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01.02.2023

Are you really 134 years old, sir?

Much anecdotal evidence about extremely old people is the product of exaggeration, mystification or fraud. Gerontologists who study these extremely old people and their lifestyle must therefore separate the wheat from the chaff, according to researchers at Boston University. They list 8 things that should set off alarm bells among critical gerontologists.

#1 Spiritual exaggeration
In many religious and spiritual lore and traditions, longevity indicates a person's special connection to deities or cosmic principles. An example from Christian tradition is Methuselah, who, according to the Old Testament, lived to be 969. Another well-known biblical lung evictor was Abraham, who lived to be 175 years old.

In the Old Testament you find those extremely high ages especially in the first books. In the more recent parts of the Bible, the ages become more and more realistic. Abraham lived to be 175 years old, Moses lived to 120 and David lived to 70.

Still, religious and spiritual traditions claim that their foremen and women grow extremely old. A recent example is the Tibetan meditation master Nyala Rinpoche, who died in 1978. He would have lived to be 152 years old. Then he no longer had a body of organic tissues, but of light. At least, that's what his followers say.

#2 Elder worship
In many isolated traditional societies, the elderly have a special position. In those societies people like to exaggerate the age of 'their' elderly. For example, the South African Moloko Temo is said to have died in 2009 at the age of 134.

Temo was a local celebrity. She said in interviews that she was convinced that elsewhere in the world people lived even older than her, and that she liked spinach, sweets, meat and cola. When she was born there was no proper registration yet. It is unknown how old she really was. CNN has made an item about her once.

#3 The source of eternal youth
Some people claim to hold the secret of eternal youth. You can of course substantiate that claim better if you are very old and extremely vital at the same time. Norman Walker was one such person.

Walker was the founder of the raw food movement. He designed a centrifuge with which people could make their own healthy juices from fruit and vegetables [and earned good money with it]. He wrote books about how you can grow old with a vegetarian and juiced lifestyle and stay vital at the same time.

Walker made himself ten years older than himself for marketing reasons. When he died he would have been 119, but he was actually 'only' 99.

#4 Shangri-La
Residents of some areas like to maintain the illusion that life in their valley, on their mountaintop or island is extremely healthy. A Shrangri-La, such a special area is called. The Hunza Valley in Pakistan is one such area, or the Eurasian Caucasus.

Media plays an important role in myths surrounding Shangri-Las. For example, in 1976 the book Los Viejos: Secrets of Long Life from the Sacred Valley was published by the journalist Grace Halsell. Halsell wrote the book after living in Ecuador's Vilcabamba Valley for a while.

For example, during that time she had camped out in a dirt-floor mountain cabin with a man who claimed to be 132 years old. He would stay sane by reciting poems in his head as he hiked through the mountains. Hasell's book made the ancient Vilcabambbanen world famous.

Harvard gerontologist Alexander Leaf grew suspicious of the stories when he spoke to a man in 1974 who said he was 134 years old. Leaf had also met the man in 1971, and then he said he was still 122 years old. When scientists like Leaf started to check the fabulous ages of the Vilcabam orbits, it turned out that they were all wrong.

A hallmark of a culture of longevity exaggeration is an excess of very old men, the researchers said. Women's genomes are more robust than men's and so women can live longer than men. If suddenly all extremely old men turn up somewhere - such as in the Vilcabamba Valley - but not many more extremely old women, then a skeptical attitude is in order, the researchers say.

#5 Propaganda
Governments that want to give themselves a good image like to lie about their very old residents. Only in healthy countries, where life is good, do people become very old. The Soviet Union could use some PR in the 1960s and 1970s, so the state media created the myth that the inhabitants of the Caucasus could grow old fabulously.

Their icon was Shirali Muslimov, who would eventually live to be 163 or 168 years old. Muslimov owed that age to the clear mountain water, his diet of chicken and yogurt and the healthy hard work on the kolkhoz.

Western reporters were never allowed to talk to Muslimov. We owe it to Danone that Muslimov nevertheless became known in the west. In a clever advertising campaign, he made a connection between Muslimov's fabulous age and yoghurt. Yoghurt from Danone, that is.

#6 Obligatory military service
When war breaks out, countries enlist men of a certain age group. Those who are too old do not have to serve. In the US, the civil war between the Northern and Southern states led to a spike in the number of Southerners who had reached miraculous old age - like John Salling. Salling became famous in the twentieth century as the man who lived to 113 and had fought against the North during the Civil War. "If we cannot beat 'em, we can outlive 'em", he once said.

According to historians, Salling never fought. He had cheated his age for ten years during the Civil War so he wouldn't have to enlist.

#7 Bureaucratic errors
In many developed countries, reports of supercenturies [people who live past 110] are often the result of clerical and typing errors by the government. According to aging researcher Michel Poulain, bureaucrats have made such an administrative error in 1 percent of all Belgians who have officially turned 100. This means that these people are actually younger. For all Belgians who turn 105, this percentage has risen to 5 percent, for 110-year-olds to 50 percent and for 110-year-olds to 100 percent.

In France, Eva Jourdan fell victim to such a mistake. She would have officially become 112 years old, but in reality died 'already' at the age of 102. A civil servant once accidentally wrote her birth year - 1890 - as 1880.

#8 Benefit fraud
Old people receive benefits in civilized countries - and the introduction of that health care system has resulted in some people suddenly getting years older from one moment to the next. In Pennsylvania, for example, Eddlee Bankhead suddenly turned 16 years older when the elderly could receive benefits in his state. His 116th birthday prompted JET to put it in italics. [JET March 29 1999] In it, the Bankhead children say the vital 116-year-old owed his age to 'hard work'. Bankhead died the same year.

Another form of fraud that can lead to myths about fabulously old men and women is keeping dead relatives at home, allowing next of kin to continue collecting pensions. In 2010, the Japanese government investigated two hundred cases in which this was the case. There was even talk of someone who was 110 years old on paper, but had actually died at the age of 76.

Similar stories come from Greece. Of the five hundred centenarians who are still alive in Greece according to government records, three hundred have actually died, according to independent research. Their relatives keep that to themselves for a while.

Source:
Curr Gerontol Geriatr Res. 2010;2010:423087.

More:
Supercentenarians are extremely healthy 06.06.2011
Nonagenarians with resilience will make it to 100 14.04.2011

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