8. The Dark Ages
You have probably heard that life expectancy was quite low in medieval times. What’s with the nonexistent notion of hygiene, the lack of proper nutrition and the regular wars, the average medieval person could be expected to live for about 35 years. Key word here being “average”.
You see, those average numbers tend not to reflect the reality in quite the way we expect them to. In this case, high infant mortality rate influenced the end result. A lot of babies didn’t live long enough to grow up, for just the reasons described above (some sources say that as many as 30% of all newborns died within the first several days of their life). However, those strong enough to get through childhood could expect to live quite a long life without dying at the ancient age of 35.
