History is, to some extent reliant on comparison, of the past to the present and of two or more past cultures to each other. It's an inevitable part of interpretation, and is something that is by no means bad! Comparison highlights differences, and in exploring the causes of those differences, much can be revealed about what values a culture had, and how a culture formed itself and interacted with the world around them.

However, most historians would not view it as viable to "rank" cultures on any metric.

To look at your example, one problem is what criteria you are using - life expectancy? life expectancy compared to diet? Archaeological evidence of surviving diseases? Miltary success? Reputation? Provable feats of strength? What about environment? Do we need an accurate climate reconstruction to make the comparison? All of these come with baked in assumptions about what is "tough," and necessarily elides a lot of cultural and technological differences between cultures.

So, for instance, in the Viking Age "toughness" involves a complex mixture of physical strength, material generosity, fearlessness, and mental quickness, used to help preserve personal and familiar honor. This mixture is not the same mixture of values as in the 19th century American West, nor is it the same as in 9th century Baghdad. However, life expectancy wasn't particularly high, nor is the stereotype of 6ft tall barechested barbarians accurate at all, and so if physical burliness is highly important, cultures with better nutrition WILL be ranked higher than the Vikings.

A more fundamental problem emerges, though, in the very idea of "ranking" cultures. A ranking implies some kind of "objective" standard to say "this group was the best at this." Modern historical practice, however, leans into the subjectivity and inevitable irrationality of humanity. Cultures aren't monolithic entities, and people vary dramatically between those. And applying the same criteria to globally incredibly diverse lived experiences ends up erasing all of that variation, revealing nothing in return about the causes of a particular historical event or culture. It ends up missing a fundamental goal of history as profession, as a result.

Additionally, the concept of a 'ranking' necessarily implies relative superiority and inferiority. This is problematic - various biases in documentary evidence (or translations thereof), environmental luck, and the impacts of conflict and colonialism can easily end up accidentally supporting racist and white supremacist nonsense. Even if that is not your intention, that is a trap, and something all engagement with the past has to deal with!

And as such, no, I would not say there is any historically credible way of ranking cultures.