If my memory from Bible School holds true, I believe there was a person named methusala who lived to the age of 669. Assuming this fact is true, what is the oldest that a person could live today? This of course would be in a controlled enviroment with the best health care possible. Also is there a way that science can prove it is not possible to live that long; which would also go on to prove that the Bible may in fact have faslities in it? I know this is a weird question and all, but thanks for your help.
Firstly: From what I understand, Mathusula lived for 969 years. If you’d like to find falsities in the Bible, nitpicking on numbers in a two-thousand year old document is a rather poor place to start.
Secondly: What bearing does assuming his age have on the topic at hand?
Thirdly: Hi, Opal!
The vast improvement in medicine and nutrition that has led to much greater numbers of people living to advanced age recently has not led to that much of an increase in the greatest age. People used to live to be over 100 even back in the old days. Though poorly documented, I wouldn’t be surprised to find that some of them lived to be in the hundred-and-teen range that more people are hitting now. I’d think that’s pretty close to the upper natural limit.
Gut feeling here: I think someone in a controlled environment would live a shorter life. Boring.
I’m not going to address the biblical issue; I don’t think there are too many people who really believe Methusulah lived to be 969.
Here is my half remembered version of things. Humans have a built in timer that counts down. It is a protein cap at the end of genes (I think) that shortens each time the gene replicates. When it is gone there is the likelihood of things falling apart… or something. I am sure a geneticist will be along shortly. As humans are currently built we could not live that long, but the bible says God shortened human lifespans so whatever mechanism scientists can use to claim that humans could not live that long, creationists can turn around and say that God changed the mechanism.
[Church Lady]How conveeeeeeeeeenient[/CL]
flight is right on the money. Those protein caps are properly named telomeres. There’s a lot of hullaballoo over their importance and our ability to lengthen them, so a cursory Google search will get a lot of hits.
The night is marching on and my attention span is dwindling, but from what I saw*, www.telomere.org is a good resource. 
Thanks,
CxP
*The koala
I recall a woman in France dying at the documented age of 122 a few years back. She could remember selling paint colors to Van Gogh. I believe her name was Alice.
(Damn! What was the secret of that blue?)
This is a link to a website with all sorts of speculation about the ever-changing life expectancy and other information relating to age:
http://www.grg.org/calment.html
As of April 16, 2004, there were 45 living documented supercentenaries (110 or older). Only two of these were men.
In rereading the OP, I am reminded of Gershwin’s comment from *Porgy and Bess’s * “It Ain’t Necessarily So” :
I’ll get back to you on this later.
Hopefully a lot later.
In the era of accurate birth documentation, the upper limit seems to be around 120-122. There are stories from long ago of people living longer, and while a few of them may be true, they cannot be conclusively proven. One story I liked was about the old English farmer (possibly Irish) who lived to be 156 by eating only potatoes. The king invited him to his castle to celebrate his incredible long life – unfortunately, the man ate the king’s food and died. So much for the Atkins plan. 
I’ve read somewhere that the age limit for all species was equal to six times the length of their growth period, that is, the time it took to grow from birth to full adulthood. With humans who stop growing around age 20, a maximum age of 120 sounds about right.
Well here’s my mother’s theory. In Antedeluvian times, the earth was shielded by a giant cloud of water, high above the atmosphere, that encircled the planet and blocked the cosmic radiation that causes aging. The Flood was caused by all that water falling on Earth. Since then, without the protective water layer, humans started aging much faster. (It doesn’t explain why Noah and many of his progeny lived to be over 500, but hey, it’s Christianity…it doesn’t have to make sense.)
My own theory (which I’ve never seen mentioned anywhere) is that the earliest people in the Bible used a lunar calendar, and measured “years” in terms of moon cycles, and the facts were never correctly translated in Genesis. Since 969/12 = 80.75, that’s a much more reasonable age for Methuselah.
Zoe writes:
> I recall a woman in France dying at the documented age of 122 a few years
> back. She could remember selling paint colors to Van Gogh. I believe her name
> was Alice.
Her name was Jeanne Calment.
Unfortunately it also means that he sired his first child at the age of 6 or something equally ridiculous. I’ts a nice theory but it clearly doesn’t hold up.
Looks to me like it holds up, but I may have the ages wrong or be missing a child:
Methuseleh 969 years
Lamech born when he was 187 years old.
187 / 969 * 80.75 = 15.58
So he was 15 when his first son was born, 14 when he was concieved. In modern western society that’s too young, but back then I assume that it was the norm.
What a very helpful and constructive approach.
I’m sure it’s been pointed out a thousand times before but I’ll do it again: it’s not Christianity, it’s creationism. While many, perhaps most creationists would call themselves Christians, there are a LOT of Christians who are unhappy with creationism. Are all Muslims in the Taliban? Do all Hindus run Kwik-e-Marts?
That statement doesn’t make any sense, actually. It’s probably best not to make assertions about Christianity if you don’t know what it is.
KGS:
First of all, it’s Judaism as well. Just thought I’d mention that, especially since the Jew smiley seems to finally be working again, for the first time since the board upgrade in January. ;j
Second of all, Noah was born in antedeluvian times - he was already 600 when the flood hit, and “only” lived 350 years after the flood. As for Noah’s progeny, only Shem, his son, who was born before the flood, is recorded as having lived 500 years following it. Here are all recorded lifespans for other people after Noah, until the death of Moses:
Arphaxad - 403
Shelah - 403
Eber - 430
Peleg - 209
Reu - 207
Serug - 200
Nahor - 119
Terah - 205
Abraham - 175
Sarah - 127
Ishmael - 137
Isaac - 180
Jacob - 147
Joseph - 110
Levi - 137
Kehath - 133
Amram - 137
Aaron - 123
Moses - 120
So there is, in the Bible, clearly a somewhat progressive reduction of lifespan following the flood, until it settled at about what modern lifespans are. Working within your theory, it could be that the increased radiation affected the environment so that certain factors (nutrition in the food, lack of pollution in the air, who knows?) which promoted extreme longevity prior to the flood decreased and eventually disappeared subsequent to it, leaving us with an environment similar to today…life-preserving, but not to a millennial degree.
I think that the aforementioned Jeanne Calment has to be near the limit for humans.
If you look at her compared to the next oldest person ever recorded, there’s actually quite a gap (the next oldest was 119, IIRC). There’s a whole bunch of people clustered around 115-116 (well, not a whole bunch I guess), the 119 yo and then Ms. Calment sitting out there at 122. She’s an outlier among outliers.
As for future advances, I think the sociological and psychological aspects of people routinely living to 150 or older area greater barrier than any scientific ones.
The other question to ask is “how much of the increase in life expectency is due to real life-extending medicine and how much of it is due to the reduction in infant mortality?”
The life expectency at 1900 in the U.S. was about 49 years. Now it’s about 80. While I’m certain that we are (on average) living longer than we were in 1900, the question is how much. It’s not that the average person dropped dead at 49 years old in 1900; a lot of that number includes a fairly high (by today’s standards) infant mortality rate, which dragged down the average. If you factor out infant mortality and ask the question “Once a person reached adulthood (say in 1918), how could could s/he expect to live?” That’s really where you have to figure out the increases in life-expectency from. Once you reduce infant mortality, you can push up the life-expectency numbers without actually increasing the length of anyone’s life (aside from the infants involved, of course).
Zev Steinhardt
I agree that Guinness accepts Ms. Calment’s 122 as the oldest uncontested.
It is not, however, completely insane to believe that Elizabeth “Ma Pampo” Israel lived to be 128