This. The claim that ancient lives were brutish and short, is just a hobbesian concept. That he used to strut his shakey theory.
A significant amount of people reached old age even in the middle ages.
We need to teach people that averages are generally not a meaningful way to compare things, except in the very rare case of them both being normally distributed and also about the same standard deviation. People are taught to think day to day by comparison of averages and it really harms our ability to reason about basic things in daily life.
Where I live (SF Bay) it is extremely windy all summer, and nearly dead calm all winter except when a big storm comes through. Average wind speeds are about the same year round.
If you take away the knowledge and the medical advances and the social technology, the big difference is food acquisition.
Pre-industrial revolution, most people were subsistence farmers, and city dwellers lived on their backs.
Now our food needs are met by a much smaller % of the population