[HN Gopher] Was Jeanne Calment (longest living well documented p... ___________________________________________________________________ Was Jeanne Calment (longest living well documented person) actually two people? Author : briefcomment Score : 54 points Date : 2021-07-26 21:03 UTC (1 hours ago) (HTM) web link (yurideigin.medium.com) (TXT) w3m dump (yurideigin.medium.com) | adolph wrote: | For a moment I thought the claim was Calment was a chimera as | well as a long-lived person. | | _A chimera is essentially a single organism that 's made up of | cells from two or more "individuals"--that is, it contains two | sets of DNA, with the code to make two separate organisms._ | | _One way that chimeras can happen naturally in humans is that a | fetus can absorb its twin. This can occur with fraternal twins, | if one embryo dies very early in pregnancy, and some of its cells | are "absorbed" by the other twin. The remaining fetus will have | two sets of cells, its own original set, plus the one from its | twin._ | | https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/3-human-chimeras-... | | Unfortunately the claim is more like identity theft. Much less | interesting biologically. | laurensr wrote: | From the article, albeit a bit... buried: There is a petition to | exhume the bodies and confirm the identity theft | | https://www.change.org/p/m-emmanuel-macron-p%C3%A9tition-en-... | chrisbolt wrote: | Has a change.org petition ever done... anything? | Bayart wrote: | A minor pet peeve of mine : I would like English-speaking writers | to stop using the term << Victorian >> for places that are not | Britain or the British Empire. There was no Queen Victoria, no | Victorian era, no Victorian spirit in France. Indeed it was a | time of humiliation, political instability and rampant | nationalism, albeit on a canvas of industry. | david-gpu wrote: | It's a bit like asking people not to use the Gregorian calendar | in places that are not predominantly Christian. | | We have to adapt our language to the person we are | communicating with, and if they are familiar with the time | frame associated with Queen Victoria, I can see how it makes | sense to use it. We could refer to the period of Isabella II of | Spain, but they wouldn't understand us, so it would be rather | pointless. | nescioquid wrote: | I'm a native English-speaker, and the use of the term | similarly annoys me, though only just a little. Why not be | clearer an simply say "19th century" (early/mid/late)? | | Reminds me of the story of the British headline "Fog in | channel -- continent cut off". | skissane wrote: | > It's a bit like asking people not to use the Gregorian | calendar in places that are not predominantly Christian. | | I think it is different in that numbering years is useful, | and we need to have an agreed starting point, and by | historical accident we've all adopted an estimated (albeit | likely incorrect) birth year for the founder of one of the | world's major religions. It is hard to pick a culturally- | neutral starting point - astronomers sometimes use the Julian | period starting at 4713 BCE, but while that is more | religiously neutral it still isn't culturally neutral. (It is | based partially on astronomy, but also partly on the taxation | cycle of the ancient Roman Empire, and that's still Western- | centric.) | | By contrast, applying _names_ to periods of time is far less | useful and far less portable across cultures. The 1800s | looked very different in different parts of the world, but it | was the same 100 year span everywhere. And we only do this | for a handful of historical periods anyway (mostly seem to be | named after British monarchs - Victorian, Georgian, | Edwardian, etc). Applying those period names to places | outside the British Empire is a bit like applying Japanese | era names to European history. The whole thing of historical | era names seems to be somewhat dying anyway - references to | decades (the 1990s, the 1920s, etc) seems more popular in | discussing more recent history - the Elizabethan era was in | the 16th and very early 17th century, not in the 20th and | early 21st. | | > We have to adapt our language to the person we are | communicating with, and if they are familiar with the time | frame associated with Queen Victoria, I can see how it makes | sense to use it. We could refer to the period of Isabella II | of Spain, but they wouldn't understand us, so it would be | rather pointless. | | "mid-to-late 19th century" covers roughly the same timeframe, | and everyone knows what that is. | dragonwriter wrote: | > By contrast, applying names to periods of time is far | less useful and far less portable across cultures. The | 1800s looked very different in different parts of the | world, but it was the same 100 year span everywhere. And we | only do this for a handful of historical periods anyway | (mostly seem to be named after British monarchs - | Victorian, Georgian, Edwardian, etc). Applying those period | names to places outside the British Empire is a bit like | applying Japanese era names to European history. | | Sure, but a lot more of the world was part of the British | Empire during those periods than has ever been part of the | Japanese (and there's a lot of second-order uses for | cultural/artistic trends that originated in the British | world of those times but are found elsewhere, e.g., | "Victorian architecture".) | philwelch wrote: | It's still a political decision though. The Romans would | elect new consuls each year so instead of numbering their | years, they just designated them by whoever were the two | consuls that year. Later scholars numbered the years since | the supposed founding of Rome. The French Revolutionaries | created a calendar where Year 1 was the founding of the | First Republic, but it didn't catch on. | lmilcin wrote: | Gregorian calendar was directly adopted in many places. It is | still Gregorian calendar in France as is Ming vase sitting in | a museum in New York. Arabic numerals used on Space Station | do not stop being arabic just because there is no Arab in | sight. | philwelch wrote: | My impression of the Victorian era is that the British Empire | dominated world affairs for most of that period, making them a | natural centre of attention for historians of that period. | | You don't have to look too long before the Victorian era to | find an era where France is the undisputed center of attention | in Western history. | trishika wrote: | https://academic.oup.com/biomedgerontology/article/74/Supple... | lacker wrote: | I am convinced that Jeanne Calment was actually two people. She | is a fairly strange outlier in the record of the oldest people: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_verified_oldest_pe... | | The oldest person on record is Jeanne at 122, then one 119, then | one 118, then the next seven are at 117, then the next thirteen | are at 116. She's just an extreme outlier from the rest of the | distribution. | | Also, in the 25 years since Calment, the distribution of | subsequent extremely old people has seemed unchanged. Nobody has | gotten any closer to Calment, although we've had far more people | in the 114-117 range. It all points to a faked data point. | laurent123456 wrote: | If this theory is true I guess it means she died at around 100, | which is still honourable. | | It would have been interesting if she had lived to 120 like a | real supercentenarian, which means the fake age of 142. Then at | least we would have been sure that something's off. | alain94040 wrote: | Debunked, see study mentioned in https://www.bbc.com/news/world- | europe-49746060 | arnaudsm wrote: | Fake supercentenarians have been used by multiple governments in | the past to glorify their lifestyle. USSR did the same, claiming | that Shirali Muslimov reached 168. China also has fake "longevity | villages" that draw some tourism. | kevinpet wrote: | I read up on this when the article first came out, and what | really stood out was the way the supports of Calment's claim / | debunkers of the new theory would ignore how their supposed | evidence did or did not fit in. IIRC, the Guinness authenticator | talked a lot about how they authenticated the birth records and | other types of records, which is irrelevant to this particular | claim. | j_leboulanger wrote: | I feel like the pictures shown on the article demonstrate the | opposite of the author theory. | | When the author writes things like "undeniable", the resemblance | is more questionable than undeniable when he tries to match the | pictures of Yvonne with the ones of the 122 years old women. | | I was not convinced at all by the article. | | Moreover in such a rich family in France, changing identity like | this would have been spotted really quickly. | alpaca128 wrote: | I agree that some of the photo comparisons were weird. | | The rest however was indeed very convincing to me. Mismatched | eye color, height and appearance untypical of that age, and | cognitive tests that estimated a much younger age? That's not | something you can just discard imho, and those are the metrics | you can hardly fake. | | > changing identity like this would have been spotted really | quickly. | | Unless the people close to her didn't have an interest in | spilling the beans. | fieryskiff11 wrote: | Evidence That Jeanne Calment Died in 1934--Not 1997 | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6424156/ | rscoots wrote: | I remember seeing this article awhile back. | | Really made me realize that sometimes simple, trivial things that | everyone takes as fact really cannot be trusted. | | The notion that Coco the gorilla could do sign language was | another one that stuck with me. | | Anyways, I think the best evidence 'against' Jeanne is that no | other super-old person simply looked (both outwardly and | physiologically) like someone 20 years thier junior. All the | medical evidence points to her not actually being the age she | claimed she was. | | I'm of the opinion the 2nd place woman is also not legitimate. | She probably just lied about her age so she could marry and then | lived incredibly long. | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Knauss | joshuaissac wrote: | > I'm of the opinion the 2nd place woman is also not | legitimate. She probably just lied about her age so she could | marry and then lived incredibly long. | | From that link: | | > The 1891 directory records that the 1890 US census listed | Sarah D. Clark as age 10, which is roughly consistent with a | September 1880 birth date. | rscoots wrote: | Yea, looks like that source came out Dec 2019 which is after | I first looked into this. | | Very interesting & well written write up! Even though | Wikipedia says "Better source needed" for whatever reason. | | The author still casts a good amount of doubt on her claim | though, and even assuming the existing evidence is correct | she still couldve been 116 it says. | | But yea as long as you don't have birth certificates or | baptism records I guess that would always be true. | dredmorbius wrote: | There's the observation that the one modern social phenomenon | that's been most strongly associated with a reduction in the | number of superannuated persons in a population is accurate | demographic recordkeeping. | | See, e.g., | https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2019/08/06/are-superc... | xdennis wrote: | This is like the UFO observation: camera sensors have | improved, but UFO videos stay the same (low details and | ambiguous). | astrange wrote: | > Really made me realize that sometimes simple, trivial things | that everyone takes as fact really cannot be trusted. | | One I've noticed is "Einstein was super smart" when a simpler | theory is "Einstein didn't cite prior work so everyone thought | he did it." ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-07-26 23:00 UTC)