what are the leading causes of death for the past 50,000ish years?

Disease.

If you believe one oft-quoted statistic, malaria may have killed as many as half of all the humans who have ever lived. I'm not sure I buy that - it sounds like one of those made-up-for-the-Internet "facts" (like the one about a duck's quack not echoing, or people swallowing spiders in their sleep) - but it IS true that malaria kills a whole heap of people every year, so it's definitely up there on the list of history's greatest killers of humans.

As long as we're in the disease category, we can't forget smallpox, which is all but extinct now but which used to wipe us out with frightening regularity. It killed 20-60% of all the people who contracted it and was responsible for 300 - 500 million deaths in the 20th century alone. Remember, it was virtually eradicated during the 20th century thanks to a focused vaccination effort, so who knows what the death toll would have been like if smallpox had made it to the end of the century.

Starvation has certainly taken its toll on the human population. Roughly 1 in 7 people alive today is facing malnourishment and/or starvation, and many will die from it. It's hard to pin down a historical death toll, but I'd be willing to be that it would rank in the top ten.

Of course, the number one killer of people is...time. Given enough time, we'll all die from one thing or another. And that's been the case since the very beginning.

I hope that helps. Good luck!

Disease by far. Smallpox and Plague are probably the leaders, but I'm not sure about that.

Cardiovascular diseases, I.E Heart attacks, strokes.

Health care; i.e. medicine, disease, etc.

malaria