26. The Middle Ages Were Pretty Rough
The Middle Ages were not a great time to be alive. Especially for commoners in feudal Europe. There, society was divided into de facto castes or layers, with peasants, serfs, and other manual workers – most of the population – at the bottom. They were ruthlessly exploited by those in higher layers up the social structure, who benefitted from the commoners’ labor, in exchange for “protection”. There was a twist, though: the protection offered was often from fellow members of the upper castes.
Although higher-ups were not as screwed as the commoners at the bottom, life was no bed roses for them. Violence was rife across all classes. Even discounting deaths in wars or bullying knights rampaging against peasants, the homicide rate was 50 times greater in medieval Europe than in the modern EU. Put another way, Europeans were 50 times more murderous back then than they are today. However, as seen below, it was not violence, but diseases, that did the most to keep life expectancy low. High mortality rates, especially in childhood, kept the average life expectancy around 35 years.