# Oldest living human. **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 28, 2008, 5:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-living-human/474769 "2008-11-28T05:52:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Cervaise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cervaise/32/16693_2.png) [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2008, 11:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-living-human/474769/81 "2008-12-01T23:29:34Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Who eats bald eagles now? You see, **Chronos** , when a Daddy Bald Eagle loves a Mommy Bald Eagle very much, and wants to get jiggy with her, but doesn’t want to be responsible for a aerie full of eaglets… ---
**Author:** ![copperwindow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/4af34b/32.png) [@copperwindow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/copperwindow)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2010, 11:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-living-human/474769/82 "2010-10-09T23:42:02Z")
> [@Washoe](#): > > Folklore notwithstanding, the operative term here is “confirmed.” Okay, I don’t mean to sound like a troll, but how could her age possibly have been confirmed? If she was the oldest person, then there couldn’t be another person to say “Yes, I remember her being born on this day”. ---
**Author:** ![Lobohan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobohan/32/79_2.png) [@Lobohan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobohan)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2010, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-living-human/474769/83 "2010-10-09T23:50:08Z")
> [@copperwindow](#): > > > [@Washoe](#): > > > > Folklore notwithstanding, the operative term here is “confirmed.” > > Okay, I don’t mean to sound like a troll, but how could her age possibly have been confirmed? If she was the oldest person, then there couldn’t be another person to say “Yes, I remember her being born on this day”. First. Moses never existed. Seriously. The bible isn’t supernatural in origin. And some of its writers weren’t concerned with accuracy. Second. We have records. I assume the standard is oldest living person with solid records of birth. If some dude in a hut in Vietnam is older we likely aren’t going to know it. ---
**Author:** ![copperwindow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/4af34b/32.png) [@copperwindow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/copperwindow)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2010, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-living-human/474769/84 "2010-10-09T23:57:51Z")
[quote=“Lobohan, post:83, topic:474769”] > [@copperwindow](#): > > If some dude in a hut in Vietnam is older we likely aren’t going to know it. Wow, I never even thought of that! ---
**Author:** ![Chimera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Chimera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chimera)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2010, 12:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-living-human/474769/85 "2010-10-10T00:02:56Z")
> [@Grumman](#): > > Is Moses currently alive? No? Then he can’t be the oldest living human, no matter what your book says. FTW. Moses is not currently alive, hence he is not the Oldest Living Human. ---
**Author:** ![Frank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Frank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frank)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2010, 12:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-living-human/474769/86 "2010-10-10T00:22:11Z")
> [@copperwindow](#): > > > [@Washoe](#): > > > > Folklore notwithstanding, the operative term here is “confirmed.” > > Okay, I don’t mean to sound like a troll, but how could her age possibly have been confirmed? If she was the oldest person, then there couldn’t be another person to say “Yes, I remember her being born on this day”. Have you really been mulling that over for two years? ---
**Author:** ![HMS\_Irruncible](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hms_irruncible/32/7394_2.png) [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2010, 12:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-living-human/474769/87 "2010-10-10T00:26:47Z")
> [@copperwindow](#): > > Okay, I don’t mean to sound like a troll, but how could her age possibly have been confirmed? If she was the oldest person, then there couldn’t be another person to say “Yes, I remember her being born on this day”. Good point. Come to think of it, now I’m wondering if the War of 1812 ever really happened… after all there are no living witnesses remaining, and I don’t remember reading about it in Leviticus. ---
**Author:** ![Cisco](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ccd318/32.png) [@Cisco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cisco)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2010, 12:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-living-human/474769/88 "2010-10-10T00:28:08Z")
Guys, Jeanne Calment isn’t alive either, and wasn’t alive when the OP was written. The thread title is slightly awkwardly-written, but at least know what you’re talking about before you make fun of someone (or just make fun of them for something patently ridiculous, like claiming the bible to be infallible, and then demonstrating they don’t know the bible very well.) ---
**Author:** ![KarlGauss](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/karlgauss/32/3713_2.png) [@KarlGauss](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KarlGauss)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2010, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-living-human/474769/89 "2010-10-10T00:54:25Z")
> [@Frank](#): > > Have you really been mulling that over for two years? _Just_ missed the ‘edit’ window, I guess. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2010, 3:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-living-human/474769/90 "2010-10-10T03:44:32Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > > [@Polycarp](#): > > > > Is it possible, **PRR** , that your distaste for the Judaeo-Christian myths has led you into some overbroad falsehoods here? **Xenophon** ’s statement is precisely accurate as regards the findings of scholars studying myth. Check out the technical literature, or even Campbell’s popularized works, for relevant background. > > Well, the “scholars” are wrong then, or myths are really bad at their job. They seldom “convey general truths”, or any truth at all. Would you endorse a statement that they convey that which the society would like to set up as general truths? No, there is no committee that has a meeting and decides that here is this concept we want to message, and let’s make a myth about it, maybe it will go viral. But certain stories resonate enough within particular cultures to become part of their mythos because they are consistent with the emerging cultural ethos and by so doing they reinforce the development of that ethos. Nah, of course you wouldn’t. And here I thought this thread was going to be about the mythologically old folk living in Japan. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2010, 4:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-living-human/474769/91 "2010-10-10T04:47:04Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > > [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > > > Well, the “scholars” are wrong then, or myths are really bad at their job. They seldom “convey general truths”, or any truth at all. > > Would you endorse a statement that they convey that which the society would like to set up as general truths? Of course; but that just underlines how stupid and dishonest they are. A lie is a lie even when you declare that it comes from the gods, and you can’t “set up” truths. When you try, the unpoetic name for doing so is “lying”. > [@DSeid](#): > > No, there is no committee that has a meeting and decides that here is this concept we want to message, and let’s make a myth about it, maybe it will go viral. How do you know that? I wouldn’t be at all surprised if quite a few myths weren’t concocted and spread by a bunch of priests who got together, collaborated on the myth and the message they wanted it to send, and then went out and pushed it in a coordinated attempt to make people believe it. Such things have happened; propaganda isn’t a recent invention. > [@DSeid](#): > > And here I thought this thread was going to be about the mythologically old folk living in Japan. This thread is much older than that story. ---
**Author:** ![Cisco](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ccd318/32.png) [@Cisco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cisco)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2010, 5:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-living-human/474769/92 "2010-10-10T05:01:56Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > Of course; but that just underlines how stupid and dishonest they are. A lie is a lie even when you declare that it comes from the gods, and you can’t “set up” truths. When you try, the unpoetic name for doing so is “lying”. And just how the shit do you know where cultural myths really originated? Was Mark Twain lying when he wrote Huckleberry Finn? And here’s the interesting follow-up question: was he conveying truth? ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2010, 8:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-living-human/474769/93 "2010-10-10T08:05:46Z")
> [@Cisco](#): > > > [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > > > Of course; but that just underlines how stupid and dishonest they are. A lie is a lie even when you declare that it comes from the gods, and you can’t “set up” truths. When you try, the unpoetic name for doing so is “lying”. > > And just how the shit do you know where cultural myths really originated? Was Mark Twain lying when he wrote Huckleberry Finn? That’s a novel, not a myth. He wasn’t lying for the obvious reason that he didn’t pretend that what he wrote was real. ---
**Author:** ![Cisco](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ccd318/32.png) [@Cisco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cisco)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2010, 8:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-living-human/474769/94 "2010-10-10T08:18:17Z")
You didn’t answer my first question. How do you know that the people who originated these myths claimed they were literal truth? Others could have done that later. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2010, 8:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-living-human/474769/95 "2010-10-10T08:54:19Z")
> [@Cisco](#): > > You didn’t answer my first question. How do you know that the people who originated these myths claimed they were literal truth? Because that’s what people making up such nonsense do, up to the present time. ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2010, 10:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-living-human/474769/96 "2010-10-10T10:17:00Z")
And what is the “oldest living” thread on these boards? This one’s a zombie, but there are many “confirmed” threads that are older. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2010, 1:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-living-human/474769/97 "2010-10-10T13:27:28Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > > [@Cisco](#): > > > > And just how the shit do you know where cultural myths really originated? Was Mark Twain lying when he wrote Huckleberry Finn? > > That’s a novel, not a myth. He wasn’t lying for the obvious reason that he didn’t pretend that what he wrote was real. Um actually he did pretend that, and he knew that his readers knew he was pretending. Myths are the stories by which cultures articulate and promulgate their perspectives on the world and by which cultures become cultures. Those worldviews are neither provably true or false. They are what “we” are accepting as “right” and “wrong”. The story itself can be based on facts or made up, believed to be based on facts when it isn’t, or thought to be made up and actually have been based on a factual occurrence - doesn’t matter to its status as a myth. ---
**Author:** ![John\_DiFool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_difool/32/19543_2.png) [@John\_DiFool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_DiFool)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2010, 3:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-living-human/474769/98 "2010-10-10T15:17:18Z")
[Attempt at redirection, albeit into a more GQ direction] I’d say, with a virtual 100% certainty, that someone somewhere (tho most likely within the last 100 years or so) has lived longer than Calment did, but without the proper documentation it could never be proved. There’s probably a statistical method that could be used to estimate the likelihood and perhapseven the probable age at death. ---
**Author:** ![Cisco](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ccd318/32.png) [@Cisco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cisco)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2010, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-living-human/474769/99 "2010-10-10T16:28:12Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > Because that’s what people making up such nonsense do, up to the present time. Ah, so you don’t know at all. Shocker. I’ve never known someone so religious in their atheism as you, Der Trihs. You make Christopher Hitchens look like a dabbler. ---
**Author:** ![Cisco](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ccd318/32.png) [@Cisco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cisco)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2010, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-living-human/474769/100 "2010-10-10T16:50:45Z")
> [@John\_DiFool](#): > > [Attempt at redirection, albeit into a more GQ direction] > > I’d say, with a virtual 100% certainty, that someone somewhere (tho most likely within the last 100 years or so) has lived longer than Calment did, but without the proper documentation it could never be proved. There’s probably a statistical method that could be used to estimate the likelihood and perhapseven the probable age at death. I’m pretty sure that a sound statistical model would say that Calment’s lifespan was all but impossible. She would be way, way, _way_ off to the right of any graph. Mean life expectancy in the first world is somewhere in the neighborhood of 79, with a standard deviation somewhere in the neighborhood of 5. So 3 standard deviations from the mean would be 94. I’m pulling these numbers out of my head because they’re kind of hard to find, but I’m pretty sure they’re pretty close, and serve our purposes here. Ninety-nine point seven percent of all your data falls within 3 standard deviations of the mean. That means only 0.3% will live to be older than 94. Statistics doesn’t go into that territory much because for almost all practical purposes, it’s considered anomalous. Centenarians are outliers. Jeanne Calment is an outlier of an outlier of an outlier. I can’t imagine a mathematical model predicting someone older than her, but I’d be fascinated to be proven wrong. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-living-human/474769.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-living-human/474769.md?page=6)