For many years, travelers have reported that there are a lot of very elderly people in this region. I am not talking about ridiculous claims (like lifespans over 130 years), but large numbers of people in their 90’s, 100’s.
I this a legend, or are there any true stories of large numbers of people living past 90 there? At first glance, it would be hard to imagine this-the region is pretty poor and underdeveloped.
http://www.abkhazworld.com/abkhazia/people-a-culture/182-abkhazia-ancients-of-the-caucasus.html
There are abnormally many centenarians in Abkhazia. The exact ages, though, are hard to figure out since no good records were kept that long ago, and there were a lot of upheavals in the area where records were lost.
This was debunked back in the 1980s.
Cite.
The paper seems to be behind a paywall or such. Maybe someone else can access it.
I used to read it was due to eating apricots; lots and lots of apricots.
Nah, it’s the yogurt.
Which, not coincidentally, is how the legend turned into an urban myth.
Nothing reduces long life-spans like accurate birth and death registries.
Heard this when I was growing up. But as mentioned above, I saw it debunked in the 1980s. I thought that was one Urban Legend that had died since I’ve not heard it since then.
It’s got a longer life than the people it’s about.
That resulted in it just feeling like you’d lived 130 years when in fact you died at 52.
Since the OP referenced Russia it should be mentioned Abkhazia hasn’t been part of Russia for the last 20+ years. Hell, since 1994 or so they haven’t even considered themselves part of Georgia.
So what are they? Part of Alabama?
I’ve heard speculation that this is because for many years, it was common for men in those regions to inflate their age to avoid service in the Russian/Soviet military. The sometimes-implausably-high ages we see is the result of people being obliged to keep up the pretense that they really were 50 years old back in 1945, and stuff like that.
Yep, and the Soviet government didn’t really press the issue because the obvious propaganda value outweighed any benefits of punishing people who, by the time anyone got suspicious, were too old to serve in the military.
Here’s a good post on the ancient Georgians.
Yes, that is what I recall reading… People were given higher ages (or one version, assumed their fathers’ identities) to avoid the draft.
When the excessively older population came to light, apparently the Soviets helped perpetuate the myth. What I read was that Tass News Agency received western cash for any item picked up and reprinted in the westrn press. Most of their stuff was ignored because it was blatant propaganda and often inaccurate with a political slant. The “human interest” stories about 130-year-old caucus mountain folk garnered a lot of hard cash for the Soviet press.
(I remember when the Romanian government was falling, a CBC employee told me - “It’s amazing, we’re getting most of our information from Tass, and we believe them, and it doesn’t sound like it’s been re-written for propaganda purposes!”)
Then, of course, there’s the yogurt ads…