The idea of radical life extension has been around for millennia, it has been scientifically plausible for decades if not centuries, but it has always been a marginal concern. There was never a society which organized to make the cure of ageing a major priority.
Many premodern societies actually spent a lot of time and effort on pursuing anti-aging technology. Perhaps not to the extent of organizing their whole society around it but their efforts were not trivial in scale. In medieval and early modern Europe, it was a primary goal of alchemy alongside transmuting base metals into gold. For Christians, the Bible already hinted at the possibility of radical life extension (biblical figures such as Methuselah were said to have lived for hundreds of years) and prominent intellectuals like Roger Bacon believed that human lifespans had been artificially shortened. Searching for a means of reversing this “corruption” to extend human lifespans was a mainstream, even cliche intellectual pursuit for centuries. It only became fringe with the rise of modernity.
Many premodern societies actually spent a lot of time and effort on pursuing anti-aging technology. Perhaps not to the extent of organizing their whole society around it but their efforts were not trivial in scale. In medieval and early modern Europe, it was a primary goal of alchemy alongside transmuting base metals into gold. For Christians, the Bible already hinted at the possibility of radical life extension (biblical figures such as Methuselah were said to have lived for hundreds of years) and prominent intellectuals like Roger Bacon believed that human lifespans had been artificially shortened. Searching for a means of reversing this “corruption” to extend human lifespans was a mainstream, even cliche intellectual pursuit for centuries. It only became fringe with the rise of modernity.