Ancient Chinese life rumors are revealed, and the truth of the life span of the Qing Dynasty is explored
The Tang Dynasty poet Du Fu wrote a poem entitled "Life is Rare in Seventy Ancient Times". If you look at these ancient poems from the eyes of a modern person, it seems a little strange, because it is not difficult to live to be seventy years old, why"Ancient"Will it appear in Du Fu's poems?
It is said that during the reign of the old feudal dynasty, the average life expectancy of the aborigines was very short, not even 30 years old, which is actually a rumor!
Early death of young children shortens life expectancy.
Could it be that people in the old society were so short-lived?Can't they even live for thirty years?Not really.
This is because Indigenous people also take infant mortality into account when calculating life expectancy, reducing overall life expectancy.
Take, for example, the imperial concubine of Emperor Qianlong of the Qing Dynasty. According to historical records, Emperor Qianlong had a total of 17 sons, but 7 of them died before they reached adulthood.
Leaving aside the fact that these sons may have been killed by their wives, according to these early death figures, the mortality rate of the emperor's sons was very high, not to mention people.
You see, the royal family has all the resources in the world. Look at how high the infant mortality rate was in ancient societies.
In ancient times, children died early for a variety of reasons: some were poor and malnourished, some were terminally ill, and some could be natural accidents in a famine yearIn the backward sanitary conditions of ancient times, wind chill could also take the life of children.
Thus, if these premature deaths are taken into account, the life expectancy of indigenous people is of course much shorter, giving the illusion that the average life expectancy does not exceed 30 years.
In addition, there were no complete age statistics in ancient times, so it was difficult to accurately determine the average age.
Nowadays, people mostly judge the lifespan of ancient people based on ancient historical sources or epitaphs. However, historical data is only approximate and has certain limitations.
Natural and man-made disasters, significant losses.
It is true that the life expectancy of indigenous people is relatively low compared to modern people, because they often do not survive natural and man-made disasters!
Let's start with natural disasters. According to the history of the Ming Dynasty, the Ming Dynasty lasted 276 years and experienced a total of 156 times**, the most serious of which was Guanzhong during the Jiajing period of the Ming Dynasty. Half of the Ming Dynasty was not destroyed, and the aftershocks even affected the border of Guangdong.
The ensuing unrest lasted five years. According to historical records, ** happened at night, and hundreds of thousands of Ming Dynasty subjects died in their sleep.
After a person dies, the corpses decompose, and a large number of corpses pile up, causing a plague epidemic. **After that, there was another plague in the Ming Dynasty. In addition, ** also led to the backflow of the Yellow River, resulting in a famine year.
Natural disasters have followed, claiming countless lives and further shortening life expectancy. In addition to natural disasters, there are also man-made disasters.
Since Qin Shi Huang established a unified feudal dynasty, many careerists also wanted to sit on the throne of the emperor, so wars were fought one after another, and dynasties were one after another.
War, of course, has a price, and war itself will reduce the average life expectancy of the people of this country to a very low level. Therefore, in the face of these natural and man-made disasters, it is difficult for indigenous people to live past the age of 30.
According to research, the average life expectancy was 18 years during the Xia and Shang periods, 20 years during the Qin and Zhou dynasties, 27 years during the Tang Dynasty, 30 years during the Song Dynasty, and 33 years during the Qing Dynasty.
In addition, it is rumored that the Qing Dynasty was the dynasty with the lowest average life expectancy among the feudal dynasties, is this credible?
It is rumored that the Qing Dynasty was short-lived.
It is known that after the Manchus established a unified feudal empire in the Central Plains, the Qing Dynasty was excluded from the Guan.
Although the Qing Dynasty was established in the many wars after the Ming Dynasty, the rulers still held imperial power. However, there are many dynasties in Chinese history that were not destroyed by war, but restored to power.
Of course, this is also wrong.
Although the Qing emperor was not a native of the Central Plains, he implemented benevolent governance after arriving in the Central Plains, otherwise it would not have been possible to rule the Central Plains for 296 years.
It is worth noting that the Yuan Dynasty before the Qing Dynasty was a regime established by the Mongols who came to the Central Plains from outside the Guan. However, the Mongol rulers did not take care of their subjects in the Central Plains, and in the following period continued to collect countless taxes, which made it difficult for the people to breathe. Therefore, they were overthrown after 98 years of rule. It can be seen that the rulers of the Qing Dynasty did not do badly.
In addition, the Qing rulers reduced or abolished some taxes and stopped conscription in order to stabilize the political situation.
According to historical records, the population of the Qing Dynasty in the early years was about 100 million. Later, the Qing Dynasty cultivated sweet potatoes and corn brought from the Americas in large quantities, and most people were able to eat enough because of their high survival rate and fast growth cycle. By the time of the Kangxi Emperor, the population had grown to 1500 million.
Of course, there are also scholars who believe that the Qing dynasty was the dynasty with the lowest life expectancy in ancient times, which is obviously also wrong, due to the mediocrity and incompetence of the Qing rulers, the invasion of Western colonizers, and the influx of opium in the last years of the Qing Dynasty.
During this period, the average life expectancy of the Chinese was shortened by Western shelling, but this was not enough to make the Qing dynasty the shortest-lived feudal dynasty.