How Old Is the Average Country?

Posted by timothy on Thursday July 4, 2013 @09:37AM from the we-just-eat-a-lot-of-yogurt dept.

Daniel_Stuckey writes with a snippet from his piece at Vice: "I did some calculations in Excel, using independence dates provided on About.com, and found the average age of a country is about 158.78 years old. Now, before anyone throws a tizzy about what makes a country a country, about nations, tribes, civilizations, ethnic categories, or about my makeshift methodology, keep in mind, I simply assessed 195 countries based on their political sovereignty. That is the occasion we're celebrating today, right?"

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Re:Egypt in 1922? by Alef · 2013-07-04 10:14 · Score: 5, Interesting

...or the fact that France was occupied by the Germans during WWII. The three year occupation of Sweden by the Danes during a war in the 1520:s, on the other hand, is apparently enough to cut Sweden's age down to 490 years.
Something which by the way wouldn't bother a Swede if it wasn't for the fact that the blasted Danes are listed at 1048 years. ;-)