The wise age

Posted by SternMystic in ,

If you take a look at the most reliable source of information in all of the green planet, ie.. wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy quotes some interesting figures for how life expectancy has improved in the past many many years. Here's an excerpt for your convenience:


Now this chart really astounded me. The immediate inference ofcourse is that we have done the following to varying degrees:
1) Increased our natural immunity (exercise, eat and drink healthy)
2) Improved our surroundings to suit our bodies
3) Improved artifical immunity and recovery (medicine)
4) Increased infantile rate of survival (again medicine)
5) Reduced death due to war (not sure if this makes a big diff.)

But the more interesting thought that occurred to me was on wisdom. We always attribute a lot to the wisdom of our forefathers. If the average population lived much lesser years than us, does this stand to reason that the age at which folks started to be called experienced and wise and started doling out advice was lesser? Imagine the bronze age, a 12 year old would have had the worldly wisdom of a 50 year old in out time. Remember that although we are more advanced now, the amount of discoveries and inventions in their time would have been just significant to them as those we have made recently. So "worldly wisdom" wise, I see no problem in making that connection. Also, during the Greek and Roman times, if the life expectancy was 25-45, it stands to reason that 15 year olds were probably fighting in wars. Finally, anyone older than this margin, woudl automatically be an elder meaning Britain probably had 32 year old elders. When I hear the word elder I imagine a person with long white beard, wrinkles in his face and struggling to walk.

This entry was posted on Oct 15, 2007 at Monday, October 15, 2007 and is filed under , . You can follow any responses to this entry through the comments feed .

4 comments

zaph  

two problems.
a) wikipedia is a bad source for accurate information. it's a good 101 kind of primer, but use it for anything more and you're in trouble
b) even if one were to assume wiki was correct in these ages, remember that these are averages

thus, there could have been 70yr old folks in ancient rome, just that there would be much fewer of them. but then by virtue of rarity they would have got that much more 'bhaav' and be classified wise-old-men regardless of how senile they might have really been

however, i do agree with your broad conclusion that onset of adulthood would have happened much earlier than today. kids probably finished education at 10, had families by 15 and were planning their retirement by 30.

but then why go so far as ancient rome? closer home, just look at our grandparents - they finished their education by the time they were 16-20, and had kids before 25.

10:35 PM
SternMystic  

[zaph] Thanks for pointing that out. Yes, those figures are averages.

haha, yeah, bhaav factor would have been so much more.

I guess my main point (that I did'nt make) was that the bulk of useful information in terms of science, research, culture
woudl have come from 15-25 year olds.

Assuming a 15-25 year old then will still be significantly different from a 35-45 year old in our age, I wanted to point out that discrepency and that there must be a disconnect in terms of average thinking going over the years.

10:57 AM
Charanya  

How does all the technological advances play into this?? For instance, I feel sometimes that the average 5 yr-old today is much smarter than the average 5-yr old just 5 years ago!! They are typing away on keyboards, playing complicated computer games, know tons of trivia they read about in the internet etc etc.

2:56 PM
Unknown  

when i was 3, my 5 year old sister passed on her words of wisdom..she does now too.. it's all relative ;)

6:35 PM

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