Re: Re: Quick morality question for heortling

From: donald_at_...
Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2005 02:11:41 GMT

In message <177dc5fd0502241628293f6459_at_...> John Machin writes:
>
>Donald Oddy:
>> This is why the population maintenance rate is something like
>> 2.3 surviving children per family which means a lot of births
>> in some families if we assume pre-20th century child mortality
>> rates.
>
>Can we assume this rate? Does the mundane and magical expertise of the
>appropriate cults only prevent the rate from being much worse than it
>was, pre-20th C.?

There was a heck of a large variation in mortality rates at different times in history. For example the rate early in the 19th Century in Britain was much worse than it had been for centuries previously. What I'm quite sure is that Glorantha doesn't get anywhere near the low rates of late 20th Century western societies where infant deaths are so rare as to be grounds for suspicion of crime.

Greg has said before that magic is necessary to achieve the crop yields in Glorantha that were achieved in the real world without so applying the same basis to infant mortality is not unreasonable.

-- 
Donald Oddy
http://www.grove.demon.co.uk/