Hi, this is David from MinuteEarth.
Recently, we made a video about how “life expectancy” numbers are misleading and how
graphs can tell us way more about how long animals are likely to live.
In that video, we looked at survival curves of dogs, sea turtles, and modern humans.
But you curious creatures wanted to know not just about modern humans, but also how human
survival has changed over time.
So we dug into the data to create survivorship curves for humans throughout history.
Or, at least we tried; it’s almost impossible to get this sort of data for all humans throughout
time.
In many places, these records got destroyed, weren’t kept in the first place, or were
only kept for the rich and the royals.
The group that had the most complete data, perhaps not surprisingly, was “White Males
from the post-colonial United States”.
That means our data represents only a tiny fraction of a percent of the humans who have
ever lived, and is a pretty skewed sample.
But there are some definite takeaways.
Like, getting old isn’t new.
In the early 1800’s, the average life expectancy of white men in the US was only 42 - yet U.S.
President John Adams was 90 when he died in 1826.
It's not like, back then, men in their 30s were senior citizens - healthy 30-year olds
looked more or less like 30-year-olds have always looked.
It's just that larger numbers of young people used to die from war and disease, skewing
the average.
If we think about our mid-life survival in relation to that of other animals, white male
Americans in the 1800s were more like wolves - many of which die from fights and infections
- while white male Americans today are more domestic dogs, which rarely die in the prime
of their lives.
But here’s something else worth noting - up through the 1960s, only about a third of the
white male Americans who made it to 60 would reach 80.
After 60, people’s bodies - and odds of surviving - went downhill quickly, like wild
sheep, who die off quickly after reaching middle age.
Today, though, way more than half of white male Americans - and, indeed, humans in general
- who reach 60 make it to 80 and beyond.
We now age more like whales do; we have lots of good years late in life.
But while whale longevity is thought to be due to special mutations that help with DNA
repair, in modern humans, it’s mostly thanks to the development of drugs that fight pneumonia,
which used to be the number one killer of old folks.
But the biggest changes in human survivorship over the last 200 years have happened at the
other end of our lives - here.
I mean, we all know we’ve reduced infant mortality, but the actual numbers are truly
incredible.
In the early 1800s, almost a quarter of white male Americans died in their first year of
life due to birth complications, infections, and poor sanitation - they had about the same
odds of survival as some baby birds.
But 200 years later, thanks to breakthroughs like widespread access to hospital care, childhood
vaccinations, and clean drinking water, very few white male American babies died.
We’ve also seen huge gains for those outside this admittedly non-representative group;
worldwide, human infant mortality has dropped to less than 3%.
Of course, those gains aren’t evenly distributed - and there is a ton of work to do to ensure
all babies have the best chance of survival.
But pretty much everywhere in the world, infant mortality rates are continuing to improve;
by 2100, it’s expected that 99% of all kids will make it to their first birthday.
And that curve is like … well, like no other animal.
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