The horrors of Pompeii • Hacker News Board

Re: The horrors of Pompeii

#81

Post by hist_thr » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 10:18 AM UTC

Dah00n wrote: post #64

inglor_cz wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"However those who survived to adulthood had a life expectancy considerably closer to modern ones than most people think." Nope. I see this consistently repeated all over HN or Reddit, but it just isn't true. Only the high clergy routinely reached their late 60s, and trying to analyze general mortality from the relatively sparse ancient records that mostly concerned the richest and most important people introduces en…

How is this different to today in countries not living the good life because they have exported slavery to other countries? Africa for example seem worse off than what you wrote. Around 1% at 60: https://www.populationpyramid.net/africa/2022/ To compare to a time when slaves were near, surely we must add our poor regions, where people work in mines and factories for us, to our life expectancy. Otherwise we are as muc…

Now look at population growth. The Roman empires population was largely stagnant between the 1st century AD to the 3rd. Africa's population has increased 10 fold in the same period.

Re: The horrors of Pompeii

#82

Post by ChatGTP » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 10:40 AM UTC

bazoom42 wrote: post #66

ChatGTP wrote: post #62

These show something very basic and timeless that we have in common with ancient Pompeiians – sex Given the low birthrates in many countries around the world, I'm not so sure this is true anymore.

Dont know if you are serious, but contraception.

I think people are just way more interested in their phones.

Re: The horrors of Pompeii

#83

Post by danShumway » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 10:42 AM UTC

DoreenMichele wrote: post #33

Graffiti is one of the most exciting kinds of evidence preserved for us by the destruction of Pompeii, because it comes not from the literature of the elite, or the inscriptions of the powerful, but from a wider cross-section of society. The article is mostly about slavery and prostitution, colored by modern views of the world. For much of human history, people were simply trying to survive and life expectancy was us…

> Articles like this usually make no effort to give that kind of context and implicitly compare their worst to our best or average and make it sound intentionally cruel to a greater degree than was probably the case most of the time.

I don't know that the situations of the people who owned slaves matter all that much to the experiences of the slaves.

There are two ways to read this article. One is as a pure imposition of modern views onto the past with the implication that everyone involved should have known better and should have had the perspective and empathy of a modern watcher; the other is as a clarification that, "hey, maybe Rome wasn't always a progressive advanced bastion of civilization that we should emulate, maybe a lot of people (even the privileged of the time) had terrible experiences, and maybe some of the regular glorification of the past that we engage in is misplaced, both materially and morally?"

I'm not sure that your comment contradicts that secondary reading. The past was an unpleasant place to live in for everybody. Particularly if you were a slave. It's a good thing that we've started to walk away from it.

Re: The horrors of Pompeii

#84

Post by inglor_cz » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 10:46 AM UTC

Dah00n wrote: post #64

inglor_cz wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"However those who survived to adulthood had a life expectancy considerably closer to modern ones than most people think." Nope. I see this consistently repeated all over HN or Reddit, but it just isn't true. Only the high clergy routinely reached their late 60s, and trying to analyze general mortality from the relatively sparse ancient records that mostly concerned the richest and most important people introduces en…

How is this different to today in countries not living the good life because they have exported slavery to other countries? Africa for example seem worse off than what you wrote. Around 1% at 60: https://www.populationpyramid.net/africa/2022/ To compare to a time when slaves were near, surely we must add our poor regions, where people work in mines and factories for us, to our life expectancy. Otherwise we are as muc…

What you say is partly true, partly not. Africans definitely die earlier.

But the current shape of the African population pyramid is partly determined by the baby boom in the last three generations. There were many fewer Africans around in 1963 (which is when people who are now aged 60 were born), so even if they all lived long (which they didn't), their share on the 2023 population would be much lower than in societies which barely reproduce themselves.

Re: The horrors of Pompeii

#85

Post by vidarh » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 10:48 AM UTC

Dah00n wrote: post #64

inglor_cz wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"However those who survived to adulthood had a life expectancy considerably closer to modern ones than most people think." Nope. I see this consistently repeated all over HN or Reddit, but it just isn't true. Only the high clergy routinely reached their late 60s, and trying to analyze general mortality from the relatively sparse ancient records that mostly concerned the richest and most important people introduces en…

How is this different to today in countries not living the good life because they have exported slavery to other countries? Africa for example seem worse off than what you wrote. Around 1% at 60: https://www.populationpyramid.net/africa/2022/ To compare to a time when slaves were near, surely we must add our poor regions, where people work in mines and factories for us, to our life expectancy. Otherwise we are as muc…

You can't look at this without compensating for population growth and get a meaningful comparison. A raw population pyramid is only a reasonable-ish indicator of life expectancies when a population is growing at slow rate.

For a fast growing population you'll always see a significant narrowing by age no matter if people live long or not.

Re: The horrors of Pompeii

#86

Post by 0xDEF » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 10:57 AM UTC

User23 wrote: post #38

DoreenMichele wrote: post #33

Graffiti is one of the most exciting kinds of evidence preserved for us by the destruction of Pompeii, because it comes not from the literature of the elite, or the inscriptions of the powerful, but from a wider cross-section of society. The article is mostly about slavery and prostitution, colored by modern views of the world. For much of human history, people were simply trying to survive and life expectancy was us…

> life expectancy was usually lower than today Life expectancy at birth was lower than today. However those who survived to adulthood had a life expectancy considerably closer to modern ones than most people think. It turns out the massive infant and childhood mortality rates greatly dragged down the average overall life expectancy.

>Life expectancy at birth was lower than today. However those who survived to adulthood had a life expectancy considerably closer to modern ones than most people think.

This is not true and the source of this misconception is a misleading BBC article that only cited sources about the rich privileged elites of ancient Rome and Middle Age England.

The vast majority of people in the past had significantly lower life expectancy than the rich elites of their time.

Re: The horrors of Pompeii

#87

Post by n8henrie » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 11:05 AM UTC

riffraff wrote: post #57

n8henrie wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the detractors of your comment would have less ground if you compared the life expectancy at 10 yo in Pompeii to that of a 10 yo from, say, 100 years ago, in which case at least I find it surprising that the difference is not far greater.

100 years ago we had barely started doing vaccinations at scale, germ theory was accepted but basically a "modern" theory and surgery was still barely better than the previous millennia. The 20th and 21st century havd been revolutionary from a medical point of view.

Exactly! Amazing how non-linear the improvements have been. (As context, I'm a US physician.)

Re: The horrors of Pompeii

#88

Post by n8henrie » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 11:09 AM UTC

pmontra wrote: post #79

n8henrie wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the detractors of your comment would have less ground if you compared the life expectancy at 10 yo in Pompeii to that of a 10 yo from, say, 100 years ago, in which case at least I find it surprising that the difference is not far greater.

According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy Rome was like this: > When infant mortality is factored out (i.e. counting only the 67–75% who survived the first year), life expectancy is around 34–41 more years (i.e. expected to live to 35–42). When child mortality is factored out (i.e. counting only the 55-65% who survived to age 5), life expectancy is around 40–45 (i.e. age 45–50). The ~50% that reached…

Exactly, thank you.

Re: The horrors of Pompeii

#89

Post by brazzy » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 11:37 AM UTC

dumdumchan wrote: post #61

brazzy wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Slave names were sometimes numbers. Senators' and emperors' names were quite often numbers. That is definitely not the distinction you're looking for.

"Janus the fifth" and "KD6-3.7"

That's not at all how it worked.

"The fifth slave I bought" and "the fifth son of this super rich senator" would have exactly the same name, Quintus.

Re: The horrors of Pompeii

#90

Post by kergonath » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 11:55 AM UTC

danShumway wrote: post #83

DoreenMichele wrote: post #33

Graffiti is one of the most exciting kinds of evidence preserved for us by the destruction of Pompeii, because it comes not from the literature of the elite, or the inscriptions of the powerful, but from a wider cross-section of society. The article is mostly about slavery and prostitution, colored by modern views of the world. For much of human history, people were simply trying to survive and life expectancy was us…

> Articles like this usually make no effort to give that kind of context and implicitly compare their worst to our best or average and make it sound intentionally cruel to a greater degree than was probably the case most of the time. I don't know that the situations of the people who owned slaves matter all that much to the experiences of the slaves. There are two ways to read this article. One is as a pure impositio…

> hey, maybe Rome wasn't always a progressive advanced bastion of civilization that we should emulate, maybe a lot of people (even the privileged of the time) had terrible experiences, and maybe some of the regular glorification of the past that we engage in is misplaced, both materially and morally?

Isn’t this a straw man, though? Roman art and culture has a very important part in western minds, if only because our culture largely descends from theirs. But I haven’t seen anyone saying that life was better in the Roman Empire, ever. Even the enlightenment philosophers, to which we owe things like the American and French revolution and gave to their institutions a Roman-like patina, were well aware of the imperfection of the Roman systems. They knew about the social wars, the Gracchi and the fall of the Republic. And that was in the 1600s and 1700s.