People Died Very Early in the Past
We now take for granted that living to an age of 70 is normal, while living for only 40 years of life is tragic.
But that wasn't the default in most parts of human history. Many people died very early in the past.
Some died of Addison's disease at 41.
Some died of tuberculosis at 40.
Some died of tuberculosis-induced heart failure at 34.
Some died of meningitis at 24.
Some died simply because of having eaten a rotten fruit at 36.
Some died of airplane crash at 34.
Some died of epilepsy-induced accident at 29.
My grandfather died of appendicitis (can you imagine?) at 28.
I am not even talking about self-inflicted deaths like that of rock stars who died of drug abuse or depression-induced suicide. I am talking mostly about pure misfortunes, mainly due to some completely random diseases, either genetic or bacterial.
We can safely conclude that if most of them were born in the world today, they would have survived way longer. Almost no one dies of tuberculosis or appendicitis today. Also, we have lots of vaccines and antibiotics today that are able to defeat diseases that were deadly in the past.
I am not going further into trite messages such as "Life is short" or "We need to create more things that prolong human lifespan". I'll leave that to your consideration. I just want to highlight something which we might have easily trivialised today:
People died very early in most parts of human history.
That awareness itself, in long run, might be sufficient to trigger something wonderful. If we don't forget it tomorrow.
But that wasn't the default in most parts of human history. Many people died very early in the past.
Some died of Addison's disease at 41.
Some died of tuberculosis at 40.
Some died of tuberculosis-induced heart failure at 34.
Some died of meningitis at 24.
Some died simply because of having eaten a rotten fruit at 36.
Some died of airplane crash at 34.
Some died of epilepsy-induced accident at 29.
My grandfather died of appendicitis (can you imagine?) at 28.
I am not even talking about self-inflicted deaths like that of rock stars who died of drug abuse or depression-induced suicide. I am talking mostly about pure misfortunes, mainly due to some completely random diseases, either genetic or bacterial.
We can safely conclude that if most of them were born in the world today, they would have survived way longer. Almost no one dies of tuberculosis or appendicitis today. Also, we have lots of vaccines and antibiotics today that are able to defeat diseases that were deadly in the past.
I am not going further into trite messages such as "Life is short" or "We need to create more things that prolong human lifespan". I'll leave that to your consideration. I just want to highlight something which we might have easily trivialised today:
People died very early in most parts of human history.
That awareness itself, in long run, might be sufficient to trigger something wonderful. If we don't forget it tomorrow.
Comments
Post a Comment