I think life would have been pretty tough all round, if you go back beyond modern times. Even just 100 years ago, there wasn't the medication and vaccinations we've got now. My mother lost her four year old brother in the 1919 Spanish Flu epidemic (she got it herself, but survived), and some years later lost her 16 year old sister to meningitis. These days they probably both would have survived if they'd been vaccinated beforehand.
It took a long time for Britain to become the relatively genteel place it is now. It went from local warlords who were usually fighting each other to a Roman enclave kept in order by brutal means, followed by the Jutes, Angels and Saxons.
Then the Vikings came along with their battle axes and broad swords, followed a few hundred years later by William and the Normans. A bloke I knew in Toastmasters used to blame an unknown Viking ancestor, whose genes set loose by fair means or foul apparently set the scene for the Toastmaster's eczema centuries down the track, but I digress.
There was the First Baron's War, the Scottish Wars, the Wars of the Roses, and the Glorious Invasion of 1688.
Not to mention the Black Death, and the religious violence of the Reformation years.
Apart from the usual run of famines, disease and no effective treatment, high rates of infant and maternal mortality, natural disasters from time to time, cold winters with only wood or peat to keep them warm, no social security, very few hospitals, and rough justice.
If there's some sort of eternal plan God's working towards, it's not going to be found on this earth. We might think we're immune to the troubles our ancestors went through, but I think we're just being given a breather before the next round starts.
