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 Originally Posted by BananaStand
Is that weird? Like, for there to be two different ages suggests that someone put some thought into this, but apparently not enough thought to realize 13 year olds shouldn't be getting married.
Times they are a changin'.
Throughout most of civilized history, average life expectancy for a human was ~35 years. Getting married at 13 - 15 just makes sense if you only have 20 years left to raise the kids.
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Note that until the rise of city life, people tended to rove about in bands of ~100 people or so. They might wander across another band only 2 - 3 times a year. Their ailments were not really communicable, out of the nature of the situation. There were no populations big enough for a cold to keep sweeping loops through the populace. Any disease which was too aggressive at infesting their hosts runs the risk of killing all the local hosts. Life expectancy was higher because human pathogens had a much harder time with vectors.
Current advances in health care and hygiene have greatly extended life expectancy back to where it was before the rise of civilizations.
Ugh. The rise of cities is more accurate. My Anthropology professor liked to talk as though humans had no civility until we built cities.
Whatever.
We're figuring out how to live together, guys! It's only taken us like 12,000 years to do it. We're the best!
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