What does general age show about a civilization?

Question

If there are no elderly people in a civilization, what does this show about the civilization?

Answer 1

you can make a connection with these facts:

primitive societies had (or have, there still are some) a very short life expectancy. at 30 they were already old. during the middle ages, the same phenomenon happened. why? because health was not a priority, and neither was hygiene. the cities were crammed, dirty, had no sewers, no fresh water and so on. diseases could spread unbelievably fast under the circumstances (see the plague, as the radical example). there were no effective medical remedies for diseases, on the contrary sometimes the alleged remedy actually killed the patient.

so, no elderly people means that particular civilization has not come up with solutions to such problems as described before. this is to explain the big picture.

in sociology, life expectancy is determined by such factors as the development of the healthcare system, income levels, poverty levels, social aid development and other such systems. some rather fine differences in life exp. between countries are explained by means of the differences in these factors.

the shortest possible explanation: the more developed a country,the older its people.

edit - you might want to research this further for more accurate details.

Answer 2

That they eat their elders.