That is one of the side effects of the medical advances allowing us to live many years longer
I got some reservations about that often heard pseudo factoid. It's very hard to examins the past back further than the start of the 17th century. Before that time is is pretty cloudy. Did you know there was a major rewrite of history undertaken mid 16th to mid 18th centuries. Many volumes were hunted down and destroyed. History was reconfigured to assist and obscure a certain classes passage in the world.
I think history is very different from what we are commonly taught to assume. This planet is littered with the remains of powerful ancestors. Who knows what the natural average lifespan could be.