Pretty much all businesses used to be basically ephemeral until about 150 years ago. The whole idea of a business that is intended to run perpetually just didn't exist in the West, and anything that ran long was tied to a family that plied a trade. Businesses were also a lot easier to understand: a corporation might run a ship or a mine, and go out of business (still having made everyone a lot richer) when the captain of the ship retires or the mine dries up. In fact, the way we value businesses today still somewhat applies that model.

Most attempts at perpetual businesses today fail after less than 100 years, too, so it looks like we haven't figured out how to actually make a perpetual business - aside from a few notable examples like Zildjian (the cymbal company). Most of the success stories here are businesses with modest ambitions under the tight control of a single family.

I think you could argue that the idea that a business has to be a long-lasting perpetual enterprise comes from an increase in the power of business managers, at the expense of both investors and employees. These long-lasting businesses give managers a chance to build empires and personally enrich themselves without worrying about anything so pedestrian as figuring out when to return cash to shareholders ("they can have a tiny dividend if they whine too much, but don't get in the way of the expansion of my empire").