Since childhood, we've been led to believe the commonality of 100. People turn 100, then they die. Can't understand where the dumb figure of 100 came from - is it our decimal number system?, or were we brought up on an overtly-simplified treatise on life (100 sounds way more exciting than, say, 72, or 99)?
Earlier, people were dying left and right of epidemics and a general backwardness of medical sciences, so 100 was surely an exaggeration. To remind, I've read about villages celebrating their sexagenarian population as rockstars. And the average life expectancy in India hasn't touched even 70 years yet.
The Mayans (of the Pre-Columbian flavor) used a base 18 system (which is also where our present 365-day calendar derives from: the Mayans had 20 days in a month, 18 months in a year - that totals to 360. The 5 remaining days were a margin period considered a phase of evil/danger. Thats how we originally had 365). What, then, would be the Mayan doctrinal life expectancy? - 20, 30, 40, 50 (which on our present base 10 system make for 36, 54, 72, 90 years, respectively)?
The Babylonians were using a Sexagesimal numeral system. That means somebody reaching double digits (10) by their count would be 60 years old. They couldn't even expect somebody to reach 20! What zeroed-down figure were they using? Poor kids, those Babylonians, growing up on either a real-world life expectancy figure of 10, or having to settle midway 10 and 20, whatever figure their parents chose).
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