Thanx for the update.More anwsers to the mystery.”He only lived a short time after the arrow impact.”Add the gash to the hand + headwound...probably spent his last few hours of life in a great deal of pain.Recall from anthropology class the average lifespan back then(according to instructor and textbook)was mid-twenties to early thirties.Apparently this man had lived a(comparatively)long life.
My pleasure. The human lifespan hasn’t changed much since the Middle Ages (at least one traveller lived to see an entire calendar century, i.e., the 14th century, but I’m not sure of the name or which century; one of my own ancestors lived from the 1650s to the 1750s), but life expectancy has improved somewhat since, say, the time of Henry VIIIth (I guess we could insert here some smart remarks about how Henry had something to do with shorter life expectancy...); it’s now around 80 in the industrialized world, whereas in Tudor England it was probably mid-50s.
Farther back, we see Augustus (first “real” Roman emperor) ruling for 40-41 years; he lived to be 77, while many members of his family, including most of his descendants, uh, didn’t make it that far. His successor Tiberius lived to be 78, and the fourth emperor Claudius lived into his 60s despite having been in terrible health throughout his life. Like now, better-off families enjoyed greater longevity, all other things being equal.
It would be nice to have more remains (of any kind, bones, anything) from Neolithic Europe (for that matter, Neolithic anywhere); probably life expectancy was around 40 or 45, but infant mortality must have been at least along the lines of fairly recent history in Europe and pretty much everywhere before Pasteur et al.