FW: fourscore...

[Beverly Flanigan]

I suspect rural areas in the U.S. today have longer lifespans than urban
areas.  Minnesota has some of the longest-living people in the country, and
it's basically rural, cold, and dark. . . .  And even Minneapolis doesn't
have much urban smog!

At 04:52 AM 3/5/2003 -0500, you wrote:
>This is perhaps a bit off topic, but since Safire brought it up . . .
>
>What Mark M says below re lifespan and life expectancy and actuaries is
>correct, and is backed up by ancient evidence.  It has long been the case
>that if one lives past childhood diseases, war, famine, etc., then one's
>lifespan can well be very long indeed.  This has been true for many
>centuries.  Two examples come to mind: Sophocles, the Athenian dramatist,
>lived some 90 years and was still writing in his old age, Socrates was 70
>and quite spry, until he was executed.  There are many other examples,
>biblical, too.
>
>Modern medical science has made it possible to extend life and avoid death
>from various diseases, but barring violence or disease, it has not been that
>unusual -- since ancient times -- for people to live into their 80s and 90s,
>at least in urban cultures.
>
>In rural societies things are quite different.  Following the fall of the
>Roman Empire, in western Europe at least, life expectancy declined with the
>collapse of urban centers and the coming of much tribal and "national"
>fighting.  In what used to be called the Dark Ages things really were grim
>and dark, compared to the imperial days.  With the fall of the Western
>Empire urban living was much diminished if not wiped out, and there were
>"barbarians" not just at the gates but in charge of things.  Intellectual
>activity all but ceased in western Europe, as did schooling and writing,
>except for a few monastic enclaves.  The populace was mostly peasant
>farmers, lorded over by nobles who were beholden to royals and churchmen.
>In those times life expectancy was very low, except for the very well-to-do
>who didn't have to fight, a tiny minority of the population.  Much that had
>been known and that was common in Roman imperial days was lost, forgotten,
>even destroyed (examples: literature, philosophy, the use of concrete for
>building, etc.).  Hence "the Dark Ages", which to me is a very accurately
>descriptive term.
>
>Frank Abate