Is there a limit to the number of years a person can survive? Is there an age for people to say “they can live up to this age”?
The question of whether there is a limit to human lifespan and what this limit is has been plaguing people for a very long time. A new statistical study suggests that if there is a maximum limit to human lifespan, we are still far from reaching that limit.
Estimates of human lifespan have increased throughout recorded history. It is said that the Jews of the Bronze Age thought the maximum human lifespan to be 80 years. 1,000 years later, the Romans were united in the idea that this was 100 years.
Oldest known person: Jeanne Calment
The industrialized modern age, on the other hand, pushes this frontier further with the development of medical knowledge and improved social care. The oldest person ever recorded, Jeanne Calment, died in 1997 at the age of 122. However, according to this latest research, the record holder may change in the near future and the concept of the oldest person may be moved to a whole new dimension.
To arrive at these findings, researchers from the University of South Florida and the University of Georgia scrutinized historical and current data on people aged 50 to 100 in 19 industrialized countries around the world. Their goal was to find out whether the continued increase in lifespan over the past century has reached a plateau, indicating that we are approaching the maximum limit of lifespan.
Their statistical analysis showed that some people born before 1950 could break longevity records for years to come if their health was guaranteed by political and economic stability.
Looking at current trends, it seems likely that someone born in the 1930s or 1940s will break the world record in the coming years. “Japanese women, who are very close to reaching longevity records, are at the forefront of this phenomenon,” add the study’s authors.
Researchers do not claim that the endpoint of human lifespan will increase forever, and they believe that at some point we may reach the maximum lifespan. However, it remains unclear how far this limit is.
The researchers note that those born between 1900 and 1950 experienced an increase in life expectancy not seen before in history, but are now too young to set any records. These people are expected to raise the bar quickly by breaking life records in the coming years.
Maximum lifespan of the human body
In 2021, another study claimed that the maximum lifespan of the human body was 150 years. Unlike the last study, which looked only at statistical trends, that research tackled the question from a biomedical perspective.
This debate doesn’t look like it will end anytime soon. Some scientists argue that there is a maximum lifespan limit, while others argue that there is no evidence that such a strict barrier exists. Those who think there is no limit argue that biomedical breakthroughs and technological advances have the potential to allow us to live forever.
50926
