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How Old Is the Average Country?
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?"
Excel and About.com
The G
Given that this is America's 237'th birthday, which make us 78.22 years older than the average (49.26%), should they change the name of the magazine from "The New Republic" to "The Somewhat-Older-Than-Average Republic"?
A cursory look at the Wikipedia article indicates that Egypt has spent time under the rule of a few empires here and there over history, but it and Greece have both been their own societies for several thousand years in spite of this. I figure that both countries are closer to the age of China than they're listed...but that's just me.
"England" may be 1000+ years old but 1) it's far from certain that it's the same "England" as today, and 2) it was a subsidiary of Normandy, Inc. for quite some time, pardon my Middle French.
Ezekiel 23:20
A count, I presume? (Although nowadays, from what people are telling me, it more like someone called a "countant" rules the land, or how this horrible notion is spelled.)
Ezekiel 23:20
I'm happy here in the UK, enjoying the thousands of years of history.
Speaking of history, you obviously didn't pay attention in class. The UK is only 306 years old (Acts of Union in 1706 and 1707). And you folks complain about Americans not understanding the difference between England/Scotland/Wales, Britain and the UK.
P.S. If you see the queen, say happy Independence Day for me.
Here's what you don't get:
He's not talking about existence as a culture, he's talking about being recognized as an independent nation-state.
Germany, for example, did not actually exist as a nation-state prior to the Prussian defeat of the Hapsburgs in the Austro-Prussian War, and the defeat of Napoleon III in the Franco-Prussian War a few years after that. What existed were hundreds of feuding statelets that all spoke German.
The Greeks existed as a culture, but the last independent Greek state had been conquered by the Ottomans in the 15th century.
The Italians were in exactly the same boat as the Germans. There were the Kings of the Two Sicilies and Piedmont, the Pope, a Grand Duke of Tuscony, Hapsburgs in Venice, and several smaller states that were absorbed by Piedmont prior to unification.
Poland was divided between three Empires at the end of the 18th. Officially the Czar was Polish Head of State, but he didn't give the Poles any autonomy, and ran his bit of Poland as if it was merely another Oblast of Russia, so the Poles don;t count that as independence.
Yeah. If a country merged with some other country, or was temporaly invaded by another, then for these guys its as if this country did not exist beforehand. I mean just look at the Iberian Peninsula or France. The borders have been mostly stable for yonks and look at the claimed age. Just pathetic.
So dear US readers... Please explain to me why the UK is as old as the Act of Union while you did not measure the age of your country starting with the annexation of Texas or some other quaint date like that.
"Oh we've got both kinds, we've got country and western."
As sensible an answer as the OP
Patent litigation: A doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction... in which everyone seems willing to push the button
Please explain to me why the UK is as old as the Act of Union while you did not measure the age of your country starting with the annexation of Texas or some other quaint date like that.
Mentioning Texas is hitting below the belt.
On the other hand, this site lists Austria as 1037 years old, Hungary as 1012. Please remind me, what country did that guy named Franz Joseph rule?
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
A thousand years ago England was French so ooh la la rosbif.
Actually it was Norman, which isn't quite the same thing. The Normans spoke French but were Norsemen who'd settled in Normandy only a century or two before the Norman Conquest. Even the name "Norman" derives from "Norse".
This is (almost definitely) a completely incorrect method to calculate "the average age of a country". The statistic provided here is the average age of (a sample of) countries existing at present, not the average age of countries that have existed. The difference might seem pedantic, but it has an immense effect on the computed statistic, because it excludes countries which existed briefly, no matter how recently. Some geographical locations have been through many, many sovereignties during the 158.78 years quoted. (This could be called left-censored data, because everything is excluded if it is not current at the moment of observation).
A better statistic might be the mean duration of countries that have existed over the last few centuries, which will slightly underestimate due to countries that will continue to exist (which could be called right-censored data).
A further improvement would be to take the median, because country life-spans are likely to have a strongly skewed distribution, perhaps approximating Pareto distribution, with a long, thin tail of a small number of very long lifespans.
The definition of a when a country was created is also hard to pin down.
Looking at what should be a simple answer is the United States. The easy answer is to count from July 4th 1776 when the political entity 'The United States of America' declared itself independent. But there are any number of problems with this approach:
1. The majority of the land that currently comprises USA was not part of it in 1776.
2. The revolutionaries originally considered themselves 13 independent entities, loosely related by a group of common interests.
3. The original government (The Articles of Confederation) was superseded by The Constitution.
4. You could make some noise about the US Civil War, but the North never acknowledged the South's independence, and the rest of the objections would probably be covered by #1
5. OTOH, if you find #3 compelling, you could possibly argue that amendments to the constitution are a new governing document. The problem there is that it's hard to argue that, say, the passage of the 27th amendment represents a fundamental change in the governance of the US, but you could definitely make a case for the Reconstruction Era amendments (13-15) being a fundamental change. So if you accept this, then you need to have some kind of test to determine whether or not an amendment represent enough change to be considered a new government.
And those are just some of the issues at hand for ONE country on the list. Multiply that by 200, and you've got a real mess.
William of Ockham had no beard. The most likely explanation is that it was chewed off by squirrels every morning.
You consider it the same country even after the Normans trounced you, completely changed the government and aristocracy, and even started to change the language almost beyond recognition. Yeah, right.
Technically, yes, historians do consider it to be the same country. William, Duke of Normandy was persuing a claim to the English throne as a relative of Edward the Confessor.
Aren't they forgetting the Anschluss in 1938? Do we the independence date for France to 1944, when the Germans were kicked out and they got control of their coutnry back? When do you set a date for Italy? Unification in 1870, or with the establishment of the Roman Empire 2000 years earlier? How old is China? Was it established in 1949, 1919, 216BC or 2100 BC? How old is Egypt? 3 days, two years or 5000 years?
I'm happy here in the UK, enjoying the thousands of years of history.
Speaking of history, you obviously didn't pay attention in class. The UK is only 306 years old (Acts of Union in 1706 and 1707). And you folks complain about Americans not understanding the difference between England/Scotland/Wales, Britain and the UK.
You also didn't pay attention in that class. The UK is not a country rather it's an amalgamation of individual countries. The name is not the "United Kingdom" it's the "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland". It consists of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland whom each have their own parliaments. It's like saying the US is only as old as NATO because it's a member of NATO.
I would have pointed this out nicely, but you acted like such an pompous arse (yes, propper spelling, there is an R in there, an ass is a donkey) I couldn't help myself.
P.S. The Queen, her majesty Elizabeth the second, being a polite, proper and fair person would wish you and you nation well on this day of celebration, despite your ignorance and disrespectful attitude.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.