How is it Only 1 Person Lived Past 120?

[Ghostpanther]

We do not know that is the record for sure. Only the recorded record which can be verified. Big difference. Like the record low temp for Ohio is -39 F. The records only go back a couple hundred years. :P

[haxartus]

Extremely unlikely people would have lived that long before the advancement of modern medical science. In ancient Egypt average life span was around 30.

That 30 number doesn't mean that everyone died at the age of 30. Plato lived until 80.

Please, learn how statistics work before trying to correct people.

[BloodyAngel12]

Didnt they say that there is already someone born in the last 20 year that will live past 120 years due to medical technology progression.

[markos82]

Out of Billions of humans on earth how is it possible only a single person lived past 120 years old. That sounds ridiculous, but apparently Jeanne Calment was able to do it. Was her age falsely recorded? Shouldn't there be atleast a couple people close to her record age? It doesn't make much sense to be 3 years ahead of the second oldest human ever. Sounds like passing 120 is impossible which would make this woman's age impossible.

What's the science behind this? And how was she so far ahead of everyone else on earth?

The problem is that most people that are in their 100s were born in the time when medicine wasnt that great, there were 2 WW, life wasnt as "friendly" as it is now and so on, there are most likely ppl alive now that will live to be 150, if something life changing doesnt happen, like WW3 or major cataclysm.

[ParanoiD84]

She got lucky.

[lockedout]

Out of Billions of humans on earth how is it possible only a single person lived past 120 years old.

Not to long ago some people didn't even know exactly how old they were.

[Danner]

Out of Billions of humans on earth how is it possible only a single person lived past 120 years old. That sounds ridiculous, but apparently Jeanne Calment was able to do it. Was her age falsely recorded? Shouldn't there be atleast a couple people close to her record age? It doesn't make much sense to be 3 years ahead of the second oldest human ever. Sounds like passing 120 is impossible which would make this woman's age impossible.

What's the science behind this? And how was she so far ahead of everyone else on earth?

I guess statistics.

On average, males live to the age of 79 in my country, and females to the age of 83. That means, in a school class of 30 male students born in the year 2000, 15 of them would statistically be dead by the year of 2079. But that's just an average. There is no supernatural entity running around killing exactly 15 of them by that date. Could be all of them are alive at that point. Could be all of them died in a tragic lawnmower accident long before 2079.

It's all down to individual chances adding up. At a given age, you have x% chance of surviving to see a new year. If we pretend this chance is uniform (ie, constant for every year), you have a 0.875% chance of dying every year. That way you have a 50% chance of staying alive to the age of 79% (per calculating (0.99125^79) ). Obviously the chance of death isn't uniform. If it was, you'd have a 34% chance of living to the age of 120, and a 0.01% chance of seeing a four digit candle birthday cake. Clearly that is not how reality is. We can estimate the probability using actual death records, and the probability looks something like this:


(Credit: http://www.bandolier.org.uk/booth/Risk/dyingage.html)

The key takeaway is that as you get older, the chance of dying the next year sharply increases. What I would claim is that the lines never actually reaches 1. There is no physical law stating that anyone turning a certain age will invariably die that year. Some species have that kind of traits; for example pacific salmon invariably die after spawn season. Humans, not so much. We just live until something kills us. As we grow older, the chance of it happening increases. But not to 100%.

Imagine every year, Death comes to visit, and tells you to roll a dice. When you are 14, you have to avoid rolling a flat 1 on a die with 100 000 sides. Easy, right? Yet if you have a million fourteen year olds make that gamble, some 10 of them will on average fail. When you are 79, you need to beat death in that same die roll, only this time the die only has 15 sides on it. It's a much larger chance of failing that gamble with death. One in fifteen people do.

The data in the image stops at age 85. If we just continue the graph as-given, it will intersect the 100% probability at around the age of 104. Which would mean that all 104-year-olds positively had no chance whatsoever to make it to the year of 105. Which is nonsense, certifiably older people than that exist.

I can claim that the number between age 100 and 105 is around 33% per year. This article https://www.theguardian.com/news/dat...y-centenarians says there at some point in time was 12310 100+ year old people in the UK. And amongst them, 610 people were 105+. If we assume that a third of them die every year, the breakdown amongst those should be, if we count backwards:

Sum: 105+ year olds: ~610
104 year olds: 610/0.66 = 914
103 year olds: 914/0.66 = 1372
102 year olds: 1372/0.66 = 2078
101 year olds: 2078/0.66 = 3149
100 year olds: 3149/0.66 = 4772
Sum 100+ year olds: 12676, which is close enough to the actual number of 12310.

I find no data whatsoever beyond that, but likely the chance of dying will increase further as you age. If it remained flat at 33%, 1 in 5000 hundred year olds would get to the age of 120, and that's obviously not the case.

[Deleted]

That 30 number doesn't mean that everyone died at the age of 30. Plato lived until 80.

Please, learn how statistics work before trying to correct people.

Before you correct me I think you should read first what I wrote "average life span around 30" that doesn't mean everyone died at 30. So yeah please learn how statistics work and what average means.

[Azarak]

Twins (or triplets etc) that are the oldest human beings. Checkmate.

There's always a twin born a few minutes before the other. They don't push them both out simultaneously, as pleasant as that sounds.

[Wilian]

you realize 120 years ago, most people only lived into their 40's right?

Not exactly true. Average life expectancy was being held down by babies and children dying whereas if you managed to live to 15-20 you had p. good chance to hit 60+

[Celista]

Science behind this is how our body uses oxygen called Oxidative phosphorylation, it is causing continuous damage to our cell and DNA. So as your get older our DNA strand keeps getting shorter and keeps making mistakes and these mistakes can become cancer. The older you get the higher the chance of getting cancer becomes. Another thing is brain cell can't multiply so they get damaged and eventually deteriorates.

Eventually we will be able to reduce the oxidation damage or replace our organs but major obstacle to human longevity will be deterioration of brain cells.

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Extremely unlikely people would have lived that long before the advancement of modern medical science. In ancient Egypt average life span was around 30.

You can reduce the oxidation now by taking antioxidants. Also not smoking, avoiding/minimizing stress, not sunbathing, etc.

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We do not know that is the record for sure. Only the recorded record which can be verified. Big difference. Like the record low temp for Ohio is -39 F. The records only go back a couple hundred years. :P

Well the recorded record will be the bible which states that humans had crazy long lifespans before the flood. Noah supposedly lived for 950 years. Then in Genesis 6:3 the passage seems to limit human lifespans to 120 years.

I think there are other works that reference crazy long lifespans that may or may not be accurate but that one comes to mind specifically.

[Deletedaccount1]

I wouldn't say it is reasonable to talk in absolutes for something as complex as a human's lifespan. There's genetics, epigenetic effects, nutrition, lifestyle, sicknesses, stress, strokes of fate etc. pp.

Telomeres are only so long unless medical science finds a way to replenish them.

[Independent voter]

Things fall apart.

[Ghostpanther]

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Well the recorded record will be the bible which states that humans had crazy long lifespans before the flood. Noah supposedly lived for 950 years. Then in Genesis 6:3 the passage seems to limit human lifespans to 120 years.

I think there are other works that reference crazy long lifespans that may or may not be accurate but that one comes to mind specifically.

Which I believe in. Other passages in the bible later, indicated 3 score and ten. Which would be 70.

The single most important factor is genes. You can shorten your life however, by living foolishly. But if your genes say you will only live to 70 or 80, odds are great that will be the max. Of course luck plays some role too I think. And some are blessed with not only the luck, but who their parents were.

[Karfal]

Wait, didn't Noah live to be 950 years old?

Ya many did back in the day to be 100s of years old.

[Deleted]

You do understand that human beings haven't lived the length they do today at any other time in its history right? Just a hundred years ago people were lucky to live to see 70.

Plenty of people lived to see 70.

I'm guessing, but I'm assuming that it wasn't as easy to officially register birth dates as it is in modern times. In the 1930s it was still an era of illiterate farmers which is less than 100 years ago (came close to saying 70 >.<). I suspect that over the next 50 years we are going to see many more break the barrier as a combination of improved science and health care and better tracking of official birth documents.

People aren't living longer.They're just not getting killed off as much.
A few people have pointed out the infant mortality dragging the average down back in the olden days when people had dud kids that died off fairly quickly before trying again.

If anything I would say the average will start going down for normal people as lack of proper healthcare,poor food, pollution and other modern problems damage their health.

[zorkuus]

Because someone has to be the oldest person. duh

[Chinese Bootlickers]

Plenty of people lived to see 70.



People aren't living longer.They're just not getting killed off as much.
A few people have pointed out the infant mortality dragging the average down back in the olden days when people had dud kids that died off fairly quickly before trying again.

If anything I would say the average will start going down for normal people as lack of proper healthcare,poor food, pollution and other modern problems damage their health.

And a surprising amount of them lived to be over 100. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_s...s_war_veterans
And that's just US war vets as an example.