More Words, Deeper Hole

Not really. The top 50% of a distribution is not any more exceptional than the bottom 50%. If average lifespan was 70 years, fully half of newborns could expect to live longer.

Second, that's life expectancy at birth, which includes infant and child mortality dragging the number down. (in the US in 1960 this wasn't a large effect for the US population as a whole, but it's worth mentioning, especially when considering whether long-lived people were exceptional before the 20th century, or in less-developed countries.)