img]http://forums.armourarchive.org/ubb/smile.gif[/img]

Steve

HugoFuchs · Post by **HugoFuchs** » Wed Jan 21, 2004 12:26 am

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR>Originally posted by Steve -SoFC-:
Or...once you made it to 50 you lived forever! [img]http://forums.armourarchive.org/ubb/wink.gif[/img]

Highlander is real! [img]http://forums.armourarchive.org/ubb/smile.gif[/img]
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

So then the cause of death would just be beheaded. [img]http://forums.armourarchive.org/ubb/tongue.gif[/img]