Besides the high childhood mortality rate — which, according to various sources, averaged between 25–50% — there were also several other lethal killers that were far more prevalent during those days.
Humans were more or less designed to live for about as long then as they are now — an average of eighty years, with a few outliers making it to as old as 120 — but to get to that stage in life, one needed to not only survive their infancy, but also all the other major obstacles standing between their younger and older selves.
Some of these include:
WARFARE
Wars were much more common in those days than they are today, and also much more violent in terms of per capita deaths.
In most modern warfares fought in the West it is typical for about 1–5% to die in an armed conflict — such as the 3% mortality rate in the Korean War (1950–1953), the 2% mortality rate in the Vietnam War, and less than 1% for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — and as many as 10% during the two World Wars.
During Colonial and Napoleonic times approximately 10–15% of combantants would die in conflict.
When we get to the Medieval Ages numbers were closer to 30–50% for the simple reason that fighting was done at much closer range — giving the defeated side no chance of escape — and because diseases and other unsanitary conditions ensured that far more men would die from “natural” causes than in a skirmish.
DISEASES
Aside from battlefield illnesses, widespread plagues — such as the Plague of Justinian and the Black Death — could wipe out entire civilizations while leaving other “fortunate” populations with just half of their numbers from the previous decade.
Even other killers, such as scurvy and dysentery could whittle down a population and make those fortunate enough to have survived everything else that medieval reality had to throw at them live to only half their potential age.
MEDICAL ADVANCEMENTS
In more recent centuries human knowledge in the field of medicine has witnessed some drastic improvements that have made it both easier to detect and prevent potential medical hazards and symptoms before they progress, but also to treat it when it does happen.
Various types of injuries and diseases, such as war injuries, burns, extreme blood loss, or even cancer are far more treatable today than they were in the past, which has meant that those who would have died from a similar condition in medieval times are likely to recover in the present.
HOMICIDES
Murder rates were significantly higher in the past than today, with some estimates suggesting that around 10% of all deaths in medieval times were homicide-related — and as many as 15% during neolithic times.
Even if diseases and warfare did not kill you, a roaming serial killer, a disgruntled neighbour, or a whacky guy you picked a bar fight with could have ended you right there and then.
NATURAL DISASTERS
Tornadoes, volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunamis, and fires are still dangerous in modern times, but far less so than in the past, in large part because of better warning systems, improved structures, and also better medical care to treat the injured.
Aside from the natural disasters in question, other types of killers, such as city fires, were also quite dangerous due to the close proximity that old buildings — often made of wood — were to one another, which would then allow the conflagration to quickly engulf thousands of homes and wipe out entire families before most people would even understand what was happening.
CONCLUSION
At the end of the day human biology remains as it has been in terms of lifespan.
Nobody spontaoeusly dropped dead in their thirties or forties, but rather, were very likely to die from causes that humanity has spent millennia trying to reduce and overcome.
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