average lifespan of the elite roman class?

[SwissBarbar]

The lower average lifespan of ancient times, is because of the higher infant mortality. If one had survived his first - say 10 - years, there was quite a good chance for him to get 60-80 years....

Remember Augustus. He's said to have had quite a weakish, morbid health, but still got very old (76 years, IIRC)

[Parallel Pain]

Obviously some people post without reading the thread.

[Macilrille]

Yes but our water is treated to kill almost all bacteria and other bad stuff in it. Their's isn't.

One small point.

I do not know where you live, but I am Danish and my water is not treated in any way but filtering sediments from it and oxydizing it- some places here not even that. Apart from that we drink it exactly as pumped from the ground, and Scandinavian drinking water is the cleanest in the world (though we are worried these days about toxins from agriculture getting into it in 25- 50 years from the last couple of decades). Treating water only cleans it if it was dirty to begin with and is unnecessary if the water was clean.

Ours is what is known as deep ground water (in Danish- translated), surface water usually needs treatment to attain the same quality- or rather a lower one for the treatment does something to it as well. But does it need as much treatment if you use mountain rivers? I have often drunk from Icelandic and Norwegian rivers and Danish wellsprings and it is my distinct impression that there is nothing wrong with that.
In contrast I have a few friends living in the countryside with private wells whose water I do not like to drink as it is not deep and smells and tastes funny. The crucial question is what quality the meltoff Romans used was, and that is hard to answer. But AFAIK the constantly running fountains and waterposts in Rome is still/again fed by the same source.

Anyway, we are deviating. And I do not know much of the subject. However, I do know that it is something other historians have researched, so you could try and look for that info instead of making our own less qualified guesses.

I was supposed to read this in my Roman History Class at uni, but could not afford it

http://books.google.dk/books?id=Evww...age&q=&f=false

but I am certain the information is in that or other like books.

Edited to add- the E-book has a tantalising example, then misses the relevant pages (surpriiiiseeee), so you would have to read the real thing and/or have a look at sources about Roman demography that she uses. Seems from the example she uses no statistics, but I dunno as ... I could not afford it then.

One of the assumptions that are being made here is that lower class people had a lower life expectancy. Thats not necessarily true though, being richer doesnt make you healthier. Better sanitation is only needed if you live in a dense enviroment like a city. Imagine tribesmen living from farming and some hunting, having acces to undiluted water sources, etc. Some of the more "primitive people" may actually have a healthier life. The Hadza, a hunter-gatherer people in Tanzania, are a modern example. The live in a lifestyle older than 10,000 years but regularly get older than 60, 70.
Death from childbirth and disease have more to do with the age of the mother and the enviroment (Filthy stinky cities like Rome) than wealth or availability of sanitation and medication. Didn't greek and roman girls got married of young? that most have severely increased childbirth, the healthiest age for a woman to deliver is 25 (read that somewhere not sure).

Famine? Widespread in all pre-modern societies, including our own developing countries.

[antisocialmunky]

It is worth mentioning that they are for different reason. They had weather problems, we have economic problems are failures of government.

[Ludens]

It is worth mentioning that they are for different reason. They had weather problems, we have economic problems are failures of government.

Although I agree that today's food shortages could be solved by better distribution (and a considerable number of westerners tightening their belts), weather still plays a role. In the West we don't notice it because we can simply get our food from somewhere else. And governmental and economic failures played a role in historical famines as well. Didn't Julian the Apostate try to solve a food-shortage in Antioch by fixing the grain-price? The grain-merchants responded by keeping the grain of the market. Julian was not the first (and presumably not the last) ruler to make that mistake.

[antisocialmunky]

Well, actually modern agriculture produces too much food that overeating is the number one dietary problem today as you might have heard. I mean when agriculture produces SO much food that food prices have to be kept artificially high by subsidies and there are government bought stores of extra food just rotting somewhere, its not an issue of food supply. I know people in the EU are all too aware of this.

And while quick relief is sometimes needed when local food supply is a problem, the food supply is available and transportation is available. Its just whether the government of the victims is willing to let the aid read the people. Remember what happened in Burma(Myamar) when that typhoon hit?

It was like during colonialism when Ireland was producing potatoes for EXPORT during the Great Potato Famine. Asia was EXPORTING grain during the great famines of the early 20th century. The colonial governments had the power to release food to the people but were making profit instead.

Compare this today to a government official that seizes food at the docks and sells it on the black market or a government so inefficient that it lets the aid rot at the docks during the crisis.

[Parallel Pain]

Yep.

According to my prof. The average time length between famine is 17 years.

[moonburn]

It was like during colonialism when Ireland was producing potatoes for EXPORT during the Great Potato Famine. Asia was EXPORTING grain during the great famines of the early 20th century. The colonial governments had the power to release food to the people but were making profit instead.

i heard from a few historians and economists that during the great famine in ireland (due to a disease that also attacks vineyards ) their cereal production was one of the highestest in a 50 years span and had the farmers changed the production from potatoes to wheat or something during the 1st year of the disease then famine could have been averted but several english land owners proihibited and even a few english who told their farmers to change their production faced judicial law suits for breaking some wierd rulles

note: (1st year of the disease was not yet the 1st year of great famine i believe ) a florestal engineer explayned to me that it´s just like fighting fires if you inter change crops then you stop disease spread beteween plants in the same way as you can control fires by controlling the fuel they have