The Past World

It is common to come across the statement that people in the “old days” did not live as long as we do. A person who reached the age of 30 was considered old. This misconception applies to more periods than the Middle Ages, although this arcticle focuses on that period.

Life Expectancy Over Time

The life expectancy of people has increased enormously in the last few decades. According to figures from the World Health Organization, life expectancy has risen from 48 years worldwide in 1950 to 73 years today. In 1900, the average age was only 31 years worldwide.

For comparison, life expectancy in Ancient Greece was 25-28 years, in the Roman Empire around 20-30 years, and around 30-35 years in the Middle Ages.

It is consequently natural that we conclude that people lived much shorter lives in earlier times. I have seen many claims that a person who reached 60 in the past became a community elder. That this person was a rare exception, and people of his time were quite surprised to see such an old-timer. But was it so?

The average age in 1950 was only 48 years. We know that many people got older than that during this period. Why shouldn’t the same apply to the Middle Ages?

The Reality Behind the Statistics

The life expectancy of humans has not increased because we, as an animal species, can live longer. The average has increased as more individuals of the animal species live longer.

Life expectancy is just the average of the group. The average age says little about how long your life can be. If two children are born at the same time, one dies immediately, and the other lives to the age of 70, the life expectancy of both children is 35 years. We see that a person could live to the age of 70 even though the life expectancy was only 35 years.

It is more reasonable to conclude that a life expectancy of 30 years in the Middle Ages is because many died in wars, plagues killed millions, and infant mortality was exceptionally high. Historians generally accept that infant mortality (deaths before age 1) was around 20-30%. For comparison, the average infant mortality rate in the European Union is 0.34% today. Some European countries such as Estonia, Slovenia, and Iceland have 0.16-0.17% infant mortality.

So when we say that the medieval man could only expect to live 30 years, that is a somewhat misleading interpretation of the statistics. If 20-30% die before the age of one, it makes sense that the average life expectancy takes a hit. Those who survived childhood, outlived military service and escaped the plague of the time could expect a much longer life than 30 years. And many people did. So there was no miracle to see a 60-year-old man around.

Written Sources

We have numerous written sources that give a different view of life in the past. The Greek poet Hesiod wrote that a man should not marry until 30. Why wait if you only expected to live 25-30 years? In the Roman Empire, men were not allowed to hold the office of quaestor (the lowest official level) until the age of 30, and to become a consul, one had to be 43 years old. In many countries today, the age limit to be a president is similar (35-50 years). We see from this that many people expected to reach higher age than 30 years.

The Roman intellectual Pliny the Elder mentions in his work Naturalis Historia that the consul M Valerius Corvinos lived to be 100 years old, Terentia, Ciceros’ wife, lived to be 103 years old, and the actress Lucceia appeared on stage at 100 years old. He also mentions a Roman woman named Clodia, who lived to be 115 years old despite giving birth to 15 children.

An individual’s lifespan then could well be as long as it is today. But how common was it?

Now we come to a particular problem. There was no statistics office in the past. The statistics we have in written sources usually refer to wealthy men who were old enough to make a name for themselves and make it into the history books.

In 1994, an interesting study was conducted on this. All individuals appearing in the Oxford Classical Dictionary were studied and compared with those in the Chambers Biographical Dictionary. Anyone murdered, committed suicide, or died in war was not counted.

The results show that famous people born before 100 B.C. had a median age of 72. Those born after that period had a median age of 66. The median age of those who died between 1850 and 1949 was 71. This analysis shows that famous people in the past became just as old as famous people today. The question is what conclusion we can draw from that.

In the Middle Ages

As mentioned before, plagues, infant mortality and war kept life expectancy down in the past. Those that managed to survive these hindrances got quite old.

As with antiquity, we must rely on the figures of the privileged few when looking at the Middle Ages. At that time, no Statistical Office was active. By studying written sources, it is possible to take child deaths out by only looking at people who managed to reach adulthood.

English nobles reaching age 21 averaged 64 years in the 13th century. In the 14th century, they lived to be 45 (the Black Death lowers the numbers), and in the 15th and 17th centuries, they reached 69 and 71, respectively. Although based on people who lived better than the general population, these figures show that people who survived infant mortality could live to reasonably old age despite poorer health care and war.

We can safely conclude that people today are generally living longer. We can attribute this to better sanitation, medical science, penicillin, and other things we enjoy. However, the difference is not as significant as one might think at first – it is a misconception that a person who celebrated his 30th birthday was old.