This statue of a worshipping man is from the third millennium BCE is from Ancient Sumeria, and I like the way his lips are pursed, almost like he has a half-smile. Judging his age by the long beard, I think his IRL corresponding figures would have had good reason to smile: they, unlike most other humans that preceded them, had been allowed to grow old.
Figuring out the average lifespans of different peoples across time is extremely difficult: we lack representative bone samples of the deceased, and graveyard evidence notoriously skews demographic evidence. For example, many cemeteries of the distant past have a dearth of infant burials, but historians recognize that mortality rates from birth to age five were extremely high. On the other hand, a disproportionate amount of skeletal evidence and scholarship attests to the life spans of elites — obviously, also not representative of the majority of people. For instance, a 2017 study by Neil Cummins (which uses a lot of genealogical data collected by the Church of the LDS) tracks the average age of death of European nobles who lived between 800-1800. Cummins argues that the overall lifespan increased in those times, partially because diseases like the plague killed wealthy people less often, and also because fewer aristocrats were dying in warfare as time went on (before 1550, he estimates that on average 30% of male nobles were killed this way versus 5% after).
But the totality of humankind lived much, much longer starting about 30,000 years ago. Anthropologists Rachel Caspari and Sang-Hee Lee argue that it was only after this date that we began to age much past 30. Using information bone samples from contemporary Homo neanderthals and Homo sapiens, they argue that cultural changes — not biological — are the cause of our longevity.
By the time this Sumerian statue was made, it wouldn’t have been unusual to see someone in their 70s. While infant and child mortality was extremely high, once you survived that period, your chances of living past age 30 were vastly improved.
Source: Vol 77 issue 2, 12 June 2017, Cambridge UP, Neil Cummins, The Journal of Economic History, “Lifespans of the European Elite, 800-1800”, Sharon Basaraba, April 23, 2020, “A guide to longevity throughout history,” verywellhealth.com, https://doi.org/10.1002/ajpa.20360, “Is human longevity a consequence of cultural change or modern biology?” American Journal of Physical Anthropology, R Caspari and SH Lee, 2006, 129 (4); 512-517.
