# Oldest living human pt2
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-living-human-pt2/715813
**Category:** Great Debates
**Created:** [March 23, 2015, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-living-human-pt2/715813 "2015-03-23T20:37:36Z")
**Posts on this page:** 17
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@copperwindow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/copperwindow)
#### Post date: [March 23, 2015, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-living-human-pt2/715813/1 "2015-03-23T20:37:36Z")
How can wikipedian claim that Leandra Becerra Lumbreras was the unverified oldest living person when she only purportedly lived to 127 when there are people in the bible who purportedly lived for hundreds of years?
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### Author:  [@The\_Joker\_and\_the\_Thief](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Joker_and_the_Thief)
#### Post date: [March 23, 2015, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-living-human-pt2/715813/2 "2015-03-23T20:53:18Z")
The bible’s claims aren’t reliable enough for Wikipedia’s standards.
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### Author:  [@copperwindow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/copperwindow)
#### Post date: [March 23, 2015, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-living-human-pt2/715813/3 "2015-03-23T21:21:43Z")
> [@The\_Joker\_and\_the\_Thief](#):
>
> The bible’s claims aren’t reliable enough for Wikipedia’s standards.
And what makes Ms. Lumbreras’s claims any more reliable?
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### Author:  [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)
#### Post date: [March 23, 2015, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-living-human-pt2/715813/4 "2015-03-23T21:24:52Z")
> [@copperwindow](#):
>
> And what makes Ms. Lumbreras’s claims any more reliable?
Because they have proof in the form of birth certificates and such while we don’t even have a body to back up the Bible’s claims? It’s all just words with zero proof that people lived hundreds of years as claimed in the Bible, so why SHOULD wiki post that as fact?
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### Author:  [@Cheesesteak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheesesteak)
#### Post date: [March 23, 2015, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-living-human-pt2/715813/5 "2015-03-23T21:27:57Z")
> [@copperwindow](#):
>
> And what makes Ms. Lumbreras’s claims any more reliable?
Despite losing her birth certificate, I’m pretty sure Ms. Lumbreras actually existed, and was really really old. That gives her a big leg up on Methuselah.
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### Author:  [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)
#### Post date: [March 23, 2015, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-living-human-pt2/715813/6 "2015-03-23T21:31:21Z")
> [@XT](#):
>
> Because they have proof in the form of birth certificates and such while we don’t even have a body to back up the Bible’s claims? It’s all just words with zero proof that people lived hundreds of years as claimed in the Bible, so why SHOULD wiki post that as fact?
Totally missed that it’s unverified. [Here](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leandra_Becerra_Lumbreras) is the link if anyone is interested. Still more plausible than the Bible, and like Cheesesteak said, she was really really old, even if perhaps not what she claimed while we have zip from the Bible wrt physical proof.
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### Author:  [@YogSothoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YogSothoth)
#### Post date: [March 23, 2015, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-living-human-pt2/715813/7 "2015-03-23T23:12:39Z")
> [@copperwindow](#):
>
> How can wikipedian claim that Leandra Becerra Lumbreras was the unverified oldest living person when she only purportedly lived to 127 when there are people in the bible who purportedly lived for hundreds of years?
Your join date is 2005 and you ask a stupid question like that? The bible is wrong, nobody ever lived for hundreds of years.
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### Author:  [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)
#### Post date: [March 23, 2015, 11:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-living-human-pt2/715813/8 "2015-03-23T23:15:53Z")
> [@copperwindow](#):
>
> How can wikipedian claim that Leandra Becerra Lumbreras was the unverified oldest living person when she only purportedly lived to 127 when there are people in the bible who purportedly lived for hundreds of years?
Because the Bible is a work of myth and legend. The Old Testament in particular has no more factual basis than the Iliad.
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### Author:  [@DrCube](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrCube)
#### Post date: [March 24, 2015, 1:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-living-human-pt2/715813/9 "2015-03-24T13:59:55Z")
[Jeanne Calment](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldest_people) is the longest living person ever, not counting fairy tales.
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### Author:  [@DataX](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DataX)
#### Post date: [March 24, 2015, 2:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-living-human-pt2/715813/10 "2015-03-24T14:54:49Z")
I was reading the other day (don’t remember where) that there is some debate that the ages for some of those accounts in the bible May have been based on lunar cycles. I guess I could buy this, but I though there was also a part in Genesis or somewhere where god decided “my bad - you guys are living too long - starting today I’m making 120 the limit.”
Which might make me believe in it more if people were dying on their 120th birthday. Also I think the guy who came up with the whole “the earth is only 4000 years old” (or was it 6000?) would have to redo his calculations.
But back to the OP - are you actually serious? I’m sure there are other religions somewhere that have someone who lived even longer.
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### Author:  [@DrCube](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrCube)
#### Post date: [March 24, 2015, 3:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-living-human-pt2/715813/11 "2015-03-24T15:05:07Z")
> [@DataX](#):
>
> But back to the OP - are you actually serious? I’m sure there are other religions somewhere that have someone who lived even longer.
Didn’t the Epic of Gilgamesh have some kings who lived to be 65,000 years old? And according to some Hindu stories I’ve heard, there are priests who have been living in a cave playing the Towers of Hanoi game with 64 disks since the beginning of time. When the last disk is put into place, the world will end. It will take them at best half a trillion years. And that puts Methuselah to shame.
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### Author:  [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)
#### Post date: [March 24, 2015, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-living-human-pt2/715813/12 "2015-03-24T15:12:10Z")
> [@DrCube](#):
>
> Didn’t the Epic of Gilgamesh have some kings who lived to be 65,000 years old? And according to some Hindu stories I’ve heard, there are priests who have been living in a cave playing the Towers of Hanoi game with 64 disks since the beginning of time. When the last disk is put into place, the world will end. It will take them at best half a trillion years. And that puts Methuselah to shame.
Unless those monks plan to switch planets in the next 2 billion years they are fucked though, so I hope they are scouting out new digs. Not that they need to rush, but it’s going to be pretty uncomfortable on the Earth in the next 500 million years or so…they might want to get crackin’…
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### Author:  [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)
#### Post date: [March 24, 2015, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-living-human-pt2/715813/13 "2015-03-24T15:20:51Z")
> [@XT](#):
>
> Unless those monks plan to switch planets in the next 2 billion years they are fucked though, so I hope they are scouting out new digs. Not that they need to rush, but it’s going to be pretty uncomfortable on the Earth in the next 500 million years or so…they might want to get crackin’…
They’ll never get done. Those other monks who just have to list the 9 billion names of God got a printer and they should be done any minute n
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### Author:  [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)
#### Post date: [March 24, 2015, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-living-human-pt2/715813/14 "2015-03-24T15:47:18Z")
I’m the oldest human, in that nothing important happened before I was born, nor will anything important happen after I die.
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### Author:  [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)
#### Post date: [March 24, 2015, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-living-human-pt2/715813/15 "2015-03-24T16:46:05Z")
> [@DrCube](#):
>
> [Jeanne Calment](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldest_people) is the longest living person ever, not counting fairy tales.
I don’t see China represented on those charts. Just given population dynamics, shouldn’t China be producing people who live a long time?
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### Author:  [@SpoilerVirgin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SpoilerVirgin)
#### Post date: [March 24, 2015, 5:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-living-human-pt2/715813/16 "2015-03-24T17:00:13Z")
Apparently China isn’t counted in international statistics, since [there was no reliable system for certifying most births until after the Communist Party took power in 1949](http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1300103/doubts-over-127-year-old-chinese-woman). That article discusses claims of a 127-year-old Chinese woman.
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### Author:  [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)
#### Post date: [March 24, 2015, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-living-human-pt2/715813/17 "2015-03-24T17:31:01Z")
Cool, thanks. Been thinking about the huge population of China. My gf, just back from Iceland asked me to guess the three most common origins on tourists in Iceland. I guessed US and UK right away, but never came up with number 3, China.