Do some actual research. People regularly got heart attacks throughout recorded history even if dying earlier from other things was common.

The history of coronary syndromes and sudden death, and apoplexy or stroke, goes back to antiquity and has been thoroughly treated by historians and experts from many disciplines. By the beginning of the twentieth century, a heart attack with myocardial infarction was well known to cause death, but comprehension of it as a syndrome that one might survive was much delayed.

…

Part of the historical delay and confusion in recognizing heart attacks apparently lay in the Greek word, kardialgia, which could mean either abdominal or precordial pain. Biblical and Talmudic references abound, however, about chest pain of a life-threatening nature, and Hippocrates mentions sudden death related to an episode of chest distress (Leibowitz 1970).

Leibowitz points out that the great Italian anatomist Morgagni failed to tie it all together, but nevertheless clearly described in 1761 the late pathology found in survivors of myocardial infarction in his well-known dictum: “The force of the heart decreases so much more in proportion as the greater number of its parts becomes tendonous instead of being fleshy” (ibid., 4). http://www.epi.umn.edu/cvdepi/essay/history-of-heart-attack-...

People have been dying for 1000s of years for things we are still dying from now. But heart disease was not a leading cause of death.

It was a leading cause of death for the same age range it’s a leading cause of death now.

Saying it was or wasn’t a leading cause of death overall is quite arbitrary, though it was at a minimum a common cause of death back then.

This is a ridiculous point. If you halved today's average lifespan, you'd see a dramatic reduction in cancer.

> If you halved today's average lifespan, you'd see a dramatic reduction in cancer.

Not sure where the comment I’m replying to, and onwards, ever mentions cancer.

Lol