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People in the past were not all dead by 30. Ancient documents confirm this. In the 24th century BCE, the Egyptian Vizier Ptahhotep wrote verses about the disintegrations of old age. The ancient Greeks classed old age among the divine curses, and their tombstones attest to survival well past 80 years. Ancient artworks and figurines also depict elderly people: stooped, flabby, wrinkled.
This is not the only type of evidence, however. Studies on extant traditional people who live far away from modern medicines and markets, such as Tanzania's Hadza or Brazil's Xilixana Yanomami, have demonstrated that the most likely age at death is far higher than most people assume: it's about 70 years old. One study found that although there are differences in rates of death in various populations and periods, especially with regards to violence, there is a remarkable similarity between the mortality profiles of various traditional peoples.
High infant mortality and inaccuracy at the other end of the age range skew the numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 17 2018, @11:57PM (18 children)
People knew the earth was round 2500 years ago and old people existed too. Thinking that before Columbus people were afraid to fall off the edge of the earth, or that everybody died at 25 are popular fallacies that I hope my fellow readers here never believed.
(Score: 3, Touché) by bob_super on Wednesday July 18 2018, @12:47AM (14 children)
And people also believed that America was Greater before.
(Score: 3, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday July 18 2018, @03:03AM (9 children)
Read the bible - people in ancient times lived to 900+ years old. It's in the bible...
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by anubi on Wednesday July 18 2018, @05:58AM (8 children)
Anyone know at what point in time we defined what a "year" is? Was it before Moses? Could it have been confused with a lunar cycle? I read that there was a lot of confusion regarding Kepler, Copernicus, and Galieo before we got our celestial mechanics nailed down.
Sure, we have a pretty exact definition of what a year is... did "they" have that same definition? I guess I have to cite really old things like Stonehenge as evidence of earlier understanding of solar cycles, and I still do not know if Stonehenge and earlier stone "temples" were constructed with observing solar phenomena in mind, even though they can be used for that purpose. We sure seem to have a lot of unexplained mysteries in our past. Sure makes me wonder if life on this planet was seeded by an ancient spacefaring race.
My guess is we will find the answer on the moon.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday July 18 2018, @10:32AM (7 children)
As with all things, it does often get lost in the translation... those high biblical ages do seem more likely to be lunar cycles than solar cycles, but that sounds like too much science for a Sunday morning.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday July 18 2018, @02:51PM (6 children)
The Hebrew Calendar is a good place to start, if you really want to go down that road. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_calendar [wikipedia.org]
TL;DR
You can either take the bible as truth or you can dismiss it. The bible is clear that you can't sit on the fence and expect that since you didn't do anything horrible that you'll be saved.
Revelation 3:15-16 KJV "15 I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. 16 So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth."
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Revelation+3:14-22 [biblegateway.com] (This defaulted to the NIV for me instead of the KJV, but the semicolons in the version part of the link were breaking something.)
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday July 18 2018, @04:20PM
I really think a middle ground (probably strongly slanted to the skeptics' side) is a better use of the information. It is a long developed record of certain information that the holders of that information thought worthy to pass along, there's great insight into the human condition within the pages (for instance, try an online searchable bible and look for marriage - the two passages you hear at weddings are there, as well as about 50 others that describe misery, murder, and all sorts of unpleasantness associated with the institution...)
Quoting scripture without careful introspection of what you are trying to say and why is a great way to set my BS filter to max, but if you can draw connections to real life it doesn't hurt as a starting point for understanding and confirmation that you're not just living in an anomaly.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday July 19 2018, @06:33AM (4 children)
If this looks like it might be a soylent bug, please tell us more. Just recently, I've looked at the automatic linkifying code, in particular with respect to how it treats punctuation, maybe I have broken something. Either reply here, or hop onto #dev on the IRC server, and you can tell us how to reproduce the issue.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Thursday July 19 2018, @07:24PM
I posted an example of the problem in the dev channel. Not sure anyone was there.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Thursday July 19 2018, @07:28PM (2 children)
https://logs.sylnt.us/#dev/2018-07-19.html [sylnt.us] Has the link example that showed up broken when I chose preview, before I submitted my comment.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday July 19 2018, @10:10PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday July 19 2018, @10:30PM
Explanation at https://dev.soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=18/05/01/117209&page=1&noupdate=1#comment_31539
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 18 2018, @06:20AM (3 children)
People lived roughly as long as they do today until the discovery of cigarettes.
Not quite true - heavy rates of burning wood or coal reduced life expectancy in cold countries pretty badly, coupled with high population densities.
In northern Europe starvation also killed a lot of people until frozen and tinned food were invented.
I believe childbirth killed a lot of women until very recently. Still does in a lot of Muslim countries as a result of child brides.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday July 18 2018, @07:10AM (2 children)
> I believe childbirth killed a lot of women until very recently. Still does in a lot of Muslim countries as a result of child brides.
Still does in the US [wikipedia.org], lower than third world countries, but three to six times the rate of other developed countries.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 18 2018, @07:16AM (1 child)
Doesnt the US count differently than other countries? Eg, a longer period after the birth counts as "in childbirth".
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday July 18 2018, @07:27AM
RTFWiki [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 18 2018, @03:50AM
I heard this was a psyop by the Phoenicians/Carthaginians so no one would find out where they were mining all that silver and tin. They didn't want anyone else exploring the impassable Mare Tenebrosum.
https://phoenicia.org/carthanewworld.html [phoenicia.org]
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Wednesday July 18 2018, @03:37PM (1 child)
Consider the Ptolemaic epicycles to be just like the Fourier decomposition of a function.
Within the limits of observational accuracy, epicycles accurately predict the future positions of the heavenly bodies.
Epicycles break down with increasing accuracy of observational measurement.
Those measurements were always made with a transit. It's just like a gunsite that can move along just one axis to measure the altitude of an object in the sky, as well as a clock that one uses to record the time it transited, that is, the time that it achieved its greatest altitude.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday July 19 2018, @06:48AM
(planet - earth) - (sun - earth) = (planet - sun)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves