Age of characters & NPCs

Games Discussion Ars Magica
41

Yes, but that doesnt take into account that on average we have a dreadfully much worse lifestyle today in general.
Food in particular, too much meat, too much additives that at best just add to someones fat and at worse(like sugar replacements) messes with the body on a hormonal level, and waaaaay too much sugar.
And its also actually a proven fact that if you eat less, you live longer as long as you eat "just enough".

Add to that that we tend to have too warm housing(just one thing that does is help keep bacteria and virus alive and spread more easily) and we tend to have jobs that doesnt involve enough exercise, and our free time tends to be spent far to "unmovably". We come into close contact with all sorts of chemicals on a daily basis, which are regulated on a "safety level" NOT on the basis of being actually safe. Etc etc etc...

All in all, even if most of those effects, except sugar and exercise arent so big alone the combined effect is probably quite large(how large is already being debated in lots places, but anything from raising average age today 5 years up to 25 years is what the more serious people seem to argue with some arguing far greater effects still.

Edit:
Try this place:
freecen.org.uk/cgi/search.pl
You can enter a birth date +-10 years and select a place to search, and from which census.

For example i searched one place for people born 1800+-10 years, and got 33 results ranging from 79 to 86.
When including "All Places" the search gave the error "over 2000 hits". and while thats a big coverage, its also from 1891, right in the middle of the industrialisation and thats one of the eras with worst longevity you can find.

42

Very interesting. :slight_smile: It seems my understanding of age patterns in the middle ages falls squarely into the myth being descirbed. I stand corrected.

Still, IIRC (and I might NOT be recalling correctly, mind you?) the age where you entered "adult life" was earlier on average, right?

Xavi

43

Stadistics. :unamused:

Welcome to the boards, DW - I'm sure you'll fit right in.
:wink:

44

Probably not but thanks anyways. :stuck_out_tongue:

Lol, was that an intentional mistype or not? Statistics=Sadistics?
:laughing:

Well, that depends on what you call "adult life"?
Kids start helping out at home from the time they are capable of it and might start as a "novice" worker somewhere in early teens or earlier still, it varied alot from place to place and depending what the job was and parents situation( a knight to be might start out as a page as early as age 5), but at the same time thats basically the same as education now, its just that its "on the job" education instead. And it blurs the lines of "adult" somewhat. A 15 year old wouldnt be thought of as adult for sure...
At the same time, nowadays, a natural part of becoming adult is often considered to get your own house/apartment but medievally that had nothing at all to do with it.

Oh and the "kid marriages" thing is somewhat skewed as well, it DID happen but it wasnt common. And majority of these happened among nobility and "higher-ups" for political reasons(which is the very reason we hear so much about them and getting that very skewed picture, because its the bigwigs we hear most about), and if either involved was below 13 or thereabouts, noone expected much from it until later or at all if it was merely as a basis for a political union.

Among peasants the norm was much much less extreme, and it was probably more common to marry late on average rather than early, that marriage however might be preceded by a "going steady" relationship for such a long time that the couple might have children in the teens themselves. Much to the chagrin of the more zealous priests.

I dont have any "exact data" for this on medieval but the above comes from what i have picked up while mostly reading about other things of the era (history, technical and military tends to be my favorite subject).

This also is somewhat supported by my involvement in the 19th century project, with the difference that it had become more common to marry "quicker" then and usually before any children arriving(those chagrinned priests getting their wish through). Ie further back, children born with unmarried parents was a smaller thing if they were "unofficially officially together".
Thats how i interpret it at least.

So "adult early", might be said to be completely true AND a myth at the same time depending on where and when you look and how you look at it. Its a very interesting subject actually, especially looking at how very skewered the common view today often is of history.

45

You've clearly been there, what do you think? :wink:

46

Oh statistics is FUN. One of the easiest math subjects obviously. :smiling_imp:

:wink:

47

Yes, obliviously. 8)

48

I have read long ago half of the children died before their adulthood. However there were no reference what the writer of the book thought to be an adult. :laughing:

In the early middle ages people got merried early. Later, maybe after the great pestilence, the age of the marriage protracted and women got merried in their twenties.

49

And thirties even. But yes it changed back and forth over time.
And of course, WHERE are we specifically talking about?
And in what social class?
:wink:

It differed quite alot. Anyway, the "normal" marriage age was never in the low teens almost anywhere, anytime in medieval Europe, and middle teens doesnt seem to have been common either.

50

Hi,

A few years ago I looked at life expectancy in the medieval period, and the results might be relevant here. The statistic of most use is not the mortality at each age or deaths per 1000, but the number of years one can be expected to live, or life expectancy.

The following data are for males born 1276-1300, and are for landholding families in England.

Age LE (male) LE (female)
0 31 34
10 32 35
20 25 19
30 22 12
40 17 18
60 8 9
80 4 5

So, at birth a man could expect to live until he was 31. If he made it to 10, he could expect to live another 32 years. If he made it to 20 he could expect to live another 25 years, and so forth. Life expectancy for women is exceptionally low for child-bearing ages (14-40) - approximately half of that for a man of the same age. However, under 14 and over 40, a woman's life expectancy is about 10% greater than that of a man.

One would assume that for lower social classes the situation would be grimmer. While I couldn't find any life expectancy data, the following is for a graveyard in York, at about the same period. They are the percentage of people surviving at the start of each age category:

                       20-30   30-40   40-50   50+      avg age at death

High status male 100.0 88.0 64.0 24.0 45.0
Low status male 100.0 65.9 43.9 14.6 38.9

High status female 100.0 80.0 46.7 20.0 41.7
Low status female 100.0 75.0 33.3 8.3 37.9

So, 88% of those high status males who were alive in their 20s were still alive in their 30s. 64% of those who made it through their 30s were still alive in their 40s, and so forth.

Infant mortality is much harder to get a handle on. 20% of women died giving birth to their first child (data from 1210-150), and it is assumed that most of the babies also died (the caesarian section almost never worked). An additional 5-15% of infants died immediately following birth. Thus infant mortality just for childbirth itself could be as high as 40%.

Mark