For a woman to live to 50, she would have had to survive ten or more childbirths before the days of antiseptics. A bad harvest could have meant starvation, for a peasant. Various illnesses that can be cured now killed many people, and hygiene was abysmal. A housewife's life was very hard, and she probably worked in the fields too. It was quite an achievement in those times to survive to see one's grandchildren.

The wealthy, of course, had a better chance.Earlier, before civilization among the hunter-gatherers, there would be even less chance of surviving much beyond thirty. People would be very fit, or dead.

Few women would survive to menopause in early times. It's just the end of reproductive life. Today we have years of freedom afterwards, not so for our ancestors. And the idea of sex after menopause still shocks some people!

Evolving humans were designed to last for about as long as they could be top athletes today. After that a predator would get them, or they couldn't hunt and starved.

Even in Roman times it would be a lucky person who lived to see their grandchildren. Few could reach the Bible's threescore years and ten.

Nestor would probably have been around 70 - 80. An astonishing age for those times. But didn't Ramses II live to be 90?

And in the old days, the "wisdom of age" would simply have been the maturity of a thirty year old in a world of mainly teenagers.

Philosophical musings for a wet day!

In case you ever wondered, Ananias, Azarias and Misael are Shadrach, Mishach and Abednego under different names. I googled them.