Notes

This chart shows the likelihood of dying at a particular age; the data is made up, but reflects the general shape of the mortality rates for pre-modern people. There was a high death rate for young children and an elevated death rate around the age of twenty reflecting death in child-birth or war. At birth, the life expectancy would be 24. This leads people to jump to the conclusion that in pre-modern times old people were freakishly rare. In fact, much of the gain in life expectancy since pre-modern times has been due to the reduction of infant mortality, and diseases of youth. In this chart, a person who lives to 20 has a 50% chance of surviving to 41, and at 40 has a 50% chance of surviving to 57. If you're designing a society with a relatively low life expectancy, you can have a lot of mature people, as long as you remember that these characters have likely lost children at a young age.

This is related to another apparently paradoxical situation...

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