• CosmoNova@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    They also lived shorter on average. Some of them still reached a very old age. The average really doesn‘t tell us that much about the extremes that existed.

    • I_Has_A_Hat@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      That’s because of high infant/childhood mortality rates skewing the average. If you take away anyone who died before age 5, the average age shoots up to like 70+ in most places. Not too different from today.

      • CosmoNova@lemmy.world
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        23 hours ago

        Yes, I know. The problem is that most people see an average stat and think it‘s a universal law. That goes for life expectancy, height and even GDP per capita among other things. In reality no one is perfectly average and extremes exist everywhere.