While experts in various fields attempt to uncover the secret of centenarians who have lived beyond a hundred years, Australian researcher Sol Newman believes he has found the answer.
Newman noticed that most of the record-holding centenarians tend to reside in impoverished areas, where access to healthy food, a high standard of living, and quality medical care is certainly lacking.
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The answer, according to Newman, turned out to be simpler than expected. A large number of these centenarians had no official documents confirming their birth dates. Estimates of their age were often based on witness testimony from their community, which couldn’t accurately remember when or why people started believing their elderly relative or neighbor had lived for 110 years or more.
Newman pointed out that many of these supposed long-livers are found in regions where people rarely even reach the average life expectancy, such as Thailand, Malawi in Africa, or Western Sahara, a region with no recognized government and no formal system of citizen records.
What’s more, even centenarians from wealthy and well-developed countries often lack birth certificates.
“In the United States, there are over 500 of these individuals. Only seven of them have birth certificates,” Newman stated.
His logical conclusion is that many people are labeled as centenarians due to errors in their personal records or the complete absence of documents verifying their birth date.
Amusingly, despite the plausibility of his discovery, Sol Justin Newman was awarded the Ig Nobel Prize, a playful alternative to the prestigious Nobel Prize, during the ceremony held at MIT in September.
