How peasants lived in Tsarist Russia. Analytics and facts. The myth that in the 17th-18th centuries throughout Europe people got married early due to low life expectancy Average life expectancy in the 19th century

The life expectancy of people varied in different historical periods and depended on socio-economic conditions.

Scientists who studied ancient tombstone inscriptions, as well as the remains of burials, came to the conclusion that in ancient times people lived on average 22 years.

In the XIV-XV centuries there was a slight increase in life expectancy. English scientists believe that it was minimal (17 years) during the era of the “Black Death” plague, which raged in England in the 14th century. And in other periods, the maximum level did not exceed 24-26 years.

In the 19th century, according to statistics, the Belgians lived on average 32 years, the Dutch - 33 years. In India, during the rule of the British, the average life expectancy of Hindus was 30 years, while the British in this country at that time lived up to 65 years. In Tsarist Russia in 1897, the average life expectancy of men was recorded as 31.4 years, in 1913 – 32 years. Today in the Soviet Union, according to the Central Statistics Service, men live on average 65 years, and women - 74 years.

In many countries, there is a difference in life expectancy between men and women of 5-7 years. Some researchers explain this by the fact that the male population drinks alcohol, others - by a decrease in women's mortality from childbirth, others - by the fact that men do more difficult work, and others - by the biological adaptability of women to changing living conditions. These questions are currently being studied.

Historical data shows that at different periods in almost all nations there were individuals who managed to live very long lives.

Academician A. A. Bogomolets in his book “Life Extension” gives examples of longevity. In 1724, P. Kzarten, 185 years old, died in Hungary. His son was 95 years old at the time; in 1670, Disenkins died in Yorkshire, aged 169. Thomas Parr lived a working peasant life for 152 years. At the age of 120, he remarried a widow, with whom he lived for 12 years, and was so cheerful that, as contemporaries say, his wife did not notice his old age. In Norway, Joseph Surrington died in 1797 at the age of 160, leaving a young widow and many children from several marriages, the eldest son being 103 years old and the youngest son 9 years old.

Hungarians John Rovel and his wife Sarah have been married for 147 years. John died at 172 years old, and his wife 164 years old.

The Norwegian sailor Drakenberg lived 146 years, and his life was difficult: at the age of 68 he was captured by the Arabs and remained in slavery until he was 83 years old. At the age of 90 he still led the life of a sailor, and at 111 he got married. Having lost his wife at the age of 130, he wooed a young peasant woman, but was refused. The painter Kramer left a portrait of Drakenberg at the age of 139, in which he looks like a strong old man.

In 1927, Henri Barbusse visited the peasant Shapkovsky, who was then 140 years old, in the village of Laty near Sukhumi. Barbusse was surprised by the cheerfulness, vivacity of movements, and sonorous voice of this man. His third wife was 82 years old, his youngest daughter was 26 years old. Thus, at the age of 110, Shapkovsky had not yet stopped having sex.

Women are not inferior to men in their longevity. Mechnikov reports that in 1904 there lived an Ossetian woman whose age was 180 years old. Despite this, she was engaged in sewing and housekeeping. Not long ago, 169-year-old Turkish woman Hacer Issek Nine died in Ankara after a heart attack. Her last words were: “I haven’t lived enough in this world yet.” The life of the Ossetian Taiabad Anieva was even longer: she died at the age of 182.

The largest number of centenarians is noted in Georgia, but people 100 years and older also live in harsh Yakutia, Altai, Krasnodar territories and in all regions of the RSFSR, Ukrainian SSR and other republics.

If we compare data for the USSR with data from capitalist countries, then in the USSR there are 10 centenarians per 100 thousand population, in the USA - 3 people, in France - 0.7 people, in Great Britain - 0.6.

The socialist system, with its concern for the welfare of the people, creates all the conditions for longevity. The Soviet government gave citizens a secure, peaceful old age. Despite their material security, many of them continue to work to the best of their ability and benefit society. Old age usually develops gradually, and it progresses differently for different people. For some, the aging process begins at 35-40 years old: vision decreases, signs of sclerosis appear. The concepts of youth and old age are relative. Currently, it is generally accepted that there is a passport age and a biological age, so retirement (55-60 years) is sometimes ahead of the age at which a person actually is.

The average life expectancy in the USSR, scientists believe, will soon increase to 80 years, and by 2000 - to 150 years. Of course, not all people will be able to reach this age. Life expectancy depends not only on the environmental conditions in which a person finds himself, but also on the genetic characteristics of a person.

They also play an important role in extending human life. In good conditions, people can live to be 100 years or older.
The oldest people reached an age of just over 120 years (maximum life expectancy). For Western economies in the current period, there are also high expectations for an increase in life expectancy (implying advances in medicine).

The highest life expectancy today is for people living in Andorra up to 83.5 years. The lowest life expectancy is in the African countries of Swaziland, up to 34.1 years.

Jeanne Louise Calment - oldest person in the world

Jeanne Louise Calment was born February 21, 1875 in the city of Arles in the family of ship carpenter Nicolas Calment. Her parents married on October 16, 1861. In addition to Jeanne Louise, they had several more children, but she did not know about this, since they all died in infancy.

IN 1896 At the age of 21, Jeanne marries her cousin, Fernand Nicolas Calment, a wealthy merchant. This marriage gave her the opportunity to leave her job and enjoy a comfortable life where she could pursue her hobbies such as tennis, cycling, swimming, skating, piano and opera. She lived with her husband for 55 years (he died in 1942). They had a daughter, Yvonne, and a son, Frederick.
Her daughter died at the age of 36 from pneumonia, and her son, who later became a doctor, died in 1963 at the age of 37 from a ruptured aneurysm due to a motorcycle accident.

IN 1965 aged 90 years old, she sells her house to her husband, André-François Raffray. who was 47 years old at the time, on the condition that he would pay her a monthly sum of 2,500 francs. He would do this until his death in 1995 at the age of 77. His wife continued to pay after her husband's death. In total, the Raffrays paid out more than twice the price of Jeanne Louise's house.

IN 1985, Jeanne Louise aged 110 years moves to a nursing home in Arles. In 1988, the centenary year of Vincent van Gogh's visit to Arles, she attracted media attention as the only living person to have met Van Gogh. This meeting took place, according to her, a hundred years ago, in 1888, when she was 12 or 13 years old, the artist came to buy fabrics in her father’s store. She described him as a very ugly and rude man who left her feeling "disappointed".

Aged 114 years, she starred in the French-Canadian film about Van Gogh "Vincent", becoming the oldest actress in the world. In 1995, when she turned 120 years old, a documentary film was made about her.
After her 122nd birthday, her health deteriorated sharply, she stopped appearing in public, and within five months she died.

By October 17 1995 , Jeanne Calment reached 120 years and 238 days and became the oldest person in the world, surpassing Shigechiyo Izumi who died in 1986 at the age of 120 years and 237 days.
After her death on August 4, 1997, 116-year-old Canadian Marie-Louise Meilleur became the oldest person in the world.

Health

Jeanne Louise Calment (21 Feb. 1875 - 4 Aug. 1997) is the oldest person on Earth whose birthday and day of death have been confirmed. She lived 122 years and 164 days.

All members of her family died at relatively old ages: her older brother, François Calment, at 97, her father at 93, and her mother at 86. Jean Louise led a relatively healthy lifestyle. Until the age of 85, she went for walks by bicycle. Until her 110th birthday, and before entering the nursing home, she lived alone. At 114 years old, she fell off a stool and broke her collarbone, after which she had to undergo surgery for the first time in her life.

Jeanne Calment was often asked questions regarding her longevity. She claimed that she had used it all her life to prepare food. olive oil, I also rubbed it on my skin. She drank up to one a week and ate up to a pound chocolate.

Average life expectancy in different centuries

Map of life expectancy of people from different countries of the world born in 2007

Men



Women

Population pyramid of Russia in 2011 by gender and age.

Photo:iStockphoto.com © Fotolia.com
wikipedia.org

The following graph covers a larger period of time and shows how wonderful life was for people in Ancient Greece. This time, not a complete sample is considered, but a regional one: for the 18th century - representatives of Western Europe, and for two periods of Antiquity - the Romans and Greeks. As in the previous case, identification of people by time was based on their dates of birth.

Average life expectancy in Ancient Greece in the 6th-3rd centuries BC. was 73.3 years. The number is simply unreal. Even in the first half of the 20th century, Europeans lived less on average. Of course, these statistics do not take into account people in dangerous professions, such as the military, where life expectancy is below average. However, this disadvantage is compensated by the virtual absence of women in this sample, who traditionally live longer than men. In any case, none of this matters, because our task is to compare the results obtained with each other.

The graph clearly shows that in the 18th century (and, therefore, partially in the 19th century, since we are talking about people born in the 18th century), even in Western Europe, the average life expectancy was lower than in Ancient Greece. Even though the Greek statistics are based on just over fifty people, the differences between the two groups are statistically significant, suggesting that Western Europeans certainly lived shorter lives than the ancient Greeks. The reliability of this conclusion is as high as before - less than one percent (the lower this figure, which shows the likelihood of a researcher’s error, the higher the reliability).

The main idea that I try to convey in critical writing on history is that the generally accepted chronology of historical events was composed at a relatively late time, approximately in the 17th-18th centuries. Therefore, it would be more interesting to see what life expectancy was not in the Middle Ages or Antiquity, but in the 18th century and the time immediately preceding it. To do this, we will make statistics for smaller periods of time, half a century. And for a clearer picture, we will limit the sample only to representatives of Western Europe.

The above graph shows that the highest rates occurred in the second half of the 17th and first half of the 18th centuries. After this, in the second half of the 18th century, an unjustified decline occurred. As before, the indicated time periods correspond to the dates of birth of the people for whom the statistics were carried out. Therefore, the phenomenon of reduced life expectancy applies to people born in the second half of the 18th century, most of whom died at the beginning of the 19th century. Let us consider this period and the two preceding half-century periods in more detail.

Average life expectancy in the first half of the 18th century was 67.7 years, about the same as in the previous fifty years. In the second half of the 18th century, this figure dropped to 64.5 years. The difference is just over three years, which is not much compared to previous comparisons and may not seem significant. Therefore, let us turn again to the methods of mathematical processing.

The task is to find out whether the decrease in life expectancy in the second half of the 18th century in relation to the previous period of time is reliable or whether the difference in the obtained figures is statistically insignificant and is a consequence of chance. Since in the first half of the 18th century and the second half of the 17th century the life expectancy indicators are approximately the same, we will combine them into one group. This will increase the number of initial statistical data and increase the reliability of calculations. There will be two groups that need to be compared: the second half of the 18th century, in which the average life expectancy is 64.5 years, and the previous period, covering a hundred years, with an average life expectancy equal to 67.8 years.
The following table reveals the life expectancy statistics for both groups.

We see that both groups have approximately the same number of people. However, even at a superficial glance, it is noticeable that they are distributed differently in them. Thus, in the first group, the number of people who did not live to reach the age of 50 is greater than those who died between the ages of 50 and 60. In the second - on the contrary, moreover, those who died under the age of 50 are half as many as those who died in the range from 50 to 60 years.

Mathematical analysis comparing the two distributions showed that they differ from each other with a high level of statistical significance of less than one percent. Translated from the language of mathematics, this means that people born in the period from the mid-17th to the mid-18th centuries, on average, naturally lived longer than those who were born in the next fifty years. What underlies this pattern is unclear. From the perspective of traditional history, this question will remain unanswered, because we are talking about the relatively recent past of Western Europe. It has been well studied, and there are no global epidemics or other large-scale disasters that could affect the decrease in life expectancy. Maybe just before that, for some reason, it suddenly became higher than normal, and then decreased to the natural level? But these reasons are also unknown to science.

The only interpretation of the obtained result can be that there was in fact no decrease in life expectancy in the second half of the 18th century. Most likely, people began to live longer than in the first half of this century and, even more so, than in the 17th century. But no one wrote down real dates of birth back then; no one needed it. Then, when the chronology was calculated, the dates of life of famous people were also invented. And it just so happened that these fictitious dates slightly increased the natural life expectancy for that time.

The latest mathematical and statistical analysis has once again shown that chronology before the 18th century is not natural, unreliable, and therefore fictitious. As a final touch to demonstrating the artificiality of the average life expectancy picture, I present another diagram. It differs from the previous ones in that its indicators are calculated not on the basis of the life dates of those who were born in a particular period, but of those who died in it. The periods themselves are reduced to twenty years.

I found a very interesting book and it contains some statistics about life expectancy and infant mortality in the second half of the 18th century.

Actually, this is probably, in principle, almost the first such statistical study in Russia. But the figures here are given mainly from European sources. How accurate they are is also a question. But trends are reflected. And very scary trends.

This is a description of one of the long-livers. Natural selection at its finest.

Only half of the people lived to be 15 years old.

I saw quite a lot of icons of various kinds, as well as ancient frescoes. So there is such a canon there, pay attention if necessary. All warriors are exclusively without beards. If you remember that the main growth of hair in young men occurs somewhere around the age of 17-18, then you can understand where this canon came from and who made up the bulk of any army. Not for nothing back in the 19th century. And according to my calculations, well, you know about Romeo and Juliet.

Women have always lived longer than men.

And people lived married for a long time back then. Even despite the short lifespan. Well, we got married at 15-16.

And then the centenarians lived mainly in the mountains.

But this is a very interesting passage that shows the standard of living of the population in various areas. Moreover, as you can see, the larger the city, the lower this standard of living. This seems to be a very important point in understanding the history of that time.

Because of all this, people in the cities didn’t get married or give birth very much. And the influx of people from the village was not very large. In my series of posts, I clearly show that the population and size of cities have grown little over the course of 200 or even 300 years. until the early 20th century and the explosive growth of cities.

Vitamin deficiency is a terrible thing.

And now the scariest part of my post. Infant mortality:

And again this is the curse of cities.

But at the same time, the city was still more advanced in the field of medicine.

Progress in medicine was slowly taking place.

This is another scary moment of that time. Mothers or nurses were often so tired that they fell asleep while feeding or simply in bed and crushed their babies with their whole bodies so that the babies simply died.

We now have a poor understanding of the realities of life at that time. Human life was short and worthless. Therefore, the mentality of people was different. And the realities of life. And you need to know all this in order to correctly understand history. Otherwise, it appears before us in the form of a distorting mirror, where everything is wrong and everything is different.

Addition :

I also found data on mortality in the second half of the 18th century.

Book: Kurganov, Nikolai Gavrilovich (1726-1796).
As you can see, at that time the birth rate sharply exceeded the death rate. It was then that the population of Europe and Russia increased at a very rapid pace. According to my data, in Russia this began somewhere in the late 17th, early 18th centuries. A single autocratic state was formed in Russia and the number of internal strife decreased sharply. Again, there was less fighting than before. The raids of the Tatars and other nomads were completely a thing of the past. Labor productivity increased, the common population had more money to feed their offspring, and they gave birth a lot back then.
But at the same time, the mortality rate in cities was very high. Let's, for example, compare it with the current one. I live in the city of Perm. The population of the city is about 1 million people. Mortality 12 thousand per year. The population of the rest of the Perm region is 1.6 million. people and the mortality rate is 22 thousand people per year. Of course, most of it still lives in cities, but they are not comparable to the city of Perm in many respects. I think this disproportion in mortality is due to the difference in the quality and availability of medical care. Because the ecology in Perm itself is much worse than in other cities of the region, not to mention the countryside.
If you multiply 12 thousand by 23, as it is written in the book, you get 276 thousand people. This should have been the population of the city of Perm, given the mortality rate that was in the second half of the 18th century. The almost complete absence of medicine, even for the rich, took its toll. And the environment was clearly not all right. The lack of water supply and sewerage, given the general overcrowding of the population, did its job.
Life has clearly become better and certainly more fun.

The post was written as part of the cycle -.

Another tenacious myth: supposedly the inhabitants of that time turned into decrepit ruins by the age of 35-40 and instantly died from countless diseases in terrible convulsions. Let's figure out where this came from.

Of course, lowering the bar for “childhood” plays a role - a peasant child began working (that is, working hard, and not just helping with housework) at the age of 13-14. A nobleman at the age of 15 could already take part in wars - this is not the modern Pepsi generation, which is afraid to go into the army at 18. :) Noble girls got married at 12-14 and no one considered it pedophilia.

The “old age” bar remained approximately at the same level as now. A great deal of documentation has been preserved confirming this:

Decree of Philip V of France in 1319 allowing persons over 60 to pay tax to the local seneschal rather than travel to the king's court.
- Decree of Philip VI of 1341 on pensions reserved for civil servants and military personnel over 60 years of age.
- Decree of Edward II of England on military training of all men from 15 to 60 years of age.
- Henry VII's decree on pensions for soldiers over 60 years of age.

Against this background, the strict order of King Pedro I the Cruel of Castile on “compulsory labor for everyone” from 12 to 60 years old stands out - you can understand what’s going on by looking at the date: 1351. The great epidemic of the Black Death is ending, half (or more) of the population of Castile has died out, there is a catastrophic shortage of workers. Well, quickly pick up sickles and rakes and march-march into the field! That is, a peasant’s age of 60 was not considered something abnormal, since they were forced into forced labor after the plague (and probably with detachments too! :)

By the way, regarding the age of marriage. If early marriage was the norm among nobles, then among peasants, townspeople, city dwellers, and artisans, the situation was somewhat different. In the 14th century, in the south and east of Europe people got married at the age of 16-17, in the north and west - generally at 19-20. But at the border of 1400-1500, that is, closer to the Renaissance and Reformation, marriages became earlier, turning into an institution for the mass production of labor for developing industry. Let us note that by the so-called “Renaissance” (for some it’s the Renaissance, and for some it’s an ass), the skills of obstetrics, gynecology and contraception, which were fully developed in the “gloomy” Middle Ages, are lost, and the further it goes, the worse and worse the situation becomes. It was precisely in the years 1500-1600 that, thanks to a catastrophic decline in the quality of life and climatic anomalies (we look at longevity, deep problems arose.

The golden autumn of the Middle Ages in the period before the clearly drawn border of the Black Death differed in a positive direction in this very “quality of life”. Otherwise, where would such piquant stories come from:

In 1338, a certain cleric wrote an extensive slander to the Bishop of Lincoln, which describes the treacherous and dissolute behavior of Countess Alicia de Lacy, who, after the death of her legal spouse, vowed to take monastic vows and transfer all property to the monastery. But here's the trouble - before she was tonsured, a certain knight kidnapped the countess from the monastery and Madame de Lacy agreed to marry him. Particular emphasis was placed on the fact that the Countess was 60 years old - such adventures were at her age! :)

The cleric can be understood: the monastery lost the property of her ladyship, so in the complaint the bishop is asked to punish the romantic knight with a fine of a ruble in order to somehow compensate for the losses. By the way, at the same time in France and England, widows of 60 years old who owned a fortune were exempt from having to marry or pay a fine for refusing (to help) a king or lord. Well, grandma won’t go to war? Although, if you remember Eleanor of Aquitaine (who died at the age of 84), who remained cheerful until old age... :))

Some examples of the life expectancy of the highest nobility and clergy in the 14th century:

King Philip IV the Handsome - 46 years old, suspected stroke. Philip was not lucky with his children - the heirs Louis, Philip and Charles died at 26, 31 and 34 years old, respectively.
- King Philip VI of Valois - 57 years old.
- King Edward III of England - 65 years old.
- Grand Duke of Burgundy Philip II the Bold - 62 years old.
- King Alfonso XI of Castile - 39 years old, died of the plague.
- Pope Clement V - 50 years old.
- Pope John XXII - elder, broke all records: 90 years. And this with such nervous work!
- Pope Benedict XII - 57 years old.
- Master of the Templars Jacques de Molay - 69 years old, violent death. :)

So retirement age at that time was not something unusual or out of the ordinary.