> For the vast majority of human history, people lived relatively short lives, with United States life expectancy first exceeding 40 years old in the 1850s. That figure didn’t reach 50 until the 1900s, and these days it’s a little under 80.

This is a misunderstanding of life expectancy that I see very often in articles. The major contributor for low life expectancy was infant mortality, which due to the life expectancy being an average reduced the life expectancy by a lot. This doesn't mean however that people who lived past childhood were fated to die on average at 40 years old. And so while the risk of death during childhood was high, and risk of death for women during childbirth was high this doesn't necessarily mean that the survivors who reached adulthood had short lives.

It's a bit of a pet peeve of mine and often happens whenever a single number is used to describe something that's complex.