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Teenage builders
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tiompan
tiompan
5758 posts

Re: Teenage builders
Feb 28, 2017, 09:27
CianMcLiam wrote:
Evergreen Dazed wrote:
CianMcLiam wrote:
Evergreen Dazed wrote:
CianMcLiam wrote:
carol27 wrote:
At the risk of being gauche & crass..no change there then, given the assumed life span of our ancestors, this, the Paleolithic, Neolithic was largely the age of youth( as we perceive it to day?) I realise of course that "time" was possibly not a concept as we have to experience it today. Don't you find that fascinating? These astonishing "cultures" basically may have been "teenage" driven & orientated.
Of course in the slave labour driven dynasties, for eg the Romans, the Victorians etc life expectancy wasn't so great for the underprivileged. So, what's my point? No idea, but I get these funny notions. And of course, " teenagers" are a luxury item:)


I believe the confusing life expectancy averages for ancient times is heavily influenced by the very high infant mortality rate. People would have routinely lived into old age, once they made it through the tough early childhood years.


Depends what you mean by old age. Certainly not the no. of years we'd expect today in Western europe.


Some people would have lived into their seventies, not as many as in Western Europe today but then not many people in the world have so many that live into very old age. There would have been people living into the sixties and seventies, probably more than did in medieval Europe when population densities reached historically unprecedented levels.


Could you let me know yr sources for this, I wouldn't mind taking a look.


Pensioners are just a mathematical necessity. If the median life expectancy in the Neolithic was 30-35 years then people had equally likely probabilities of having shorter or longer lives than this. If you then factor in a high infant/child mortality rate then you need a lot of people living into their sixties and seventies to keep the median at 30-35. If most people died in their early thirties or forties then the median lifespan would be around 14-16.



Per Holck's Cremated Bones has a chapter on age determination from cremated remains . Whilst more difficult than working on inhumations they can be surprisingly accurate , but like inhumations , estimating the age of adults over 22 years becomes far more difficult than that of infants and sub adults . He makes the point that many of the infant deaths wouldn't have been discovered and thus not included in the estimate of life expectancy , if they had been included it would begin to look a bit silly .
Whittle assumed 75 yrs as the maximal .
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