I don't know if they'd live as long as people today but I'd be surprised if many didn't at least go till at least 70+?
I don't know if they'd live as long as people today but I'd be surprised if many didn't at least go till at least 70+?
Medieval European burials at least tend to cluster way lower than that. In the Dark Ages, skeletons of people older than 60 are rather uncommon (like 1:30), in the High Middle Ages, they become somewhat more common, but still less than 1:10.
Of all the population groups, the clergy was by far the most long-lived in pre-modern times. A nonviolent line of work, plus almost guaranteed supply of food.
Even in the 18th century in fairly developed Britain, only about 70 per cent of adults (18+) celebrated their 40th birthday.
Even then the mortality was still quite high compared to today.
And most agricultural societies before that were regularly swept by famines, which disproportionately took the young and the aging ones.
When judging historic lifespans, we tend to judge by the famous people. Cardinals, popes, kings, emperors. The population average was way, way lower, and the bones from churchyards tell the real story.
The median death for 25 year olds was about 58 in Ancient Rome for example
Also, Rome itself (as a city) had never problem supplying its population with food. There was a special office (Cura Annonae) that coordinated import of food from Hispania, Africa and Egypt to Rome so that the city was never threatened with starvation. I just recently visited Ostia Antica, the main port of Ancient Rome; it was absolutely massive. Rome certainly had a lot of problems, but it was fairly secure in food.
Things were different in 11th century Germany or Sweden. Without an extensive network of long-distance trade, if crop failed in your region, there wasn't any way to prevent famine.
Even deep in the 18th century, during the last peacetime famine in Czechia (1770-3 approx., caused by rainy and cold weather), the attempts to alleviate the hunger by importing food from Hungary were only partly successful; even though by that time, the road network was fairly developed and the state capacity was orders of magnitude higher than several centuries ago. As a result, something between 5 and 10 per cent of the population died.
I imagine the risk of contracting fatal diseases in a rural setting was much less.