How long did people live back then?
Maddow looks likes he's 80. I don't people lived that long during those times.
shareThe oldest people lived pretty much as long as the oldest people do today. The problem was that their odds of getting that old weren't very promising. A lot of babies died, a lot of children died, a lot of woman died having babies, a lot of men died just making a living.
-Even if they managed to avoid all this: an epidemic of any one of many diseases we don't worry a lot about could put a healthy human being in a coffin in a few days.
Even somebody as connected to the best health care available as President Lincoln had one child of four live into adulthood. It was bad enough that many people really tried not to get too emotionally involved with their kids because they knew most would die and it hurt too much.
-so much for Nostalgia!
In the U.S. in 1900, the average agespan was 48. That means that for every person that made it to 90, another person died when they were 10. Lots of lethal diseases back then that you'll never hear of today. Wander through an old cemetary and check out the tombstones---you'll see more than one that lists both a mother and child with the same year of death.
shareThat sounds about right...into their 40s and not much after unless good genetics carried them well past that age...
share