This preponderance of young people leads to social differences in every community and field of activity. The average man or woman in the medieval street has seventeen years’ less experience to draw on in every aspect of his or her lives. He or she has many fewer elders to ask for advice. When you consider that societies with youthful populations are more violent, tend to be supportive of slavery, and see nothing wrong in holding brutal combats in which men fight to the death for the sake of entertainment, you realize that society has changed fundamentally.
