The Distribution of Senescence 



human age to be authenticated with reasonable certainty has 

 been said to be 120 years (Fisher, 1923). A considerable num- 

 ber of cases between 110 and 115 years have also stood up to 

 examination (e.g. Bowerman, 1939; Backman, 1945; Koren- 

 chevsky, 1947). The greatest age to be authenticated in Eng- 

 land and Wales by actual birth certificate, however, is 109 

 years, while in one case the absence of a birth certificate 

 indicated an age in excess of 1 1 1 years. 



Claims of extreme longevity in particular districts abound. 

 Metchnikoff investigated statements of this kind in Bulgaria 

 and the Caucasus. Bazilievitch (1938a, b) led an expedition to 

 investigate the celebrated longevity of Abkhasians, and ex- 

 amined several claimants in detail. Two of these were reputed 

 to be over 130 years old. The evidence (identity papers and 

 memory of events in the Caucasus during the early nineteenth 

 century) is given by Bazilievitch in careful detail; much of it is 

 extremely entertaining, but far from conclusive, although the 

 subjects were certainly very old men (Bazilievitch, 1938b). 1 In 

 recent years very large numbers of claims to extreme longevity 

 have been made in Russia (e.g. Rokhlina, 1951; Nagornyi, 

 1948; Lukyanov, 1952; Nikitin, 1954). Dealing with the figures 

 in the 1926 census of the U.S.S.R., which showed proportions 

 of 3-5 and 3-8 centenarians per thousand gross population in 

 Daghestan and Abkhasia respectively, as to 1-8 per million 

 among Volga Germans, Tomilin (1938) says 'We must doubt 

 the factual truth of these figures, since no documentary evidence 

 of the age of persons who had passed the century mark was 

 produced.' The analysed distribution of age-groups in the 

 Abkhasian census shows exactly the same deficiency in the 

 85-89 and 95-99 year groups, compared with the 90-94 and 

 100+ groups, which was observed by King (1911) in England. 

 'Without special documentary evidence of the accuracy of these 

 age-data, we cannot conclude definitely that the relative num- 

 ber of persons reaching the age of 100 and over in the general 



1 Prof. G. Z. Pitshelaouri, of Tbilisi University, who very kindly showed 

 me his unpublished data on the longevity of Abkhasians, has found several 

 subjects whose reputed age exceeds 130 years and is colourably supported 

 by baptismal registers — one man still living took part in, and accurately 

 describes, the Crimean war of 1 854-56. I have failed to obtain a paper by 

 Mishaikov (1929) giving statistics for centenarians in Bulgaria. 



61 



