Age 116, Kane Tanaka of Japan was recently crowned the oldest person on Earth. She’s six years shy of the longest human life on record: 122 years and 164 days reached by a French woman, Jeanne Louise Calment, before her death in 1997.
While turning 100 can get you a shout out on the Today show, there’s nothing newsworthy about surviving into your 70s. That’s just expected based on life expectancy. In the United States, on average, newborn males live to 76 years and females to 81, according to the latest statistics from the National Center for Health Statistics. For most of the past century life expectancy has been increasing, thanks to improved healthcare, hygiene and nutrition.
But what about before the advent of modernity, say, 30,000 years before? It’s a question many scientists have tried to answer — whether ancient Homo sapiensperished in their 30s or lived on into the autumn of their lives.
Just how old is old age?
