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Comment by hist_thr | Hacker News Reader

No they really didn't.

This is what the age pyramid looks like for a first world nation: https://www.populationpyramid.net/finland/2022/

It's a column until you reach 70 then people start dying.

This is what the age pyramid looks like for a society stuck in the Malthusian trap: https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-XfdbjKDGvT0/Ti49-5r5EyI/AAAAAAAAB...

Notice how people have a half life, the chance of dying when you reach 20 years in any year is 5% regardless of age.

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A middle age rural village in Germany is not the same as an ancient roman city.

> middle age rural village in Germany

Especially after the plague would have been a much nicer place to live for most people than an average ancient Roman city (or even Rome itself given that's its population was only sustainable because of immigration)

Finland though. Try Africa:

https://www.populationpyramid.net/africa/2022/

try the world(google), it's actually closer to finland

Yes, because much of the world export our slave-like labour to poor regions of the world. Those poor people clearly need to be counted in our life expectancy if we are to compare to a time when slaves where in the household etc. Export of misery does make the numbers look nice though.

Africa does not have a 50% child mortality rate. What it has is an an average of 5 children born per woman. In short: not even the worst place in Africa today is as bad as the best place any time before 1900.

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