What is/was the average mortality age for everyone that has ever lived? And how much older am I than it at 53?
Given the rate of population growth, You are probably below it. It took 1500 years to double from 200mn to 400mn. It then doubled much more rapidly and now has slowed. Multiply the curve below by average life expectancy, which is today over 70, and you'll get an average.
https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/
times
https://ourworldindata.org/life-expectancy
in 1964, global life expectancy exceeded 53.
This is a good visual representation of the timeline of Earth...
'Live expectancy' seems a misleading term, because it's not a figure for how long you can expect to live. Age at death is not a normal distribution, so the most common value is not the mean.
Up until the 1960s, pregnancy tests involved injecting urine into frogs.
The B52 is only 5 years younger than the Lancaster bomber. When it was first in service there were still huge numbers of WW2 planes in service. The Lancaster was flying until 1963. The last B52 technically rolled of the production lines in 1962. Due to an upgrade policy it has now been in service since 1955, was last updated in 2015 and is due to remain in service until the mid 2050s. That is a century in service.
It is hard to think of many pieces of equipment that have survived that long in active service.
One that always blew my mind is that to Cleopatra the building of the Great Pyramid was longer ago than Cleopatra is to us. And to the Sumerians who were alive when the Great Pyramid was built the orgins of their civilisation were similarly ancient.
It's sometimes just hard to fathom how much history their actually is.
potatoes
Oh yeah, one I read earlier this week,
For decades, tomatoes were believed to be poisonous. People grew tomato plants for decorative purposes.
It’s sometimes just hard to fathom how much history their actually is.
And yet Jesus, if he was an historical figure, would have lived roughly 20 overlapping lifetimes ago.
Multiply the curve below by average life expectancy, which is today over 70, and you’ll get an average.
Oh c'mon, it's Friday afternoon! 😀
‘Live expectancy’ seems a misleading term, because it’s not a figure for how long you can expect to live. Age at death is not a normal distribution, so the most common value is not the mean.
I think we all know that. It's a useful term for a not particularly serious topic. 😀
One that always blew my mind is that to Cleopatra the building of the Great Pyramid was longer ago than Cleopatra is to us. And to the Sumerians who were alive when the Great Pyramid was built the orgins of their civilisation were similarly ancient.
Related to that:
Although there is no clear definitive "date of foundation", teaching existed at Oxford University in one form or another from 1096.
That means it's more than 200 years older than the Aztec civilization (the acknowledged start of which was the founding of Tenochtitlán in 1325).
On a slightly longer timescale...
All the carbon atoms in the universe were created in red giants and IIRC heavy metals like Gold have been ejected from black holes. So before life could even think about existing, all the elements necessary had to be created by the collapse of stars which had been shining for millions of years and before that it was just a sea of Helium which has to coalesce into stars.....
Most workplaces had smoking rooms.
It seems like a completely different age now
I'd forgotten this.
Back in my previous job, so 15-20 years ago, we had a branch in Bristol (Whiteladies Road, should Bristolians care). They had an office in there, a fairly sizeable one, holding three workers all of whom smoked.
It was... I'm genuinely struggling for words to describe it... it was sticky. It was brown like a 1970s suit. The once-white paint was, generously, yellow. It was grim as. You couldn't touch anything without getting residue on your fingers. At the time I was looking after their computers and even that material well-known for its absorbent qualities 'steel' was tacky. You couldn't read the letters on their keyboards and gods help you if you were anywhere near a PSU fan when a PC started up. If ever there was an advert for not smoking...
I mean, I'm all for choice and all, and if people want to smoke then good luck to them, but why would you do it in an enclosed space like that? You ever turn up to work one day and think "you know, it's alright here, but it's not baby-shit coloured enough and my shoes don't stick to the carpet"?
Oh, and, school.
The one time I ventured into the hallowed ground that was my high school's staff room, I literally couldn't see to the back wall.
Not only was I alive when there was a fascist dictatorship in Europe, we went on a family holiday to it. Maybe I will live long enough to repeat this...
It is hard to think of many pieces of equipment that have survived that long in active service.
The Shackleton which was an incremental improvement to the Lancaster was in active service until the 1990s.
Not only was I alive when there was a fascist dictatorship in Europe, we went on a family holiday to it. Maybe I will live long enough to repeat this…
I live in one.
Still. Sovrinty, blue passports, commemorative 50p.
Not sure this is true for medieval times. I have read lots of people debunking this.
It depends when you look. During the medieval warm period then there would have been decent food supplies shown by how the population boomed.
However it then went into the Little Ice Age and a long period of very poor conditions and starvation with a massive drop in population back to what could now be supported.
Still. Sovrinty, blue passports, commemorative 50p.
And the crown on the pint glass!
That you deliberately ignore that says all.
I live in one.
Still. Sovrinty, blue passports, commemorative 50p.
Expect a knock on the door from the secret service any time soon. I have informed on you.
It was… I’m genuinely struggling for words to describe it… it was sticky. It was brown like a 1970s suit. The once-white paint was, generously, yellow. It was grim as. You couldn’t touch anything without getting residue on your fingers. At the time I was looking after their computers and even that material well-known for its absorbent qualities ‘steel’ was tacky. You couldn’t read the letters on their keyboards and gods help you if you were anywhere near a PSU fan when a PC started up. If ever there was an advert for not smoking…
My dad used to fix TVs back in the day and one time I was helping him - I put my hand out onto the lovely light yellow painted wall to reach around to unplug it and then had to peel my hand back off the sticky mess, leaving a white imprint of my hand.
Did we fix the TV I hear you ask. Nope – the build up of nicotine enriched dust (attracted to the static build-up up you used to get on old TVs) had rotted though most of the wiring. It wasn't long after that my dad gave up smoking. I wish my mum did too as lung cancer did for her in the end.
All the carbon atoms in the universe were created in red giants and IIRC heavy metals like Gold have been ejected from black holes.
I don't think that's correct...nothing is ejected from black holes. I think that heavy elements are created at the point that a "normal star" runs out of fuel and collapses to create a neutron star. I may well be wrong but I was half listening to a program about it the other day.
For 239 years, Aberdeen had as many Universities as the whole of England.
This is a great thread. 😀
The orbital spaceflight of Yuri Gagarin on the 12th April 1961 technically did not qualify for the Guinness Record because the rules stipulated that the spacecraft must safely launch and land with the occupant inside.
We now know that after re-entry, Gagarin’s Vostok capsule ejected it’s occupant at an altitude of 7,000m and that Gagarin landed via parachute some distance away from his spacecraft.
The very excellent book Beyond talks about the Russian space program, Gagarin's flight, and even has interesting snippets about Mercury, too. The Russian programme was so incredibly agricultural, it's a literal miracle he got away with it. And yeah, they knew Vostock shouldn't be eligible because the cosmonaut ejects on the way down, so they lied about it. And about where it took off from. And it was dumb luck that saw him land where he did. Alive. It's insane. 🙂
All the carbon atoms in the universe were created in red giants and IIRC heavy metals like Gold have been ejected from black holes.
Supernova explosions for the heavy elements that aren't formed by fusion in layer burning stars.
Few will believe this but you used to be able to mountain bike without disc brakes, suspension or a dropper seat post. Amazingly motors were not used either. What an awful place history was
I don’t think that’s correct…nothing is ejected from black holes.
Not quite, you can get jets of excess material spat our from accretion discs IIRC.
I think that heavy elements are created at the point that a “normal star” runs out of fuel and collapses to create a neutron star.
That only gets you so far up the periodic table, to carbon I think, after that you need something more intense.....
You sure about that thing about how far it is to the moon? I mean it's a long way , but what does lining up mean?
nothing is ejected from black holes
OK, a former Theoretical Physicists writes... Hawking radiation is emitted from a black hole, it's caused by the spontaneous appearance of particles and antiparticles at the event horizon. One crosses and doesn't come back. the net effect is that the black hole loses mass and evaporates...
Isn't it the case that mathematically almost nothing comes out of a black hole , but because the mass is so large that almost nothing is an appreciable amount?
My school had an indoor shooting range for 22 rimfire, and an armoury. I doubt it's still there can you imagine the fuss if the press found out. This was the 80s
Only one person was at both the battle of Trafalger and the battle of Waterloo.
https://www.napoleon-series.org/research/biographies/c_alava.html
Nelson and Wellington met only once, by chance.
Nelson left no record of what he thought of Wellesley, but in later life the Duke of Wellington gave his account of the meeting. He claimed that Nelson did not initially recognise him, and spoke in a light and superficial manner before leaving the room for a moment. When Nelson returned, however, someone had clearly told him whom he had been speaking to and his entire attitude changed so that the two men then spoke as equals for the remainder of their brief conversation.
https://ageofrevolution.org/200-object/meeting-nelson-wellington/
You sure about that thing about how far it is to the moon? I mean it’s a long way , but what does lining up mean?
As in, the sum of the diameters of the other planets is (nominally) less than the distance between the Earth and the Moon.
My school had an indoor shooting range for 22 rimfire, and an armoury. I doubt it’s still there can you imagine the fuss if the press found out. This was the 80s
I was the armourer in my U6 year at school, in our CCF. I had to check the keys out from the staff room on Thursday lunchtime if we were doing weapons training, and then I had access to 50-odd Lee-Enfield 303's. Inside the big steel armoury was a code box which had the key to another safe in the cadet hut where all the bolts were stored. You needed both to make them work, so there was security of a sort. Similarly a smaller number of .22 rimfires which we used at a range on the school grounds. We also had a fully functional 303 LMG (Bren gun)
We held a small amount of .22 ammo for target shooting but no full bore stuff, if we were doing full bore at one of the ranges (Ash or Pirbright) we'd call in to Arborfield REME Garrison on the way and book it in and out.
So more than having an armoury and a few .22's, when we went on a trip we'd have 8 or 10 massively tooled up schoolboys in a school minibus touring the streets of Berks and Surrey, stopping at garages for fags, living the life.
I was the armourer in my U6 year at school, in our CCF. I had to check the keys out from the staff room on Thursday lunchtime if we were doing weapons training, and then I had access to 50-odd Lee-Enfield 303’s
Amateur.
We had the spectacularly shit L98A1 General Purpose Cadet Rifle - the manual cocking version of the (at the time equally shit) SA80, guaranteed to jam at least twice per magazine.
We had a few .22s as well but the only range near us was at a neighbouring school, our range having been demolished to build a Music Block.
No idea if the Armoury still exists in that school today but yeah, 6th Formers handing out weapons to 14 year olds. Oh the H&S brigade would have had a fit if they'd have seen that.
What's behind that door then?
Oh err... just the boiler room... shall we go and look at the fire escapes from the classrooms?
We did oxy acetaline welding at school age 12....it was called metalwork. I left in 1985.
We had an armoury at school with a dozen or so L98A1s, some .303s, .22s and the odd Bren IIRC. Some work on a neighbouring building disturbed some alarm sensors and led to *quite* a big response from the rozzers.
I seem to recall about half a dozen cars, couple of vans and a helicopter.
From what I know, I don't think they stocked ammo in their anyway apart from pellets and .22 rounds. We didn't have a range on site, and we drew the rounds when we went out to play.
guaranteed to jam at least twice per magazine.
Shit magazine filling didn't help. I used to help cock the weapons on the range as the little dudes (and girls) had no chance.
Cock, Hook and Look.
As a 17 year old, I found a sheath knife with a 16cm blade (similar to the one I wore on my Scout uniform). I handed it in to the Police. Six months later it was returned to me as unclaimed lost property.
Most workplaces had smoking rooms.
we had indoor smoke rooms for patients on an acute mental health wards, as soon ago as 2007/08 when I started, if you was on 1:1 obs, and the patient smoked, that is where you would be sat (with the other 14 patients puffing away)
Friday Thread- Historical facts that are hard to fathom now
Flashy is a paperclip salesperson.
We had the spectacularly shit L98A1 General Purpose Cadet Rifle – the manual cocking version of the (at the time equally shit) SA80, guaranteed to jam at least twice per magazine.
It was coming in the year after I left, I think we dodged one there.
We also did a couple of exercise where some of us seniors went and acted as enemy for another school's cadet force, and to help identify us we were loaned some SLR's by the REME we had a relationship with. That was cool, anything goes, working in pairs pretending to be SF, setting a rota so we could hit their position at regular intervals all chuffing night. I still MTB on the same areas, and brings back great memories.
tlr
Full Member
That the world population has doubled since I was born in 1973.Incredible, and scary.
It's quadrupled since 1928, when it was 2 billion, or atleast it will when the population hits 8 billion in a very short while. (few months to a year, 7.9bn currently.)
Most workplaces had smoking rooms.
It seems like a completely different age now
when I started in the civil service in 2000, there were smoking offices and a subsidised on-site bar open 12-2 and 4 onwards…
Cool thread.
The smoking thing is nuts. As an ex heavy smoker myself it does feel like another lifetime ago. I remember walking into corner shops/newsagents with a fag on. Rented my first flat from an estate agents that was literally brown, one 'agent' sat behind a massive overflowing ashtray.
Even as a reformed non-smoker I do think the ban has ruined pubs and clubs though. The fug of smoke has been replaced with the stench of cheap aftershave and farts. And being clean safe spaces with all the smoke, atmosphere and interesting characters removed, are now populated by children and their whiney cockbag parents ordering food.
Oh and also: violence, remember that? It was everywhere up until the mid 90's then... gone!
Greybeard
Full Member
As a 17 year old, I found a sheath knife with a 16cm blade (similar to the one I wore on my Scout uniform). I handed it in to the Police. Six months later it was returned to me as unclaimed lost property.
Similar happened to me, found a Bowie knife when I was 12ish, took it to police, months later they called to say could collect it, but had to have a parent with me.
Go to Copenhagen if you miss that smoky bar ambience. Or at least it was when I was there a couple of years ago. Was like a step back in time.
johndoh
Free Member
This is a good visual representation of the timeline of Earth…
Yeah, thing that gets me about this, is humans took 200k year to develop, 5/600k years ago we were defo proper apes at least, flip that, what is the human race going to look like in the future?
Life started about 500k years after the earth formed atleast, took another 4 billion years till us...
Now we are well on in the development of earth and in the window for life on Earth, but there's still around 1 billion habitable years left on the Earth.
But, as I said flip that, in 200k years what are we going to look like? unrecognisable I suspect. Now take that further.. I suspect, we'll be a footnote in Earths history tbh.
I think Planet of the Apes got it spot on, we aren't the pinnacle of evolution on this planet never mind elsewhere!
Say even life evolves into something different in say 1 million year loops. That still gives us around another 1000 times for evolutionary turnovers on this planet. (I'm wildy generalising here obviously, but it does become 5000 times if you go with 200k loops, lot of life left in the old yin yet I think!)
I know I'm going the opposite direction, but I think they are related, The past does give us some insight into the distant future!
Speaking of smoking, I mind I went down to England in 2006. Just automatically got up and went outside to have a smoke.
Felt like an edjit when I walked back in and seen the ashtrays everywhere. 😆
I was well in agreement with the smoking ban before that anyhow, but it never really crossed my mind much before that. It was just obvious at that moment how quickly my whole attitude changed without even really noticing.
Belgium was the first country to achieve a life expectancy of 40. That was achieved in 1800.
Psalms 90:
The days of our years are threescore years and ten;
and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years,
yet is their strength labor and sorrow;
for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.
So in biblical times it was expected a person would live 70 years, and had a good chance of making it to 80.
Also:
Aboriginal people enjoyed good health before the arrival of Europeans. They had abundant, wide ranging sources of fresh food including meat, fish, honey, fruit and vegetables. Accounts from First Fleet officials observed Indigenous people to be living to a great age and that children and elders were well cared for. Estimates of the age of older Aboriginal people at that time range from 60 to 80 years, although it could be that due to a healthy lifestyle Aboriginal people looked younger than their chronological age. In contrast , in 1788 the life expectancy of Europe's poorer classes ranged from 15 years to a high of 40 years.
https://www.answers.com/Q/What_was_the_lifespan_of_Australian_aborigines_before_white_man
easily
Free Member
Belgium was the first country to achieve a life expectancy of 40. That was achieved in 1800.Psalms 90:
The days of our years are threescore years and ten;
and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years,
yet is their strength labor and sorrow;
for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.So in biblical times it was expected a person would live 70 years, and had a good chance of making it to 80.
what does the bible say about child mortality back then?
I have no idea. I also doubt that the Psalms did a rigorous, peer reviewed study.
Without detailed records of child deaths it's impossible to make an accurate guess of historic life expectancy at birth. Mid-second millennium Europe seems to have had low life expectancy compared to some other civilisations however. I guess living in hovels in a damp climate is not as conducive to long life as being in a place with plenty of fruit and sunshine.
My school had an indoor shooting range for 22 rimfire, and an armoury.
My sons school still has one.....
When I did A level maths we learnt how to code in basic. The school didn't have a computer, but the local college had one (yes just one). All the A level maths teachers from the towns schools would go there and take turns on it so that they could come back and tell us what computers were like.
I used to be fit and healthy but now, well, less said the better.
This happened DURING my lifetime!!!
Yeah, thing that gets me about this, is humans took 200k year to develop, 5/600k years ago we were defo proper apes at least, flip that, what is the human race going to look like in the future?
Your timelines are a bit off. Homo Sapiens have been around for about 200,000 years, maybe longer. But Homo Habilis A sort of hairy human (but not a thing that looked like an ape*) first emerged 2-2.5 million years ago, and between 2.0-0.3 million years ago you've got all the archaic species; erectus, ergaster, neanderthal and so on.
Most evolution was mostly driven by environmental pressure. But humans are the first species that can probably (with cybernetic and AI) modify themselves, I think there's now a gap that humans have created that's largely broken the "natural selction" (at least until we die off) so the question "what will we look like in the future" is probably moot.
*noting that we are obviously; apes
Vaguely related, more recent.
My parents knew people who were in service.
My dad worked for people who couldn’t read or write.
When he was younger one of my dads mates was a strapping six foot well built copper. One night at the dancing he went awol, dad eventually found him out the back not too far from the bins, he wasn’t drunk but was sitting there crying his eyes out. It turned out he’d been a pow in the Far East for 3 years and had watched as his friends died of starvation, malnutrition and bad treatment, seeing people throwing away good food had made him so angry that he wanted to deck them, but he knew he couldn’t do that so he just sat down and wept.
seeing people throwing away good food had made him so angry that he wanted to deck them,
I feel like that now & I’ve never known real hunger.
We had a wine tasting club at school run by the Headmaster. This was in the early 80s.
I joined at around 12 years old.
2.0-0.3 million years ago you’ve got all the archaic species; erectus, ergaster, neanderthal and so on.
Neanderthals were still around during the last glaciation and cohabited with homo sapiens in some areas. Fossils dating up to about 25 000 years ago have been found. They live on in us: 2-3% of our genes are Neanderthal with up to 20% of Neanderthal genes preserved in one population or another.
We had a wine tasting club at school run by the Headmaster. This was in the early 80s.
Sophisticated grooming
A vicar as well and not uncomfortable with doling out 'the whacks', i.e. corporal punishment, for misdemeanours.
But we all liked him!
Corporal Punishment for school kids being another of those hard-to-fathom historical facts.
I used to be fit and healthy but now, well, less said the better.
This happened DURING my lifetime!!!
Well you did do most of the damage yourself
Our secondary school first year video club was showing 18 rated horror movies at lunchtime. And very popular they were too. Around about early 80's.
Aboriginal people enjoyed good health before the arrival of Europeans. They had abundant, wide ranging sources of fresh food including meat, fish, honey, fruit and vegetables. Accounts from First Fleet officials observed Indigenous people to be living to a great age and that children and elders were well cared for. Estimates of the age of older Aboriginal people at that time range from 60 to 80 years, although it could be that due to a healthy lifestyle Aboriginal people looked younger than their chronological age. In contrast , in 1788 the life expectancy of Europe’s poorer classes ranged from 15 years to a high of 40 years.
That looks like the same confusion from further up the thread: older Aboriginal people could live to 80, but so could they in Europe. Life expectancy is massively skewed by the deathrate of the under fives.
[i]I used to be fit and healthy but now, well, less said the better.
This happened DURING my lifetime!!!
Well you did do most of the damage yourself[/i]
No, most of it was done by the planet hitting me, hard.
Some of the Irish have no Celtic blood. My cousins in the south West of Ireland were genetically tested and our nearest ethnic group were bronze age peoples from Spain. Long before the Celts got there.
Might explain the "black Irish" (no sun but olive skin).
Long before the Celts got there.
The idea that Celts migrated across Europe was based on the dating of Celtic style finds. However the current thinking (IIRC) is that there was no migration of Celtic people, it was a cultural movement that spread. That style of art spread from region to region.
Some of the Irish have no Celtic blood. My cousins in the south West of Ireland were genetically tested and our nearest ethnic group were bronze age peoples from Spain. Long before the Celts got there.
Might explain the “black Irish” (no sun but olive skin).
Apparently Ireland was a big place in the 9th to 12th centuries where slaves were bought and sold. In the 11th century, Dublin had the largest slave market in western Europe, so its possible thats why so many different ethnic groups show up on dna scans.
is that there was no migration of Celtic people
Of indeed; Celtic people.
it was a cultural movement that spread
A lecturer I listened to a few weeks back likened it to future archaeologists finding Heineken beer bottles, Ikea tables, and Levis all the way from western Russia to Ireland and concluding that it's a homogeneous single tribe of folks
I used to be fit and healthy but now, well, less said the better.
This happened DURING my lifetime!!!
Well you did do most of the damage yourself
No, most of it was done by the planet hitting me, hard.
I know the feeling 🙂
There is Spanish blood in parts of Ireland thanks to the failed armada.
My uncle was a decent spud and for a man of his age pretty open re gender, sexuality and colour. BUT he hated, with a passion, anyone from mainland China.
Took a while to get him to say why but he was posted in Hong Kong on national service and one of his duties was to collect the corpses of female babies that were washed up, thanks to the single baby policy
<em class="bbcode-em">I used to be fit and healthy but now, well, less said the better.
This happened DURING my lifetime!!!
It could have been worse. It might have happened at the end of your lifetime.
We used to have to remember peoples phone numbers. I knew all my friends numbers off by heart and now I sometimes have to double check that I’ve got my own number correct. I also remember that we had about three neighbours on our street that owned cars and we thought they were weird.
We had a wine tasting club at school run by the Headmaster. This was in the early 80s.
I joined at around 12 years old.
We had a bar open at lunchtimes at AWE Foulness. Seems odd now to have that in any workplace but on a firing range!
At my school in the 80's, there was only one fat person.
My uncle was a decent spud and for a man of his age pretty open re gender, sexuality and colour. BUT he hated, with a passion, anyone from mainland China.
Took a while to get him to say why but he was posted in Hong Kong on national service and one of his duties was to collect the corpses of female babies that were washed up, thanks to the single baby policy
Not wanting to be that guy, but the one child policy was started in about 1980. National service ended in 1960 and the last national service serviceman discharged was in 1963.
Our secondary school first year video club was showing 18 rated horror movies at lunchtime.
one of my teachers ran a lunch time film club . It sounded pretty boring because he used a 16mm projector rather than the ‘teachers got a hangover’ big telly and vhs. So bound to be boring old films. All those that could be bother to go to it managed to keep it a secret for quite a long time that he was actually screening porn films.
There is Spanish blood in parts of Ireland thanks to the failed armada.
There is some evidence indicating it goes back rather further. Which given the Book of Invasions origin story for the Milesians is interesting. Possibly some history turned into myth or just a random coincidence.
The Spanish Armada had little affect on the Irish population as most died and those that survived the shipwreck were hunted down.
The sheer number of decades it took before someone realised that suitcases are easier to shift if you add castor wheels to the base.
Spoke with my dad about uncle. It wasn't single child policy. Probably just the high level of starvation and related deaths due to China's hard line communist policies.
Roger Moore claimed to have come up with the idea for the Magnum ice cream by suggesting that a chock ice would be better if it were on a stick.
Walls however dispute this.
'Black' Shetlanders too alledgedly related to the Spanish Armada.
