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First, the age of the Roman republic was a long way from the stone age. Second, by then grain was a HUGE part of the diet, so drawing conclusions about life expectancy from Roman traditions is probably not a great example. Third, Romans didn't live that long - here are a list of emperors I could find who died of natural causes...

Augustus - 75

Tiberius - 77

Vespasian - 69

Titus - 41

Nerva - 67

Trajan - 63

Hadrian - 62

Antoninus - 74

Marcus Aurelius - 58

I'll stop there - the next century is a drag.



I'm not sure why he brought up the Romans. But I think he wanted to illustrate how unintuitive life expectancy is.

According to Wikipedia, which cites brittanica (does anyone have a real source on this?), roman life expectancy was 28!

But if you survived to age 15, your life spam was expected to be much longer.

In this context the HG life expectancy of 33 is better than it sounds.


long life spam? I already get that in my inbox ;)




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