Huh. As someone who worked in Perl a very long time ago, my strong impression was always that Perl died almost entirely due to Perl 6/Second System Syndrome; Perl 5.x became, implicitly, the already-outdated thing, and yet Perl 6 wouldn't meaningfully exist for like two decades.
There was that, too. But I remember people being happy to use the latest Perl 5 and expecting it to be continually updated (which is still is today). Perl 6 was considered a different language altogether at best, and vapourware at worst.
Still, I can definitely see someone new to the language thinking Perl 5 was a dead end.