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OLD AGE IN THE MIDDLE AGES AND NOW (Starosc w sredniowieczu i dzis)

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Kwiatkowska B., Boryslawski K.

Kwartalnik Historii Kultury Materialnej

2010

vol. 58

issue 1

5-15

The issue of old age and aging has interested not only scientists from time immemorial. Over 300 theories have been proposed so far to explain the mechanism of ageing, none of them universal, but each capturing part of the truth about the phenomenon. As any biological process, ageing results from the interaction of two factors: the genotype, which determines the path, and the environment, which modifies gene expression and thus induces various ways of following the path. The threshold of old age is undoubtedly conventional. In ontogenesis both the whole organism and its particular organs go through three phases: development, balance and involution, or aging. Different organs go through the phases in different times, and differently in each individual, hence there is significant variability in reaching old age. The pace of aging is increased by ecological factors, such as lack of hygiene, illnesses, injuries, poor diet, lack of exercise, overworking and stress. Many of those factors are correlated with the low degree of urbanization, the low level of education, the individual's profession and low income. Such culture-bound factors, in turn, are usually connected with the social status, the social class and the country of residence, which jointly determine the socio-economical status. All that regards contemporary societies but also historical populations, including those that lived in the Middle Ages. Social stratification may have caused vast individual differences the process of aging, which was dependent on both natural and social circumstances determining human lifespan. The interrelation between the improvement of socio-economical conditions and the lengthening of the lifespan has been noticed by many authors. Research on Polish skeleton populations from the 10th to the 18th c. indicates that the average lifespan was gradually increasing and so was the number of people who reached old age, especially in the richer strata of society and in urban communities. To characterize and illustrate the phenomenon the authors compare the results of research on several Polish mediaeval skeleton populations, urban and rural, dated between the 12th and the 17th c.

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1 Kwartalnik Historii Kultury Materialnej

1 Boryslawski K.

1 Kwiatkowska B.

1 2010

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OLD AGE IN THE MIDDLE AGES AND NOW (Starosc w sredniowieczu i dzis)