The Historical View on Longevity

The Guinness Book of World Records establishes an achievement based on documentation. Their documentation is rooted in a scientific process of collecting of data. Currently, Guinness has declared Jeanne Calment as the oldest person to ever live in modern times. But an Indonesian man named Mbah Gotho has Indonesian documentation that states he died at 146 years old. But that documentation is not acceptable to Guinness, so when and until creditable evidence emerges Jeanne is the longevity queen.

But for billions of Christians around the world Methuselah has the record for the oldest living human of all time at 969 years old and its documentation is the Bible and more specifically the book of Genesis. Guinness doesn’t recognize Genesis, so Jeanne is still the poster child of human longevity and in comparison to Methuselah she was just a child at 122 years old. The living and reigning champion of the geriatric set is Jamaica’s Violet Brown at 117 years old. That makes her a centenarian teenager! But recently America’s “Old Suzanna” Jones died at 116 years old and she was not only a centenarian teenager, she was a tri-centurion born in 1899. 

These may be outliers and anomalies in the big picture of human mortality, but they may also be the harbingers of those yet to come, and not that far into the future. Doctor Aubrey De Grey has stated that the first person to live 150 years has most likely already been born. That’s somewhat of a shocker! But De Grey goes on to say that the first person to live 1,000 years will be born in the next two decades. Astonishing! He believes the rejuvenating breakthroughs on the horizon could reverse human aging in our lifetime. Now Methuselah doesn’t seem so far fetched any longer, even to the skeptic. Methuselah, was the Millennial Man of the past and now perhaps will have a future rival.

Whatever environment existed in the ante-diluvium period, it fostered serious longevity. In contrast, whatever changed in the post-diluvium period caused a marked decrease in human longevity. Interestingly, in Genesis chapter six, God seems to speak into the future that mankind’s life span will be 120 years. There is some dispute on the actual interpretation, but it could be referring to the average life expectancy. But if that changes the new frontiers of human longevity will impact retirement in a revolutionary way!