Average life expectancy in the Middle Ages
We love picturing 30-year-old medieval peasants as hunched-over seniors. We see that "average life expectancy of 31" and assume humans back then just expired early like cheap milk.
That number is actually a statistical prank. It is dragged down by the sheer volume of infants who didn't make it. If one person dies at birth and another at 70, the average is 35, but nobody actually lived that "average" life.
If you survived the gauntlet of childhood, you would likely hit seventy. You weren't ancient at thirty; you were just a lucky survivor who hadn't been killed by a rusty nail or a bad sneeze yet.
Well, actually, the 'gauntlet' was just a fancy word for 'everything is trying to kill you.' Without antibiotics, a simple stomach bug was a death warrant for a toddler.
About 25% of kids didn't survive their first year. Some parents didn't even name babies until they survived a few winters. Imagine being 'Baby #4' because your parents didn't want to get attached.
It wasn't that kids were fragile; they just lived in a giant, unwashed petri dish. If you didn't die from a contaminated puddle by age ten, you were a survivor.
Well, actually, that's a popular bit of historical 'brainrot.' Just because they didn't have Pinterest nurseries doesn't mean medieval parents were emotional robots.
Delaying a name was often a superstitious shield. The logic was: if the 'Angel of Death' doesn't have a specific name for the paperwork, maybe he’ll skip that cradle. It was a psychological survival tactic, not coldness.
The reality check? Their diaries are soul-crushing. They cared deeply—they just lived in a world where getting attached was a high-stakes gamble with a massive chance of heartbreak.
Well, actually, the "everyone was a dummy who couldn't read" trope is classic historical brainrot. While your average pig farmer wasn't writing novels, the rising merchant class and nobility were obsessed with "Commonplace books"—basically a medieval Tumblr for their thoughts, prayers, and finances.
We have records of fathers meticulously listing the costs of a child’s funeral right next to raw, agonizing prayers. It sounds cold to us, but tracking the expense was how they processed the reality. They wrote things like, "The light of my eyes is gone," proving they weren't just staring blankly at a wall.
The reality check? Even the illiterate ones commissioned poems or church windows. They didn't need a PhD to feel the gut-punch of loss; they just didn't have Twitter to vent about it.
Well, actually, they were the ultimate 'everything' journals. Imagine one notebook for your taxes, a recipe for 'cough ale,' and a list of neighbors who owe you chickens. They were chaotic and human.
You’d find a prayer for a sick wife next to a doodle of a knight fighting a snail. There was no 'work-life balance'; it was just life, recorded as it happened.
The reality check? Your 'aesthetic' bullet journal is just a sanitized version of what a 14th-century merchant did while dodging the plague. They didn't have stickers, so they drew monsters.
