Roughly 8 years ago I encountered a number of sources trying to disabuse me of the notion that you were lucky to make it to 40 in antiquity (let's use first century Romans for a referent). The thrust of the sources was that including infant mortality was skewing the numbers and that if you made it to adulthood you would likely live into your 60s and 70s. Now I'm seeing sources saying, naw naw, even if you made it to adulthood you could only be expected to hit 45 or so.
So which is it? Were you doing ok in first century Rome if you hit 45? Or is that still lowballing it?
Thanks for any help.
Here's a previous answer written by /u/Alkibiades415.
Pure average life expectancy is an extremely simplified view of things. You get a little more nuance once you start taking into account things like child mortality. But in the end, there are layers and layers of different stats/factors to take into account, and obviously there's not CDC-quality data for ancient civilizations. Still, the post above does a good job breaking things down with the information available.