Demographers claim about 107 billion people have walked the face of our planet. That means just a percent of those who have ever lived are currently alive. 

How old is or was the oldest? 

The prudent answer: no one knows. How could we peer back thousands of years into the past? How can we even know who the oldest was in the 19th century? We do recognize that ancient documents like the Bible have tagged some pretty hefty ages to patriarchs such as Methushelah (grand-dad of Noah) — said to have been 969 years old — and Noah himself, who is likewise said to have lasted far beyond what modern biology excogitates as possible. Some say extreme longevity in old texts are due to ancient mistranslations. For example: the word “month” may have been misinterpreted as “year.” If that’s the case, Methushelah, at 969 lunar months, would have been a more reasonable eighty years old.

In 1912 missionaries discovered a Christian hermit in a Himalayan cave who was said to have been born in Egypt and baptized by a nephew of Saint Francis Xavier. He was known as the Maharishi of Kalias and his age was put at: three hundred. More realistic: Scolastica Oliveri in Bivona, Italy, who according to a local monastery reached the ripe number of 130. In our current century the oldest verified age is 122 — recorded for a French woman named Jeanne Louise Calment who was old enough to have met Vincent Van Gogh. Aside from a cataract (after a bout with pink eye), Calment said she had “never, ever been sick — never.” Devout, she started each day early with a prayer and had exercised as long as she could (tennis, fencing), but as for other rules for longevity: smoked up to two cigarettes a day (until 117, although it’s not certain she inhaled), and indulged in white wine, cremès, and cake. Defying the odds, Jeanne was also known to order spicy fried food and eat as many as two pounds of chocolate in a single week! 

The oddest way a person reached old age may have been that of Max Hoffman, a young boy who was buried but exhumed after his mother had visions. As a newspaper recounted, “This five-year-old boy was struck down by a cholera epidemic that hit his small town in Wisconsin in 1865. After three days, the doctor declared him dead, and Max was buried. That night, his mother dreamt that Max was not dead after all. Her husband dismissed her claims as the ravings of a distressed mother. But the next night, the dream returned. This time, she was so insistent that her husband agreed to go to the cemetery and dig up young Max.

When they opened the coffin, Max was lying not on his back, as he’d been lain, but on his side.” Though showing no sign of life, the boy was indeed positioned quite differently than when the coffin had been sealed — his hands now clenched below his right cheek, precisely as Mrs. Hoffman saw in her dream. The body was carried from the grave and the physician who had declared the boy dead summoned. Hesitantly, but underprodding by the parents, the doctor tried to revive Max.

After an hour it was the doctor’s turn to be shocked as one of the lad’s eyelids twitched. Max lived for many years after.

Newspapers have related the accounts of exhumed corpses that were accidentally buried alive and not quite as fortunate. On February 21, 1885, The New York Times gave a disturbing account of such a case. The victim was a man from Buncombe County, the name given as “Jenkins.” Like Max his body was found turned over onto its front inside the coffin, but with much of his hair pulled out. Scratch marks were also visible on all sides of the coffin’s interior. His family were reportedly “distressed beyond measure at the criminal carelessness” associated with the case…

 A similar story: The Times on January 18, 1886, the victim this time a girl named “Collins”from Woodstock, Ontario. Her body was described as being found with the knees tucked up under the body, and her burial shroud “torn into shreds.”

In 2005, a bodybag was delivered to the Matarese Funeral home in Ashland, Massachusetts with an alive occupant. Funeral director John Matarese discovered this, called paramedics, and avoided live embalming or premature burial…

As for Max, he lived, in Clinton, Iowa, to nearly ninety!

That’s not very old compared to some animals such as whales, which minus Japanese harpoons can reach two hundred, and flatworms, which have such powers of regeneration they are almost immortal, whereas accumulated DNA damage limits human longevity. The oldest plant? Up there on the list is the Great Basin bristlecone pine. Biologists trudging up the highest mountains in California found one that at last count was more than five thousand years old, dating back, almost, by Christian reckoning, to Noah — and even the Garden!

In Sweden is a spruce that may be nearly twice that age. But let’s keep this to humans: In the Himalayas of Pakistan, near the borders of Afghanistan and China, are the Hunzas, a valley-dwelling people who imbibe pure glacial water and live between one hundred fifty and two hundred years. Some debunk the notion. Others say their physical exertion and diet (turnips, pomegranates, especially apricot pits) are the key to their alleged life spans. Is it all about food?

In Indonesia a man named Sodimedjo had a residency card showing that he was born in 1870. That’s when Ulysses Grant was U.S. president! He ate healthy but was a heavy smoker. Since he died in 2017, that meant Sodimedjo was 146 years young, old enough to have been Jeanne Calment’s father. “Life is only a matter,” he believed, “of accepting your destiny” (we’d put it “accepting God’s destiny”).

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