Note: This article is based on information from my book, Yuga Shift, and was first published on Mysterious Universe (https://mysteriousuniverse.org/)
The legends and folklore of many cultures assert that humans lived much longer in the bygone ages – for some hundreds of years, in fact, – which seems difficult for most people to accept in the modern day, considering that the average lifespan today is around 80 years or so. As per the Yuga Cycle doctrine of ancient India, the average lifespan gradually declines as we move from the higher Yugas to the lower Yugas. The Laws of Manu declares that,
“(Men are) free from disease, accomplish all their aims, and live four hundred years in the Krita age (Satya Yuga), but in the Treta and (in each of) the succeeding (ages) their life is lessened by one quarter.”[1]This passage tells us that, humans lived 400 years in the Satya Yuga (Golden Age), 300 years in the Treta Yuga (Silver Age), 200 years in the Dwapara Yuga (Bronze Age) and 100 years in the Kali Yuga (Iron Age). The Satya Yuga or Golden Age corresponds to the antediluvian period, for, as per the Indian legends, the Great Flood, in which the righteous King Manu was the sole survivor, had occurred at the end of the Satya Yuga or Golden Age.
Thus, as per the Yuga Cycle doctrine, average human lifespan was 400 years in the antediluvian period, while in the postdiluvian period it kept on decreasing gradually until it reached 100 years in the Kali Yuga, which is the current age of greed and lies, strife and discord, when human consciousness touches rock bottom.
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| Figure 1: The King Manu, along with the Seven Sages (Saptarishis) on a boat pulled by a great fish (Matsya), during the Deluge at the end of the Satya Yuga. Source: Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain |
The information in the Laws of Manu is in alignment with the extremely long lifespans of the Biblical patriarchs in the Genesis. The term “patriarchs” is broadly used to refer to the twenty male ancestor-figures between Adam and Abraham. The first ten of them are known as the “antediluvian patriarchs”, who lived before the Flood.
The Genesis[2] states that the average lifespan of the antediluvian patriarchs was around 900 years. The list includes Adam (930), Seth (912), Enos (905), Cainan (910), Mahalaleel (895), Jared (962), Enoch (365), Methuselah (969), Lamech (787) and Noah (950). Noah was the last patriarch of the antediluvian period who lived for 600 years before the Flood and 350 years after the Flood - adding up to a lifespan of 950 years.
In the post-Flood period, the lifespans of the patriarchs kept on decreasing till the time of Abraham, and even after him. From Noah to Abraham there are ten postdiluvian patriarchs. They are: Shem (600), Arphaxad (438), Salah (433), Eber (464), Peleg (239), Reu (239), Serug (230), Nahor (148), Terah (205), and Abraham (175). Abraham was followed by Ishmael (137), Isaac (180), Jacob (147) and Joseph (110), all of whom lived in the first half of the 2nd millennium BCE i.e. between 2000 – 1500 BCE.
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| Figure 2: The Flood of Noah, at the end of the Golden Age. Source:peakpx, Free Image |
As per the Yuga Cycle framework that I have presented in my book, Yuga Shift, the Golden Age or the antediluvian period ended in 10,876 BCE, with the onset of the 1200-year Younger Dryas period, which the Greeks referred to as Kataklysmos, meaning “Deluge”, or the “great winter” of the Great Year. It was during the period of Kataklysmos or Younger Dryas that the earth was impacted by a long sequence of 26 comets, as described in the Sanskrit text Adbhuta-sagara. The impact events precipitated a period of freezing cold temperatures, while the second comet in this sequence caused the Great Flood recounted in the flood legends of many cultures.
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| Figure 3: The 25,800-year Yuga Cycle. Credit: Bibhu Dev Misra |
Thus, what the data in the Laws of Manu or the Genesis tells us is that humans lived hundreds of years prior to 10,876 BE. As per the Laws of Manu, average human lifespan during this time was 400 years, while the Genesis states that the eminent spiritual figures of this time lived for 900 years or so. But after 9676 BCE, i.e. in the Holocene or post-glacial period, average lifespan kept on declining until it reached around 110 years in c.1500 BCE.
Since we have an ingrained tendency to look at the past in the context of our present circumstances, the dominant tendency in scientific and academic circles is to disregard such data as being mythical. But that is not a rational way of looking at the past.
Human lifespan is governed by a number of different factors such as genetics, environmental conditions, prevalence of diseases, healthcare, diet, lifestyle, stress, exercise, exposure to harmful radiation etc. None of these factors have remained constant over time. Human genes have been constantly mutating, the ecosphere has degraded significantly, diseases have multiplied, and people are leading increasingly sedentary and stressful lives and consuming unhealthy food. The amount of harmful radiation that we are exposed to on a daily basis, which responsible for many kinds of diseases and accelerates our aging – such as cosmic rays, UV rays and the background radiation from the soil and rocks of the earth – may not have remained constant over time either, and they may be fluctuating in a manner that we don’t fully understand.
The problem is compounded by the fact that human skeletal remains – which have been found in large numbers for the Holocene period - cannot be analyzed to find out how long a person had lived. The only way to validate these claims is by looking at extant historical records, of which, unfortunately, we don’t have a great deal.
The Chinese Shujing (meaning “Classic of History”) is a compilation of records related to events in China’s history, covering a total of 88 generations. As per these records, the first 7 emperors, who ruled from 2953 BCE – 2255 BCE had an average reign length of 95 years.[3] If we assume that the average age of the emperors at the time of ascension to the throne was 25 years, the average lifespan during this period was around 120 years.
By around 100 BCE, however, the average reign lengths of the rulers of the Xiong Nu Dynasty (obtained from other historical sources) had come down to only 12 years, which works out to an average lifespan of around 37 years, assuming ascension to the throne at the age of 25. Thus, the average lifespan of Chinese emperors had declined from roughly 120 years at around 2900 BCE to only 37 years at around 100 BCE.
One might imagine that the ancient Egyptians must have left behind tons of inscriptional evidence about the lifespans of their pharaohs, which can help us to figure out if their lifespan was on a decline in the Bronze Age. As it turns out, the Egyptian funerary art and stelae contain hardly any information about the dates of birth or death, or the ages at which the pharaohs had died. Only a few documents indicate that 110 years was the ideal Egyptian lifespan,[4] which is very close to the 100 years average lifespan in the Kali Yuga, mentioned in the Laws of Manu.
Certain pharaohs of the Old Kingdom approached this ideal Egyptian lifespan. For instance, King Pepi II Neferkare of the 6th Dynasty (Old Kingdom, c. 2250 BCE) lived for a 100 years, and ruled for 96 of them. One of his provincial governors, Pepiankh, lived till the age of 100, for, on his tomb, the following text was inscribed: “I spent a lifetime until a hundred years among the living, in possession of my faculties.”[5]
It appears that, during the Old Kingdom (c. 2686 BCE – 2181 BCE) at least, some people reached close to the ideal Egyptian lifespan of 110 years.
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| Figure 5: Pepi II seated on the lap of his mother Queen Ankhnes-meryre II, c 2288 ro 2224 BCE, Brroklyn Museum, Public Domain |
We must remember that there is a difference between lifespan and life expectancy. Lifespan tells us how long a person may expect to live once he gets past the fragile childhood years. Life expectancy, on the other hand, is computed after accounting for child mortality rates. Most Bronze Age societies had poor survival rates among children, which lowered their life expectancy. Historians generally say that people in ancient Egypt had a life expectancy of around 35 years. This does not mean that Egyptians started falling down and dying in their thirties. It means that infant mortality rates were very high. The Egyptian ideal lifespan of 110 years tells us how long an Egyptian could have expected to live, once he got past the childhood years.
By the Ptolemaic period (c.305 – 30 BCE), when Egypt was under Roman rule, average lifespan had fallen far below the ideal age of 110 years. During the Ptolemaic period, dates of birth and death were recorded, which show that the average age at death was 54 years for men and 58 for women.[6] This is comparable to the lifespan of the Romans at this time.
Anthropologist John Hawks of the University of Wisconsin Madison, wrote in a web post that, “A rough estimate (gleaned from tomb inscriptions that give ages) is that half of Romans who lived to age 15 – and therefore escaped child mortality – were dead before age 45.”[7] This implies that the median lifespan of the Romans was around 45 years. The average lifespan would have been close to this value.
Clearly, average lifespan was declining throughout the Bronze Age, which corresponds to the descending Kali Yuga. It may have hit rock bottom during the Greek Dark Ages (c. 1200 – 800 BCE), and then began to slowly increase. However, at the moment, we don't know exactly when the reversal took place.
Over the past 2000-odd years of the historical era or the ascending Kali Yuga, average lifespan has been steadily rising. Historical records show that, in the UK, from 1200 CE to 1745, 21-year-olds would reach an average age of anywhere between 62-70 years, which can be taken as a measure of the lifespan. Today, the infant mortality rates have reduced so drastically that the life expectancy for a newborn in the UK is 81 years, while the life expectancy for a 20-year-old (i.e. the lifespan) is 82 years.[8]
Thus, the data from the UK indicates that average lifespan has increased steadily from 62 years to 82 years over a period of nearly 800 years from 1200 CE till now. This parallels the increase in physical stature of humans during the ascending Kali Yuga (or Iron Age), which began in c.676 BCE, as I have described in the previous article, and in my book, Yuga Shift.
The increase in average lifespan and physical stature during the ascending Kali Yuga is only to be expected, since the ascending Kali Yuga is a time of increasing material prosperity, and if you are bigger and stronger and live longer you can work more and accumulate more wealth. However, our cranial capacity has continued to decline throughout the descending Yuga Cycle starting from c.9676 BCE, which explains the ongoing degradation in our consciousness in the Kali Yuga.
Thus, the historical and archaeological data available to us indicate that human lifespan was declining during the Bronze Age, staged a reversal sometime after the Greek Dark Ages (c.1200 BCE – 800 BCE) had ended, and started increasing during the Iron Age. Let me summarize some of the key pieces of information that we just discussed:
- The Chinese Shujing (“Classic of History”) shows that average lifespan of Chinese rulers had declined from 120 years between 2953 BCE – 2255 BCE, to around 37 years at 100 BCE.
- The Egyptian records show that during the Old Kingdom (c. 2686 BCE – 2181 BCE), some people reached close to the ideal Egyptian lifespan of 110 years. However, by the Ptolemaic period (c.305 – 30 BCE), the average lifespan of Egyptian men had come down to 54 years. The average lifespan of Romans during the same period was around 45 years.
- The data from the UK shows that average lifespan has increased steadily from 62 years to 82 years, over a period of nearly 800 years, from 1200 CE till now.
Since lifespan had been declining during the Bronze Age, it is possible that the people living in the higher Yugas had longer lifespans. And, since we are currently living in a time of increasing lifespan, at some point in the future human lifespan could become much longer.
Even though the average lifespan today is around 80 years, an unusually high percentage of seniors on Japan’s Okinawa Island live more than 100 years, which is the average for the Kali Yuga. People there suffer from low levels of heart disease, cancer and dementia, and remain very active well past 100. The secret: they have not been unduly influenced by the unhealthy beliefs and practices of the modern, money-obsessed civilization.
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| Figure 5: A Japanese centenarian woman from the island of Okinawa, radiating warmth and wisdom. Source: Adobe Stock. |
As this BBC article[9] explains, people in Okinawa are motivated on a daily basis by a sense of purpose, or ikigai, which gives meaning to their lives. They have social support groups called moai that start in their childhood and extend into their 100s. They regularly meet with their moai to gossip, play, share advice and provide emotional or financial support. Okinawans try to stay happy and fun-loving, and regularly exert their bodies in low-intensity exercise such as cooking and gardening, which also allows them to reconnect with nature. Their diet is rich in vegetables and antioxidant foods, and they only eat until they feel 80% full, which aligns with the ancient wisdom advising against overeating.
In other words, it is by living in tune with ancient wisdom and the traditional way of life that the people of Okinawa manage to remain healthy, happy, and active well past 100 years. It goes without saying that the average lifespan today for all of us would have touched the Kali Yuga average of 100 years, had it not been for the fact that our lives are immersed in the toxic fruits of modernity.
The historical information available to us today suggests that human lifespan is fluctuating in a sinusoidal manner in tandem with the 25,800-year Yuga Cycle, and, it is very likely that the information in the Laws of Manu and the Genesis are based on actual historical data.
References
[1] The Laws of Manu, tr. G. Buhler, Chapter I, verse 83, from sacred-texts
[2] Genesis 5-11.
[3] Walter Cruttenden, Lost Star of Myth and Time, St. Lynn’s Press, 2006, p. 263.
[4] Marie Parsons, “Old Age in Ancient Egypt”, http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/oldage.htm
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid.
[7] John Hawks, “Human lifespans have not been constant for the last 2000 years”, http://johnhawks.net/weblog/reviews/life_history/age-specific-mortality-lifespan-bad-science-2009.html
[8] “Life Expectancy”, Our World In Data, https://ourworldindata.org/life-expectancy
[9] Keith Bedford & Shiho Fukada, "Okinawa: The island of almost-eternal youth" BBC 28 November 2020, https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20201126-why-so-many-japanese-live-to-100
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