Average life spans. People in ancient times didn’t drop dead at forty. They regularly lived to be advanced ages we would consider normal. It’s just that infant and young child deaths were so common it really drags down the average.
This is the biggest historical misconception. So much dumb stuff like “horribke histories” (children’s history books + tv show in britain) heavily reinforced this misconception
Average life spans. People in ancient times didn’t drop dead at forty. They regularly lived to be advanced ages we would consider normal. It’s just that infant and young child deaths were so common it really drags down the average.
So common as in literally half of kids died.
Which is how evolution worked, those with diseases like diabetes etc (mutations thay arent beneficial) died and didn’t pass that gene on.
This is just the typical modern misunderstanding of statistics.
To be fair, I doubt people understood statistics much better back in the day, either.
I was thinking that when I wrote it.
But there is more people now. So more people to misunderstand it :-)
This is the biggest historical misconception. So much dumb stuff like “horribke histories” (children’s history books + tv show in britain) heavily reinforced this misconception