In premodern (read: agrarian) society, actual age was far less important than one’s capability. Your physical capacity (and gender) largely dictated your labor, your value, and your place in society, not the number of years you’d been on the earth. The development of modern society and the separation of certain classes of men and women from constant physical labor—along with the development of the standardized calendar, and the cult of the individual—made one’s precise age more important.
