I was reading an old book by Richard Halliburton (a world traveller and popular author of the 1930’s). He recounted a meeting with an old man (in Abkhazia/Russia), by the name of Zapara Kiut, who claimed (as of 1935) to be 153 years old.
When questioned by Halliburton, Kuit could recall details of his army service in the Napoleonic wars, the dates of the births of his children, grand/great grandchildren, etc.
He was also able to name the czar’s in correct chronological order.
Now, I have never read anything about this guy…but the statisticians say that the chances of a human life exceeded 125 are effectively zero.
Did any competent scientist ever investigate this?
He happened to claim various dates of birth for family members and to know the chronological order of the czars? That doesn’t sound like very convincing evidence of extraordinary age.
It certainly hasn’t been proven - the oldest person with solid evidence to back it up was a French woman named Jeanne Calment who died at a little over 122 years of age in 1997.
I remember the Guiness Book Of World Records comment on old age which is reproduced in this Wikipedia article:
“No single subject is more obscured by vanity, deceit, falsehood, and deliberate fraud than the extremes of human longevity.”
I don’t know if anyone investigated that claim but I really, really, really doubt that Mr. Kiut was anywhere close to 153 years old.
Make an appointment with me for four days later and I’ll memorize the monarchs of England, US presidents and 210 years of my family’s birthdays. That just means the information is available. I’m not 200 years old.
A woman in Indonesia is claiming to be 145 years old.
Census Takers Find World’s Oldest Woman Alive and Well in Riau Province (thejakartaglobe.com) 18 May 2010
Sounds doubtful to me - there are no official documents.
I find it kind of funny that the world’s longest living woman got a reverse mortgage 
Exactly. If the interviewer can cross-check the information, the interviewee can obtain it just as well. Hell, I’d imagine plenty of people have memorized sequences of historical leaders even without attempting to put on a persona of extraordinary age.
The wife and I used to send her a birthday card each year. Really! I would address the envelope thus:
Jeanne Calment
World’s Oldest Person
Arles, France
They were never returned, so I assume they all made it. One year while looking for a card, we saw one that read something like: “There are people who are richer than you, and some who are older …” Uh, no, we couldn’t send that one.
How could you prove a claim like that?
That’s a serious question. There’s no way that I’m aware of to analyze human tissue and determine age. Anything you “remember” could be simply researched and memorized. They didn’t keep fingerprints or DNA samples with birth certificates in the 1800s.
I can see ways to disprove claims of extreme age (like finding a death certificate that shows you falsely assumed the identity you’re claiming), but I can’t think of a way to prove it.
Meh. Go for broke and site Methuselah at 969.
Or, what the heck? How about Lazarus Long? He’s only 98 now, but he was over 2,000 when he was having sex with his mother in the 1940s.
Yes, I mentioned this in a thread about Mme Calment not so long ago. She outlived the guy who was paying her the monthly instalments, and his widow had to carry on paying for another two years before Calment finally checked out. Talk about adding insult to injury!
But at least he was a lawyer.
Ask his Dad—he’ll vouch for the guy.
There is a way to determine an animal’s age by measuring the amount of racemized aspartic acid in a sample of dental tissue.
I love this part:
Yep, the numbers add up. All sisters are 47 years apart and all daughters are born when the mothers are 75. There’s just no way around it.
Cut 'em open and count the rings.
I can list from memory all the kings and queens of England back to around the year 1500. Which, therefore, proves that I’m over 500 years old.
If someone lives to 153, then there should be people younger than him, but still very old. In other words, life-expectancy/longevity is distributed in a typical ‘bell curve’.
What we’d have, though, if we accept this guy’s claim, is a very few people living to, say, 110, almost no-one to 115, and then none between 120 and 150, but then, out of nowhere, by himself, this guy at 153. It makes no statistical sense. In fact, IMO, it is actually inconsistent with basic statistical considerations.
Well, couldn’t this guy have been an “outlier”? Granted, the normal distribution of human life spans shows essentailly zero after about 125 years…but outliers do occur.
Strangely, people who make surprising claims for longevity seem to come from countries with lower than average life expectancy, but very few records by which to verify age. Funny, that.