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A supercentenarian (sometimes hyphenated as super-centenarian) is someone who has reached the age of 110 years or more, something achieved by only one in a thousand centenarians (based on European data). Furthermore, only 2% of supercentenarians live to be 115.
The term has been around at least since the 1970s (as one citation, Norris McWhirter, editor of the Guinness Book of World Records, used the word in correspondence with age claims researcher A. Ross Eckler, Jr. in 1976), and was further popularized in 1991 by William Strauss and Neil Howe in their book entitled Generations. Early references tend to mean simply "someone well over 100," but the 110-and-over cutoff is the accepted criterion of demographers.citation needed
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History
While claims of extreme age have persisted from the earliest times in history, the earliest supercentenarian accepted by Guinness World Records is Dutchman Thomas Peters, who was born on April 6, 1745, and died on March 26, 1857 at almost 112 years of age. (Guinness once accepted Pierre Joubert, but later dropped him, when it was discovered that he had been confused with his father). Scholars such as Frenchman Jean-Marie Robine, however, consider Geert Adriaans Boomgaard (1788–1899), also of the Netherlands, to be the first verifiable case, as the alleged evidence for Peters has been 'lost'.
If Peters is discounted then the first 111th birthdays were celebrated in New York State in 1926, first by Louisa Thiers, and then Delina Filkins of Herkimer County. She was born on May 4, 1815 and died on December 4, 1928 having reached the age of 113. The Guinness Book of World Records accepted the claim of Martha Graham as the first ever 114-year-old. The Social Security Administration recognizes Mathew Beard as having attained the same age in 1984, but the earliest fully validated case is the one of Anna Eliza Williams in 1987.
Guinness also recognized in 1978 the claim that Shigechiyo Izumi was born on June 29, 1865, and from the 1980 edition considered him the oldest person. He died on February 21, 1986 (the 111th birthday of Jeanne Calment). However, subsequent research by some Japanese scholars has suggested that he may have been 105, as his birth certificate is believed to refer to that of his older brother who died young, and whose name might have been reused as a necronym.
Like Izumi, Carrie C. White is recognized by Guinness to have reached the ages of 115 and 116, but scholars believe these were Jeanne Calment's first milestones. Her 122 years 164 days is the longest lifespan documented beyond reasonable doubt. Over one thousand supercentenarians have been documented in history, and this is certainly a fraction of the number who have really lived, but the majority of claims to this age do not have sufficient documentary support to be validated. This is slowly changing as those born after birth registration was standardized in more countries and parts of countries attain supercentenarian age.
Oldest people
References
- Louis Epstein: The Oldest Human Beings — list of validly-documented supercentenarians (by age and chronological), including a chronological list of the oldest living listed persons since 1955. (For a time in the 1960s the oldest living person did not reach 110.)
External links
- Characteristics of Supercentenarians
- Supercentenarian Research Foundation
- International Database on Longevity
- Gerontology Research Group
Wikipedia content modification information:
- This page was last modified on 6 October 2008, at 06:50.
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