Average life expectancy is a poor metric.

It includes people who die at birth, childhood illnesses, etc.

Once you were past 20, your remaining life time jumped significantly

Thomas Jefferson lived to 83. John Adams 90. Benjamin Franklin 84. James Madison 85.

Plenty of people lived long lives back then.

Yeah it's bizarre to think about, but a lot of royalty lived until their 70s and 80s, even in ancient times.

Turns out just having steady access to food, living a low stress lifestyle, and not having to wade through literal shit on the streets was all it took for some lucky ancient humans to have the same lifespans as modern humans.

Also, food in general wasn't poisonous. And if those royals actually lived even a modestly healthy life (not drinking too much, not using lead based makeup, or their doctors poisoning them with mercury etc), then they could easily live a lot longer.

Plenty of wealthy people lived long lives back then. Most people didn't. That's how averages work.

But fair enough.

The common man wasn't running for president back then. The first person approaching anything of the sort had the most contested election ever up until that point, and also almost kicked off the civil war 40 years early. That age limit was not written with a yeoman farmer president in mind.

True, but the landed gentry (who were the only people that might end up as President) lived to be considerably older.

Perhaps but people weren't getting dementia at 40 back then. It's not really relevant what the average life expectancy was

> people weren't getting dementia at 40 back then

Citation needed. That claim seems clouded by today's standard of living.

Before there was clean drinking water, alcohol was much more widely consumed. Were people demented, drunk, or experiencing alcoholic dementia?

Before OSHA, jobs could cause similar symptoms. "Mad as a hatter" referred to hat-makers commonly getting mercury poisoning, as one example of job-induced dementia.

Before the FDA, we have examples from food and medicine.

Etc.

>Perhaps but people weren't getting dementia at 40 back then.

Exactly. There's no point in putting an upper age limit on a position when no one lives long enough for age to even be a factor.

The average life expectancy was much lower, but there were plenty of gray-beards around.

Socrates made it to 71.

Except many of the actual people with their names on that document lived to be older than Biden is now.