There are some good points made above.

To take some of them slightly further it's worth noting that; (post the recent Welford validation).

1. Christian Mortensen was the 8th oldest (of all time) when he died in 1998. - Now 36

2. Jiroemon Kimura got to number 9 when he passed in 2013 - Now 26.

3. Anisio Rodriguez Alves (Pending but very plausible) could be the all time number 6 when he died, in 2009. Now 18.

4. Even Emiliano Mercado del Toro (never the WOMOAT) seems to have been at 12 when he died in 2007. Now 45.

Using the top 3 as a broad indicator only, a spot between 6 and 9 (let's be conservative at 8-9) may suggest a male could have made 117-125 to 117-175, by now. Hence just in that regard, 117.0 is somewhere between 'due' and 'overdue'. BUT ...

Despite the unvalidated cases noted, a key issue is that the above 4 (3 validated + 1 pending) still remain the outliers for men. This is despite an average deceased period of circa 18 years (range of 11-26 yrs).

115.0 can still be considered the 'outlier' requirement for males - just as it would have been fifteen to twenty years years ago. (and only JVPM got close). Even the other 2 big pending cases (HCM and TPF) will only entrench 114.5 to circa 114.7, if validated.

By comparison, we can look at the female progression over, say the past 15 years.

With the exception of JC at 122, there was one 119 year old, zero 118 year olds and 2 117 year olds.  All of these were outliers.

Those figures are now 2, 1 and 8 women respectively and no one at 117 can be considered an outlier now, due to the depth of candidates within, above, and just below this age. The outlier status for women is now probably not less than 118.5.   

116 is even more extreme - with 15 of the 18 people (living or deceased) at this age, having come along in the past 15 years. - and all but Tane Ikai within the last 18 years. So all in all higher ages (longer lives at extreme ages) are slowly becoming more entrenched for women, over this period.

Coming back to the men

With no one even getting to 115 for over a dozen years now, the prospect of a 117 year old still seems very remote as - men are not getting within 2 years of this milestone recently - let alone achieving it. 

I believe an unvalidated (or unvalidatable) case may have occurred - but sadly I struggle to see a 117 year old male validated in the next 5-10 years.  On a lighter note, I look forward to being proved wrong.

To elaborate on what @ChrisR said above, I think that the first 117+ year-old validated man might very well come from Latin America (short of any surprise cases being validated) due to the sheer fact that most validated 113+ year-old men who were born in the 20th century (1901 and later) were from Latin America. I think that only Israel Kristal, Masazo Nonaka, and Francisco Nunez Olivera were not Latin American out of the validated 113+ year-old men who were born in the 20th century, and even Mr. Nunez Olivera shares a lot of his ancestry with Latin Americans in spite of him not personally being Latin American.

I totally agree with @chrisr and @futurist

Just my opinion, but when the day comes when we actually get a verifiable 117 year old man, these are some things that I expect to probably occur/happen.

- The man will be from most likely Japan/Brazil or Latin America somewhere. 

- Given my calculations of how a 117 year old man should've been born between 1906 and 1911, I think we can say it is with high likelihood that he will be born sometime in the 1910s decade, and become the first man to reach his 117th birthday sometime in the 2030s. 

- He will likely outlive every other male from his birthyear, and at least 2-3 years after. Example: if he was born in say 1915, his successor would likely be born in 1918/1919.

- Given the fact at how unlikely it is for a man to hold the title of WOLM for over 3 years, our 117 year old man will likely gain the title at or around 114.5-114.9, and hold the title for around 2 years and 200+ days.

- He will be in the Top 3 OLP. Maybe not the WOLP, or the vice-WOLP, but absolutely in the Top 3, just like feats held by Mortensen, Celi Mendoza, and Breuning. 

- He will probably reach the top 10 list of Oldest Ever, and close the gap between Mrs. Morano and Mrs. Brown by reaching an age between 117/137 and 117/189. If not, he will hold 12th place by closing the gap between Mrs. Okawa and Mrs. Welford. Remember, when Chris reached 115, and Jiroemon reached 116,  they were in the Top 10. A man reaching 117, would only be at place 13 (117/0 to 117/26). A much more likely event, than what was reached by Chris and Jiroemon!

Posted by: @futurist

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Posted by: @mendocino

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Posted by: @futurist

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BTW, Andrew Hatch wasn't *conclusively* debunked. We have a 1940 US Census entry indicating that he was around 111 or 112 at the time of his death, but nothing at all from before that point in time. So, we just don't know for sure how old he was. He likely wasn't 117 based on statistical odds alone, though.

There's a video of him on Facebook from June 2013, where he's walking around slowly with a cane and almost dancing. To me, his movements definitely don't appear like a 114.5 year old's. His age instead being around 108 at the time is definitely a lot more reasonable. 

-- attachment is not available --

 

 

He might have been even younger than 108 in 2013. We don't know if he began inflating his age before 1940.

It's very regretful that there don't appear to any US Census entries for him from before 1940, at least none that we know of. Even if he was an illegitimate child, one would think that he would have been enumerated somewhere else, right?

 

Of course, if he only adopted the last name of Hatch in adulthood, then he might have had a different last name in his childhood. This is just a conjecture on my own part, of course. No evidence yet to back this up.

Posted by: @chrisr

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There are some good points made above.

To take some of them slightly further it's worth noting that; (post the recent Welford validation).

1. Christian Mortensen was the 8th oldest (of all time) when he died in 1998. - Now 36

2. Jiroemon Kimura got to number 9 when he passed in 2013 - Now 26.

3. Anisio Rodriguez Alves (Pending but very plausible) could be the all time number 6 when he died, in 2009. Now 18.

4. Even Emiliano Mercado del Toro (never the WOMOAT) seems to have been at 12 when he died in 2007. Now 45.

 

Using the top 3 as a broad indicator only, a spot between 6 and 9 (let's be conservative at 8-9) may suggest a male could have made 117-125 to 117-175, by now. Hence just in that regard, 117.0 is somewhere between 'due' and 'overdue'. BUT ...

Despite the unvalidated cases noted, a key issue is that the above 4 (3 validated + 1 pending) still remain the outliers for men. This is despite an average deceased period of circa 18 years (range of 11-26 yrs).

115.0 can still be considered the 'outlier' requirement for males - just as it would have been fifteen to twenty years years ago. (and only JVPM got close). Even the other 2 big pending cases (HCM and TPF) will only entrench 114.5 to circa 114.7, if validated.

By comparison, we can look at the female progression over, say the past 15 years.

With the exception of JC at 122, there was one 119 year old, zero 118 year olds and 2 117 year olds.  All of these were outliers.

Those figures are now 2, 1 and 8 women respectively and no one at 117 can be considered an outlier now, due to the depth of candidates within, above, and just below this age. The outlier status for women is now probably not less than 118.5.   

116 is even more extreme - with 15 of the 18 people (living or deceased) at this age, having come along in the past 15 years. - and all but Tane Ikai within the last 18 years. So all in all higher ages (longer lives at extreme ages) are slowly becoming more entrenched for women, over this period.

Coming back to the men

With no one even getting to 115 for over a dozen years now, the prospect of a 117 year old still seems very remote as - men are not getting within 2 years of this milestone recently - let alone achieving it. 

I believe an unvalidated (or unvalidatable) case may have occurred - but sadly I struggle to see a 117 year old male validated in the next 5-10 years.  On a lighter note, I look forward to being proved wrong.

To elaborate on your point here, Chris, it's primarily the Latin American men who are doing well for male SCs born in the 20th century. For male SCs born in 1901 (the start of the 20th century or later) and who lived to age 113+, all but three (Kristal, Nonaka, and Nunez Olivera) were Latin American, no? And of course Nunez Olivera was Spanish and thus shares ancestry with a lot of Latin Americans.

For non-Latin American male SCs born in the 20th century, even living to age 113 is a challenge, let alone living to age 114+. If we're going to have a future validatable 117+ year-old man, especially in the near future, the odds might be decent that he will come from somewhere in Latin America. Of course, an alternate possibility is somewhere in East Asia.

Posted by: @aq

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I totally agree with @chrisr and @futurist 

Just my opinion, but when the day comes when we actually get a verifiable 117 year old man, these are some things that I expect to probably occur/happen.

- The man will be from most likely Japan/Brazil or Latin America somewhere. 

- Given my calculations of how a 117 year old man should've been born between 1906 and 1911, I think we can say it is with high likelihood that he will be born sometime in the 1910s decade, and become the first man to reach his 117th birthday sometime in the 2030s. 

- He will likely outlive every other male from his birthyear, and at least 2-3 years after. Example: if he was born in say 1915, his successor would likely be born in 1918/1919.

- Given the fact at how unlikely it is for a man to hold the title of WOLM for over 3 years, our 117 year old man will likely gain the title at or around 114.5-114.9, and hold the title for around 2 years and 200+ days.

- He will be in the Top 3 OLP. Maybe not the WOLP, or the vice-WOLP, but absolutely in the Top 3, just like feats held by Mortensen, Celi Mendoza, and Breuning. 

- He will probably reach the top 10 list of Oldest Ever, and close the gap between Mrs. Morano and Mrs. Brown by reaching an age between 117/137 and 117/189. If not, he will hold 12th place by closing the gap between Mrs. Okawa and Mrs. Welford. Remember, when Chris reached 115, and Jiroemon reached 116,  they were in the Top 10. A man reaching 117, would only be at place 13 (117/0 to 117/26). A much more likely event, than what was reached by Chris and Jiroemon!

Brazil is in Latin America. But Yes, I agree with this analysis with the caveat that this man can acquire the WOLM title even at a relatively young age, such as 111 or 112. Christian Mortensen acquired the WOLM title at 111, for instance, and Anisio Rodrigues Alves would have also acquired it at age 111 if it wasn't for the existence of Emiliano Mercado del Toro.

A man reaching age 117+ has decent odds of becoming the WOLP, honestly. Maybe 50% odds or at least 33% odds.

Posted by: @mendocino

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Posted by: @beaumont

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I think you need to realise why it is that there are hardly any claimants that “come out of nowhere” that turn out to be true. Calment did not just claim to be 122 in 1997, she also claimed to be 100 in 1975, and 101 in 1976, and so on and so on.

One of the key tells with false claimants is why haven’t they had coverage when reaching previous extreme ages? If someone suddenly declares they are 122, why didn’t we hear about them at 120? 115? 110? 108? 

I don’t think we would necessarily dismiss a 122 year old claimant instantly, but it’s never a good sign if that’s the first we’ve heard from them.

It's actually quite uncommon for someone to spontaneously start claiming an extreme age, after claiming to be born at a later date for their entire life up to that point. Typically, their claimed age will be based on some sort of mid-life documentation, such as a delayed birth record or an ID card. Most SC claims from Latin America have an ID card from at least a few decades earlier, proving that they had been claiming to be that old for a while, but that doesn't really give further support for their age, unless it happens to be a very early ID card (some Colombian cases have ID cards from the mid 1950s). They might seemingly "appear out of nowhere" because their age wasn't seen as newsworthy by the media up until that point.  

From my experience, the vast majority of false longevity claims aren't the the product of intentional, late-life age inflation, but instead were the result of illiteracy and poor documentation. You'll sometimes see people claiming to be older than what their documentation states, usually with the excuse that their birth was "registered late", but they would've probably been claiming that long before their supposed age became noteworthy. 

One exception to this would be the more religiously-motivated claims, typically from Asia, where being extremely old would be seen as a sign of wisdom and enlightenment, but those seem to be less common now.

What do you make of the Secundina Nieves Camarena (1891?-2005) case, Mendocino? The GRG validated her and she does have an SSA application from the 1960s which matches a baptismal record from the early 1890s, but she also consistently claimed a birth date of around 1904 from 1921 until his death in 2005, which raises the question of whether she was actually born in 1891 or in 1904. There's a theory that she significantly deflated her age in order to marry a much younger man, and that her marriage was significantly delayed by the turmoil of the Mexican Revolution (1910-1921), and I and @Fish looked for plausible identitiy switch candidates for her among her siblings but could only find Carolina, a sister who was just two years younger than her (so, instead of almost 114, she'd have been 112 if this identity switch would have been true--still a SC. But what would have been the incentive?). All of her remaining sisters had documentation extending after 1921, so they couldn't have stolen her identity.

Would a cousin of hers have stolen her identity, or what?