Over the past ten centuries, life expectancy has increased slightly.
I repeatedly came across a mention of the fact that people used to live until the age of 30, gave birth to many, many children, but almost all of them died.
How could this happen at the same time? It is not clear, it would seem that it takes quite a lot of time to give birth to and feed a dozen children, the nursing mother usually does not become pregnant, biologically people could not change much over a thousand years, but few people think about arithmetic.
People in general tend to believe in self-contradictory statements, apparently this is some kind of evolutionary meaning.
I decided to check whether everything was so bad.
It turned out not quite.
To check climbed into Wikipedia, more precisely on Wikidata. There were more than a million references to people with known dates of birth and death. Knowing them is easy to calculate age. There are, of course, enough mistakes, for that she’s a wiki, but the general trend is like the truth.
Horizontal year of birth, vertical age at the time of death, the more it fell into one point, the darker it is.
Little red marked moving average.
By clicking on a point, a list of people corresponding to it will open.
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Data for the last hundred years, of course, is not yet available - many are still alive, which spoils the statistics. How almost all those born in the past millennium will die - I will repeat the calculation.
But 9 centuries are not bad either, in my opinion.
It can be clearly seen that the average life expectancy was ~ 60 years for a long time, in the 18-19 centuries it grew to 70. There is progress, not many times, but noticeable.
Previously, few people passed for 90, again grew by 10 years, up to about a hundred.
One can see a distinct increase in the age of dying of the main mass, it looks like it has already exceeded one hundred. Inspires optimism.
In fact, it is clear that when they say that the average age is 40 years, it means that half died to a year, and the second lived to 80.
And when they say that 27, this means that two thirds died to a year, and a third lived to 80.
But it is clear, for some reason, not all. Many people seriously believe that a thousand years ago 40 years is already a very old man, and up to 50 to live without any chances at all. While the difference with the current state of affairs — about 10 years, and then fifty years old — is about the same thing as now sixty years old, not a young man, but quite a vigorous and efficient member of society, it’s still early to retire, not like to die. Peter I forbade after 80 to marry, you see, those who wished were. Now it seems allowed.
And why would the difference be greater, we eat about the same food, the atmosphere contains the same 20% oxygen, temperature and humidity are also without major changes, everything is as always. Medicine, of course, advanced, more precisely appeared, 10-20 years added. And that's great.
Okay, Wikipedia is about the world, but what about Russia?
Pumped up metric books, how many were found, for the XVIII-XIX centuries, it does not come across earlier.
State-owned craftsmen, recruits, coachmen, peasants. I threw out the babies, there are a lot of them, especially very small ones.
What is characteristic, if they write “die without repentance in old age,” then the age of 70-80 years, or even more.
And if at 60, then the cause of death is indicated, for old age is not considered.
How could this happen at the same time? It is not clear, it would seem that it takes quite a lot of time to give birth to and feed a dozen children, the nursing mother usually does not become pregnant, biologically people could not change much over a thousand years, but few people think about arithmetic.
People in general tend to believe in self-contradictory statements, apparently this is some kind of evolutionary meaning.
I decided to check whether everything was so bad.
It turned out not quite.
To check climbed into Wikipedia, more precisely on Wikidata. There were more than a million references to people with known dates of birth and death. Knowing them is easy to calculate age. There are, of course, enough mistakes, for that she’s a wiki, but the general trend is like the truth.
Horizontal year of birth, vertical age at the time of death, the more it fell into one point, the darker it is.
Little red marked moving average.
By clicking on a point, a list of people corresponding to it will open.
')
Data for the last hundred years, of course, is not yet available - many are still alive, which spoils the statistics. How almost all those born in the past millennium will die - I will repeat the calculation.
But 9 centuries are not bad either, in my opinion.
It can be clearly seen that the average life expectancy was ~ 60 years for a long time, in the 18-19 centuries it grew to 70. There is progress, not many times, but noticeable.
Previously, few people passed for 90, again grew by 10 years, up to about a hundred.
One can see a distinct increase in the age of dying of the main mass, it looks like it has already exceeded one hundred. Inspires optimism.
In fact, it is clear that when they say that the average age is 40 years, it means that half died to a year, and the second lived to 80.
And when they say that 27, this means that two thirds died to a year, and a third lived to 80.
But it is clear, for some reason, not all. Many people seriously believe that a thousand years ago 40 years is already a very old man, and up to 50 to live without any chances at all. While the difference with the current state of affairs — about 10 years, and then fifty years old — is about the same thing as now sixty years old, not a young man, but quite a vigorous and efficient member of society, it’s still early to retire, not like to die. Peter I forbade after 80 to marry, you see, those who wished were. Now it seems allowed.
And why would the difference be greater, we eat about the same food, the atmosphere contains the same 20% oxygen, temperature and humidity are also without major changes, everything is as always. Medicine, of course, advanced, more precisely appeared, 10-20 years added. And that's great.
Technical details
Took five-gig archive of wikidaty
Out of 18 million records, those 1264128 were selected, in which the date of death is indicated
In the received records I took labels (names in different languages), claims-> P569 (date of birth) and claims-> P570 (date of death).
Dates circumcised up to a year and subtracted each other to get the age of death
I dropped everything before 1001 and after 1950. Just a million more remained.
Pleases progress - to turn over terabytes is obtained on a five-year netbook, and terabytes themselves are available in the range and are pumped out quickly.
wget https://dumps.wikimedia.org/wikidatawiki/entities/latest-all.json.bz2 Out of 18 million records, those 1264128 were selected, in which the date of death is indicated
bzcat latest-all.json.bz2 | grep '"property":"P570"' > persons.json In the received records I took labels (names in different languages), claims-> P569 (date of birth) and claims-> P570 (date of death).
Dates circumcised up to a year and subtracted each other to get the age of death
I dropped everything before 1001 and after 1950. Just a million more remained.
Pleases progress - to turn over terabytes is obtained on a five-year netbook, and terabytes themselves are available in the range and are pumped out quickly.
Okay, Wikipedia is about the world, but what about Russia?
Pumped up metric books, how many were found, for the XVIII-XIX centuries, it does not come across earlier.
State-owned craftsmen, recruits, coachmen, peasants. I threw out the babies, there are a lot of them, especially very small ones.
What is characteristic, if they write “die without repentance in old age,” then the age of 70-80 years, or even more.
And if at 60, then the cause of death is indicated, for old age is not considered.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/395729/
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