• Baguette@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    2 days ago

    Ehh not exactly. Yes infant mortality would skew the data a bit, but modern medicine, along with modern agriculture has definitely increased the average life expectancy by a sizable portion.

    Nowadays, people don’t have to worry about food stockpiles and periods of shortages. Malnutrition was definitely a big issue back then. Especially with things like baby food being present, which was a big factor in reducing baby death rates

    Modern medicine such as vaccines, surgeries, supplements, and even basic hygiene has made wonders for the average health of a person. Things that would normally kill a person, like bacteria infecting a wound, nowadays is mostly recoverable and minor.

    If you look back even just a century, life expectancy was a lot lower than the present. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1040079/life-expectancy-united-states-all-time/

    • fading_person@lemmy.zip
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      2 days ago

      In isolated communities without any of our tech and science advancement, like the kalahari, it’s common for people to live into old age, so getting into your 80s or something isn’t something new in our society. Statistically, more people are getting into older age, but that doesn’t mean young people were considered old.