Longevity myths are traditions about long-lived people (generally supercentenarians), either as individuals or groups of people, and practices that have been believed to confer longevity, but which current scientific evidence does not support, nor the reasons for the claims. [1] [2] While literal interpretations of such myths may appear to indicate extraordinarily long lifespans, experts believe such figures may be the result of incorrect translations of number systems through various languages, coupled along with the cultural and symbolic significance of certain numbers. [3]
The phrase "longevity tradition" may include "purifications, rituals, longevity practices, meditations, and alchemy" [4] that have been believed to confer greater human longevity, especially in Chinese culture. [1] [2]
Modern science indicates various ways in which genetics, diet, and lifestyle affect human longevity. It also allows us to determine the age of human remains with a fair degree of precision.
The record for the maximum verified lifespan in the modern world is 122+1⁄2 years for women (Jeanne Calment) and 116 years for men (Jiroemon Kimura). Some scientists estimate that in case of the most ideal conditions people can live up to 127 years. [5] [6] This does not exclude the theoretical possibility that in the case of a fortunate combination of mutations there could be a person who lives longer. Though the lifespan of humans is one of the longest in nature, there are animals that live longer. For example, some individuals of the Galapagos tortoise live more than 175 years, [7] and some individuals of the bowhead whale more than 200 years. [8] Some scientists cautiously suggest that the human body can have sufficient resources to live up to 150 years. [9] [10]
Name | Masoretic Age | Septuagint Age |
---|---|---|
Methuselah | 969 | 969 |
Jared | 962 | 962 |
Noah | 950 | 950 |
Adam | 930 | 930 |
Seth | 912 | 912 |
Kenan | 910 | 910 |
Enos | 905 | 905 |
Mahalalel | 895 | 895 |
Lamech | 777 | 753 |
Shem | 600 | 600 |
Eber | 464 | 404 |
Cainan | — | 460 |
Arpachshad | 438 | 465 |
Salah | 433 | 466 |
Enoch | 365 | 365 |
Peleg | 239 | 339 |
Reu | 239 | 339 |
Serug | 230 | 330 |
Job | 210? | 210? |
Terah | 205 | 205 |
Isaac | 180 | 180 |
Abraham | 175 | 175 |
Nahor | 148 | 304 |
Jacob | 147 | 147 |
Esau | 147? | 147? |
Ishmael | 137 | 137 |
Levi | 137 | 137 |
Amram | 137 | 137 |
Kohath | 133 | 133 |
Laban | 130+ | 130+ |
Deborah | 130+ | 130+ |
Jehoiada | 130 | 130 |
Sarah | 127 | 127 |
Miriam | 125+ | 125+ |
Aaron | 123 | 123 |
Rebecca | 120+ | 120+ |
Moses | 120 | 120 |
Joseph | 110 | 110 |
Joshua | 110 | 110 |
Several parts of the Hebrew Bible, including the Torah, Joshua, Job, and Chronicles, mention individuals with very long lifespans, up to the 969 years of Methuselah.
The Sefer haYashar narrates that all of the long-lived people belonged to a special class and that Methusaleh was the last member. [11] Methusaleh also lived long enough to evangelize with his grandson Noah in the antediluvian world. [12]
Some Christian apologists explain the extreme ages in the Hebrew Bible (or Old Testament) as ancient mistranslations that converted the word "month" to "year", mistaking lunar cycles for solar ones: this would turn an age of 969 years into a more reasonable 969 lunar months, or about 78.3 solar years. [13] Donald Etz says that the Genesis 5 numbers were multiplied by ten by a later editor. [14]
Both these interpretations introduce an inconsistency: they would mean that the ages of the first nine patriarchs at fatherhood, ranging from 62 to 230 years in the manuscripts, would then be transformed into an implausible range such as 5 to 18+1⁄2 years. [15] Others say that the first list, of only 10 names for 1,656 years, may contain generational gaps, which would have been represented by the lengthy lifetimes attributed to the patriarchs. [16] Nineteenth-century critic Vincent Goehlert suggests the lifetimes "represented epochs merely, to which were given the names of the personages especially prominent in such epochs, who, in consequence of their comparatively long lives, were able to acquire an exalted influence". [17]
Those biblical scholars that teach literal interpretation give explanations for the advanced ages of the early patriarchs. In one view, man was originally to have everlasting life, but as sin was introduced into the world by Adam, [18] its influence became greater with each generation and God progressively shortened man's life. [19] In a second view, before Noah's flood, a "firmament" over the earth (Genesis 1:6–8) contributed to people's advanced ages. [20] The Bible's own (brief) explanation for these ages approaches the question from a different angle, explaining instead the relative shortness of normal lives in Genesis 6:3 (CSB): "And the Lord said, 'My Spirit will not remain with mankind forever, because they are corrupt. Their days will be 120 years.'"
Conservative apologist William Lane Craig believes that the longevity myths should be understood as 'mytho-history', where the ages of culturally significant figures were exaggerated to make a political or theological point. He points to similar practices found in neighboring cultures such as the Babylonians and argues that both Hebrews and Babylonians were aware that human longevity was biologically unfeasible. [21] Similar arguments were made by professor Robert Gnuse. [22]
Here are some more modern examples of Christian longevity claims:
Ibrahim (إِبْرَاهِيم) was said to have lived to 168–169 years.[ citation needed ] His wife Sarah is the only woman in the Old Testament whose age is given. She died at 127 (Genesis 23:1 ). In the Quran, Noah allegedly lived for 950 years with his people. [25]
According to 19th-century scholars, Abdul Azziz al-Hafeed al-Habashi (عبد العزيز الحبشي) lived 673–674 Gregorian years, or 694–695 Islamic years, between 581 and 1276 AH (equivalent to 1185–1859 AD). [26]
In Twelver Shia Islam, Hujjat-Allah al-Mahdi is believed to currently be in Occultation and still alive (age 1155). [27]
Chapter 2 of Falun Gong by Li Hongzhi (2001) states,
A person in Japan named Mitsu Taira lived to be 242 years old. During the Tang dynasty in our country, there was a monk called Hui Zhao [慧昭, 526–815[ citation needed ]] who lived to be 290 [288–289] years old. According to the county annals of Yong Tai in Fujian Province, Chen Jun [陈俊] was born in the first year of Zhong He time (881 AD) under the reign of Emperor Xi Zong during the Tang Dynasty. He died in the Tai Ding time of the Yuan Dynasty (1324 AD), after living for 443 years. [30]
Extreme lifespans are ascribed to the Tirthankaras, for instance:
The term xian refers to deified persons who have achieved immortality. The Old Man of the South Pole is a common archetype and symbol for longevity.
These include claims prior to c. 150 CE, before the fall of the Roman empire.
The Egyptian historian Manetho, drawing upon earlier sources, begins his Egyptian king list with the Graeco-Egyptian god Hephaestus (Ptah) who "was king for 9,000 years". [54]
A book Macrobii ("Long-Livers") is a work devoted to longevity. It was attributed to the ancient Greek author Lucian, although it is now accepted that he could not have written it. [55] Most examples given in it are lifespans of 80 to 100 years, but some are much longer:
According to one tradition, Epimenides of Crete (7th, 6th centuries BC) lived nearly 300 years. [56]
Some early emperors of Japan are said to have ruled for more than a century, according to the tradition documented in the Kojiki , viz., Emperor Jimmu and Emperor Kōan.
The reigns of several shahs in the Shahnameh , an epic poem by Ferdowsi, are given as longer than a century:
In Roman times, Pliny wrote about longevity records from the census carried out in 74 AD under Vespasian. In one region of Italy many people allegedly lived past 100; four were said to be 130, others up to 140.[ citation needed ]
Age claims for the earliest eight Sumerian kings in the major recension of the Sumerian King List were in units and fractions of shar (3,600 years) and totaled 67 shar or 241,200 years. [60]
In the only ten-king tablet recension of this list three kings (Alalngar, [...], kidunnu, and En-men-dur-ana) are recorded as having reigned 72,000 years together. [16] [61] The major recension assigns 43,200 years to the reign of En-men-lu-ana, and 36,000 years each to those of Alalngar and Dumuzid. [60]
This list includes claims of longevity of 130 and older from the 14th century onward. All birth year and age claims are alleged unless stated otherwise.
Name | Birth | Death | Age | Country |
---|---|---|---|---|
Mahmud Eyvazov [64] | 1808 | 1960 | 152 | Russian Empire Soviet Union Azerbaijan |
The following cases have been documented in detail over time.
Name | Birth | Death | Age | Country | Summary |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Thomas Parr | 1482–1483 | 1635-11-13 [65] | 152 [65] | England | The case was recorded in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. William Harvey carried out a postmortem on him, according to Easton. Parr is buried in Westminster Abbey with his alleged age on the gravestone. |
Henry Jenkins | 1501 [66] | 1670 [67] | 169 | England | A brief biography of Henry Jenkins, of Ellerton-on-Swale, Yorkshire, was written by Anne Saville in 1663 based on Jenkins's description, stating birth in 1501; he also claimed to recall the 1513 Battle of Flodden Field. [66] However, Jenkins also testified in 1667, in favor of Charles Anthony in a court case against Calvert Smythson, that he was then only 157 or thereabouts. [68] He was born in Bolton-on-Swale, [69] and the date given, 17 May 1500, [70] results in only a 1-year discrepancy with the age of 169 on his monument (he died 8 December 1670). [67] |
Peter Czartan | 1539 [69] | 1724 [69] | 184 [69] | Romania | Charles Hulbert, who reported Czartan's case in an 1825 collection, added that John (172) and his wife Sara [71] (164) both died in Hungary in 1741 after 148 years of marriage. [69] The Book Validation of Exceptional Longevity has the old couples last name as Rowin, [71] while The Virgin Birth and the Incarnation puts John and Sara's married name as Rovin. [69] |
Henry Francisco | 1686-06-11 [72] | 1820-10-25 [72] | 134 | United States | Henry Francisco claimed that he was born in France in 1686. His death was recorded in Whitehall, Washington County, New York, in October 1820. A family bible shows his life dates as June 11, 1686 to October 10, 1820. His family were Huguenots who left France for the Netherlands and went from there to England, where Henry recalled being a drummer boy at the 1702 coronation of Queen Anne. He had military service in Queen Anne's wars before emigrating to America in the early 1700s. [72] He married his first wife in New Jersey by 1727 and had at least five children with her. [73] He married for a second time in 1766 at Whitehall, New York. The youngest of his claimed 21 children was born in 1782. [72] He said that he had served in the French and Indian War in 1755. In January 1777, at age 90, he enlisted to serve in the Continental Army as a private in the company of Capt. Jeremiah Burroughs, and he served until April 1778. [74] [75] In 1819 he was awarded a pension for American Revolutionary War service. During his final years, skepticism was expressed about his claimed age, but older residents of the Whitehall area said they remembered "Old Henry" as having been an elderly man during their youth. In 1819, Benjamin Silliman of Yale visited him and came away as a believer in the claim of his exceptional longevity. Silliman described his visit and his conclusions in an 1824 book, Remarks on a Short Tour Between Hartford and Quebec in the Autumn of 1819. [74] [72] |
Li Ching-Yuen | 1933-05-05 [76] | Qing Dynasty, Republic of China | A New York Times story announced the death on 5 May 1933 in Kai County, Sichuan, at the age of 197, of Li Qingyun (李青云), who claimed to be born in 1736. A Time article noted that "respectful Chinese preferred to think" Li was 150 in 1827 (birth 1677), based on a government congratulatory message, and died at age 256. Tai chi master Da Liu stated that Li learned qigong from a hermit over age 500. | ||
Zaro Aga | 1764-02-16 [78] | 1934-06-29 [78] | 170 [78] | Ottoman Empire | Kurdish man who claimed birth on February 16, 1764, and died on June 29, 1934, in Istanbul, Turkey at the alleged age of 170. |
Javier Pereira | 1789 [79] | 1955–58 | 165–169 | Colombia | A Zenú Indian from Colombia who was reputedly over 160 years old at the time of his death. Although his death is variously said to have been in 1955, 1956, and 1958, sources all claim that he was born in 1789. |
Maftei Pop | 1804-06-12 | 1952-03-15 | 147 [80] [81] [82] [83] [84] [85] [86] | Romania | A man from Transylvania, who was claimed to be 148 years old when he died in 1952. The mayor of Recea Cristur in Cluj, Rus Laurian Alexandru, confirms that there are documents attesting that this man lived 148 years. |
Shirali Muslimov | 1805-03-26 | 1973-09-02 [87] | 168 [87] | Russian Empire, Soviet Union, Azerbaijan | An Azerbaijani shepherd of Talysh ethnicity from the village of Barzavu in the Lerik region of Azerbaijan, a mountainous area near the Iranian border. He claimed to be the oldest person who ever lived when he died on September 2, 1973, at the alleged age of 168 years and 162 days, based solely on a passport. National Geographic carried the claim. Some sources claimed him to be the oldest centenarian in the USSR. It was reported that at the moment of Muslimov's death, his wife was still living at 120 years of age. [88] |
Sylvester Magee | 1841-05-29 [89] | 1971-10-15 [89] | 130 [89] | United States | Although much documentation is lost or possibly never existed, some sources suggest that Magee may have served in both the Confederate and Union armies. Alfred P. Andrews, founder of the Jackson Civil War Round Table and its president elect for 1965-66, helped Magee be classified as a Civil War veteran although no service records for him could be found. |
Charlie Smith | 1842 | 1979-10-05 | 137 | United States | Prior to Smith's death, the Guinness Book of World Records had called his claim into question, noting that Smith's marriage certificate from 1910 stated that he was 35 years old at the time, which would make him 104 years old at the time of his death. [90] [91] |
Bir Narayan Chaudhary | 1856 | 1998 | 141–142 | Nepal | Bir claimed he was born in 1856, the son of a landowner. [92] [93] A cattle rancher in the village of Khanar, near Biratnagar, he was purportedly a leader of the first land survey team in the area, conducted in 1888. [94] He was a smoker throughout his later life. Bir rose to prominence in the mid-1990s when Nepalese television and press began reporting on his claimed age. [93] In 1997, he was honored by Nepal's King Birendra for his claimed longevity. [92] |
Habib Miyan | 1869-05-20 | 2008-08-19 | 139 | India | Rahim "Habib Miyan" Khan of Jaipur, Rajasthan, India, holds the Guinness World record for the longest retirement pension. [95] [96] Miyan's claimed birth date derives from a family tree listing a Rahim Khan born in 1869, although his pension book listed his birth date as May 20, 1878. [97] [98] [99] He said he had been using these documents since he was discharged from the army in 1938 to claim a pension, making him the world's longest-registered old-age pensioner. [95] [100] The Limca Book of Records lists him as the oldest man of Jaipur, describing him in its 2005 edition as "over 120 years". [101] [102] [100] [99] In 2004 two unidentified people donated money for Miyan to go on Hajj, making him purportedly the oldest Hajj pilgrim in history. [103] [104] He was named as the Aab-e-Jaipur ('Lustre of Jaipur') by the mayor of Jaipur. [97] |
Mbah Gotho | 1870-12-31 | 2017-04-30 | 146 | Dutch East Indies, Indonesia | In May 2010, Solopos reported that census enumerators recorded that Saparman Sodimejo, known more commonly as Mbah Gotho, was 142 years old. [105] [106] [107] Liputan 6 reported that his estimated age was 140, and that he could not remember his date of birth but claimed to remember the construction of a sugar factory in Sragen in 1880. [108] [109] [110] His ID card, issued in 2014, displays his claimed birth date of 31 December 1870. [111] A heavy smoker throughout his life, he allegedly outlived ten siblings, four wives, and all five of his children. [112] On 28 April 2017, he was admitted to Dr. Soehadi Prijonegoro Regional General Hospital, Sragen, where he died on 30 April. [113] [114] [115] |
Mubarak Rahmani Messe | 1874 | 2014 | 140 | Algeria | Died in 2014, allegedly at 140 years of age, in El Oued Province, Algeria, and was survived by 100 grandsons. According to family members, Rahmani had spent much of his early life in the Algerian Desert and later held various challenging occupations, including in construction, farming, and herding. He was hospitalised for the first time in 2012, with a stomach complaint. His diet, referred to as "natural", consisted largely of dates, wheat flour, sheep's milk, and green tea. [116] |
Tuti Yusupova | 1880-07-01 [117] | 2015-03-28 [117] | 134 [117] | Russian Empire, Soviet Union, Uzbekistan | Reuters reported that her age was uncovered in 2009 by Safar Hakimov, the ruling Uzbekistan Liberal Democratic Party's local chairman in Tortkol, Karakalpakstan when researching centenarians as part of the plans for the country's independence anniversary. After her funeral, her birth certificate and passport were declared conclusive evidence by Baxadir Yangibayev, Chairman of the Council of Ministers in the Republic of Karakalpakstan, where she lived and died. |
Maria Lucimar Pereira [118] [119] [120] | 1890-09-03 | 2022-05-21 | 131 | Brazil | A member of the Kaxinawa tribe, an indigenous people of Brazil and Peru. Indigenous name: Parã Banu Bake Huni Kui. Staff for Brazil's National Institute of Social Security found that Pereira had a birth certificate stating her year of birth as 1890. However, this certificate was only approved in 1985, late in her life. Exaggerated longevity claims may be common in Pereira's village, as four out of the 80 inhabitants in the village are over 90 years old. |
According to a 2021 review, there is no clinical evidence that any dietary practice contributes to longevity. [132]
Traditions that have been believed to confer greater human longevity include alchemy.
The Fountain of Youth is a mythical spring which supposedly restores the youth of anyone who drinks or bathes in its waters. Tales of such a fountain have been recounted around the world for thousands of years, appearing in the writings of Herodotus (5th century BC), in the Alexander romance (3rd century AD), and in the stories of Prester John (early Crusades, 11th/12th centuries AD). Stories of similar waters also featured prominently among the people of the Caribbean during the Age of Exploration (early 16th century); they spoke of the restorative powers of the water in the mythical land of Bimini. Based on these many legends, explorers and adventurers looked for the elusive Fountain of Youth or some other remedy to aging, generally associated with magic waters. These waters might have been a river, a spring or any other water-source said to reverse the aging process and to cure sickness when swallowed or bathed in.
The legend became particularly prominent in the 16th century, when it became associated with the Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León, the first Governor of Puerto Rico. Ponce de León was supposedly searching for the Fountain of Youth when he traveled to Florida in 1513. Legend has it that Native Americans told Ponce de León that the Fountain of Youth was in Bimini.Human life expectancy is a statistical measure of the estimate of the average remaining years of life at a given age. The most commonly used measure is life expectancy at birth. This can be defined in two ways. Cohort LEB is the mean length of life of a birth cohort and can be computed only for cohorts born so long ago that all their members have died. Period LEB is the mean length of life of a hypothetical cohort assumed to be exposed, from birth through death, to the mortality rates observed at a given year. National LEB figures reported by national agencies and international organizations for human populations are estimates of period LEB.
Methuselah was a biblical patriarch and a figure in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. He is claimed to have lived the longest life, dying at 969 years of age. According to the Book of Genesis, Methuselah was the son of Enoch, the father of Lamech, and the grandfather of Noah. Elsewhere in the Bible, Methuselah is mentioned in genealogies in 1 Chronicles and the Gospel of Luke.
Life extension is the concept of extending the human lifespan, either modestly through improvements in medicine or dramatically by increasing the maximum lifespan beyond its generally-settled biological limit of around 125 years. Several researchers in the area, along with "life extensionists", "immortalists", or "longevists", postulate that future breakthroughs in tissue rejuvenation, stem cells, regenerative medicine, molecular repair, gene therapy, pharmaceuticals, and organ replacement will eventually enable humans to have indefinite lifespans through complete rejuvenation to a healthy youthful condition (agerasia). The ethical ramifications, if life extension becomes a possibility, are debated by bioethicists.
A centenarian is a person who has reached the age of 100 years. Because life expectancies worldwide are below 100, the term is invariably associated with longevity. The United Nations estimated that there were 316,600 living centenarians worldwide in 2012, and 573,000 in 2020, almost quadruple the 2000 estimate of 151,000.
Longevity may refer to especially long-lived members of a population, whereas life expectancy is defined statistically as the average number of years remaining at a given age. For example, a population's life expectancy at birth is the same as the average age at death for all people born in the same year.
Maximum life span is a measure of the maximum amount of time one or more members of a population have been observed to survive between birth and death. The term can also denote an estimate of the maximum amount of time that a member of a given species could survive between birth and death, provided circumstances that are optimal to that member's longevity.
Jeanne Louise Calment was a French supercentenarian and, with a documented lifespan of 122 years and 164 days, the oldest person ever whose age has been verified. Her longevity attracted media attention and medical studies of her health and lifestyle. She is the only person who has been verified to have reached the age of 120.
A supercentenarian, sometimes hyphenated as super-centenarian, is a person who is 110 years or older. This age is achieved by about one in 1,000 centenarians. Supercentenarians typically live a life free of significant age-related diseases until shortly before the maximum human lifespan is reached.
Aubrey David Nicholas Jasper de Grey is an English biomedical gerontologist. He is the author of The Mitochondrial Free Radical Theory of Aging (1999) and co-author of Ending Aging (2007). De Grey is known for his view that medical technology may enable human beings alive today not to die from age-related causes. As an amateur mathematician, he has contributed to the study of the Hadwiger–Nelson problem in geometric graph theory, making the first progress on the problem in over 60 years.
Longevity claims are unsubstantiated cases of asserted human longevity. Those asserting lifespans of 110 years or more are referred to as supercentenarians. Many have either no official verification or are backed only by partial evidence. 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 organizations such as the Gerontology Research Group (GRG) or Guinness World Records. This article lists living claims greater than that of the oldest living person whose age has been independently verified, Japanese woman Tomiko Itooka, aged 116 years, 135 days, and deceased claims greater than that of the oldest person ever whose age has been verified, French woman Jeanne Calment, who died aged 122 years and 164 days. The upper limit for both lists is 130 years.
This is a list of tables of the oldest people in the world in ordinal ranks. To avoid including false or unconfirmed claims of old age, names here are restricted to those people whose ages have been validated by an international body dealing in longevity research, such as the Gerontology Research Group or Guinness World Records, and others who have otherwise been reliably sourced.
Aging in dogs varies from breed to breed, and affects the dog's health and physical ability. As with humans, advanced years often bring changes in a dog's ability to hear, see, and move about easily. Skin condition, appetite, and energy levels often degrade with geriatric age. Medical conditions such as cancer, kidney failure, arthritis, dementia, and joint conditions, and other signs of old age may appear.
Cookie was a male pink cockatoo residing at Brookfield Zoo, near Chicago, Illinois, United States. He was believed to be the oldest member of his species alive in captivity, at the age of 82 in June 2015, having significantly exceeded the average lifespan for his kind. He was one of the longest-lived birds on record and was recognised by the Guinness World Records as the oldest living parrot in the world.
Granny, also known as J2, was a female orca of the J pod of southern resident orcas notable for her long life. Early estimates placed her birth in 1911, putting her at 105 years old at the time of her death. However, this estimate was later theorized to have been based on mistaken information and more recent studies put her at 65–80 years old. If she was 105, she would have been the oldest known orca at the time of her death. Granny lived in the northeast Pacific Ocean and coastal bays of Washington state and British Columbia. She was last seen on October 12, 2016, and was considered deceased by The Center for Whale Research in January 2017.
Fungie, also known as the Dingle Dolphin, was a male common bottlenose dolphin. He became separated from other wild dolphins and lived in very close contact with the people of Dingle on the southwest coast of Ireland.
Kane Tanaka was a Japanese supercentenarian who, until her death at the age of 119 years, 107 days, was the world's oldest verified living person, following the death of Chiyo Miyako on 22 July 2018. She is the oldest verified Japanese person and the second-oldest verified person ever, after Jeanne Calment.
This timeline lists notable events in the history of research into senescence or biological aging, including the research and development of life extension methods, brain aging delay methods and rejuvenation.
Chuan xiong ... has long been a key herb in the longevity tradition of China, prized for its powers to boost the immune system, activate blood circulation, and relieve pain.
Taoist devotion to immortality is important to us for two reasons. The techniques may be of considerable value to our goal of a healthy old age, if we can understand and adapt them. Secondly, the Taoist longevity tradition has brought us many interesting remedies.
Extrapolation of this data shows a complete loss of human body resilience at around 120-150 years of age – indicating the current limit of human lifespan
Such an interpretation would have made Enoch only five years old when his son was born!
Three kings in a Sumerian list (which also contains exactly ten names) are said to have reigned 72,000 years each.
Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned ...
Shirali Mislimov, an Azerbaijani peasant, who was the oldest among the Soviet centenarians, died in 1973 at the age of 168. His surviving widow at that time was 120.
Friederich GUALDUS.