Unverified longevity claims

Incomplete longevity claims assert extreme human longevity but lack either a complete date of birth or date of death making the verification of an exact age impossible. Cases that include both a claimed date of birth and date of death are included in longevity claims. Cases where longevity has been fully verified, according to modern standards of longevity research, are reflected in an established list of supercentenarians based on the work of such institutions as the Gerontology Research Group (GRG) and/or the Guinness World Records.

Scientific status

Prior to the nineteenth century, there was insufficient evidence either to demonstrate or to refute centenarian longevity.^[1] Even today, no fixed theoretical limit to human longevity is apparent.^[2] In ^[1] Studies in the biodemography of human longevity indicate a late-life mortality deceleration law: that death rates level off at advanced ages to a late-life mortality plateau. That is, there is no fixed upper limit to human longevity, or fixed maximal human lifespan.^[3] This law was first quantified in 1939, when researchers found that the one-year probability of death at advanced age asymptotically approaches a limit of 44% for women and 54% for men.^[4]

Categorization

In 1955, Guinness World Records began maintaining a list of the verified oldest people. It developed into a list of all supercentenarians whose lifespan had been verified by at least three documents, in a standardized process, according the norms of modern longevity research. Many unverified cases ("claims" or "traditions") have been controverted by reliable sources. Taking reliable demographic data into account, these unverified case vary widely in their plausibility.

Fully verified claims

• Over 100 people in modern history have been documented as reaching the age of 114.
• Only 35 of these people are fully verified as reaching 115; only eleven have reached 116.
• The oldest person verified by modern standards, and the only person with undisputed evidence to have lived to be 120 (and over), was French woman Jeanne Calment (21 February 1875 – 4 August 1997), aged 122 years, 164 days.
• The oldest man verified by modern standards, and the only man with undisputed evidence to have lived to be 116 was Japanese man Jiroemon Kimura (19 April 1897 – 12 June 2013), aged 116 years, 54 days.
• As of 1 May 2015 the oldest verified living person is American woman Jeralean Talley, born 23 May 1899, age 7009365875920000000♠115 years, 343 days, and the oldest living man is Sakari Momoi, born 5 February 1903, age 7009354179520000000♠112 years, 85 days, from Japan.

Reports with incomplete date of birth

Recent

These cases purporting a supercentenarian lifespan, and reported to be alive in the last 2 years, are unsupported (or insufficiently supported) by publicly available, early-life records.

Past

These supercentenarian claims with incomplete birth or update date have no publicly available early-life records to support them. The age of cases with no reported death are given as at the date of the last report that they were still living.

Notes

References

External links

• Books on demographic transition of longevity claims at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research
• Gerontology Research Group