Is It Possible That In Antiquity People Lived Longer Than 200 Years - Alternative View

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Is It Possible That In Antiquity People Lived Longer Than 200 Years - Alternative View
Is It Possible That In Antiquity People Lived Longer Than 200 Years - Alternative View

Video: Is It Possible That In Antiquity People Lived Longer Than 200 Years - Alternative View

Video: Is It Possible That In Antiquity People Lived Longer Than 200 Years - Alternative View
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Mentions of people who have lived for 900 years or more are not only in the Bible. Ancient texts belonging to a wide variety of cultures tell of elders whose age seems completely impossible to modern man.

Mentions of people who have lived for 900 years or more are not only in the Bible. Ancient texts belonging to a wide variety of cultures tell of elders whose age seems completely impossible to modern man. Some explain this by translation errors, while others argue that numbers for our ancestors had a purely symbolic meaning. However, against each of these arguments, there are always a number of counterarguments that give historians reason to make a timid assumption: what if the truth of human life has decreased so dramatically over the past millennia?

For example:

One possible explanation is that in ancient times in the Middle East, the concept of a year could be very different from how we understand a year today. Perhaps the ancients called the year the cycle of the Moon (that is, one month), and not the time during which the Earth revolves around the Sun (that is, 12 months).

If we adopt this theory, it turns out that Adam lived not 930, but 77 years, much more acceptable for our consciousness. However, then it turns out that he became a father at the age of 11. And Enoch conceived Methuselah at the age of five. Similar inconsistencies arise when trying to represent an ancient year, for example, as what we call a season. A plausible picture is also not obtained with any other attempts to compare the age of people from ancient texts with certain models of life of modern people (for example, when dividing the indicated age by a certain number).

Mathematical models

In two ancient documents belonging to different cultures - the Bible and the List of the Kings of Sumer and Akkad (compiled about four thousand years ago), the lifespan of some characters of which reaches several thousand years. In both texts, according to analysts, squares of numbers were used.

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In both documents, one can trace a marked decrease in life expectancy over time. The list of the kings of Sumer and Akkad, moreover, separates the reigns before and after the Flood. The kings who ruled before the Flood lived much longer, although after it the life expectancy reached several hundred years, or even exceeded a thousand.

The Bible also traces a gradual decline in life expectancy - from Adam (930 years) and Noah (500 years) to Abraham (175 years).

A specialist at Brandeis University (Massachusetts, USA) analyzed the age to which, according to the List of the Kings of Sumer and Akkad, rulers lived after the Flood. He drew attention to the fact that the age of a king named Etana who lived the longest life in this segment (1560 years) is the sum of the ages of his two predecessors. Some of the numbers seem to be obtained by simply multiplying by 60. Other large numbers are squares of far more plausible numbers: 900 is 30 squared; 625 is 25 squared; 400 is 20 squared.

On the other hand, according to the findings of Texas expert Arthur Mendes, the rate of decline in the life expectancy of characters from ancient documents after the Flood is comparable to the rate of extinction of organisms that were exposed to radiation or toxic substances.

Life expectancy of the ancients in other cultures, including Chinese and Persian

In ancient China, super-longevity was also common, according to many texts. According to medical records, a doctor named Xu Wentse from the Qin Dynasty lived to be 300 years old. Guy Yul from the late Han dynasty died at 280 years old, the Taoist monk Hu Cao at 290 years old, and so on. And in our times, a Chinese doctor named Luo Mingshan from Sichuan province happily lived to be 124 years old.

In China, the key to eastern longevity is said to be "nourishing life." And here it is not only about proper nutrition for the body, but also about taking care of food for the mind and soul equally.

Modern centenarians

Even now, according to some evidence, people live up to 150 years and even longer. True, as a rule, reports of such centenarians come from sparsely populated regions, where documentation is kept somehow. Now in such remote settlements even less attention is paid to documents than a century ago, so it is very difficult to prove the truth of the declared age of centenarians.

One such long-liver lives in a remote village of Nepal, and his name is Narayan Chodhari. In 1996, he claimed to be 141 years old. If this is true, then Chodhari broke the Guinness World Record for 20 years. But the long-liver cannot prove this - he has no documents. The only confirmation he has is the collective memory of his native village. Almost all the old people in the area remember Chodhari in his childhood, and even then he was a very old man. According to local residents, in 1888 this person was already working - he took part in the country's first survey. According to their estimates, at that time he should have been at least 21 years old. Chodhari himself assures that that year he was 33, and he was a convinced bachelor.

In the Caucasus, there are also many old people who claim that they are over 170 years old, but these statements can also neither be confirmed nor refuted, since they have no documents. As a rule, these are people who, from a young age to the very old age, lived very modestly and unhurriedly, day after day they performed hard physical work, often in nature. They ate simple food, and were always surrounded by numerous relatives.

Faith matters

In China, adherents of Taoism associated longevity with "inner alchemy", harmony between body and mind. It was believed that God gave the ancients more time for their outstanding virtues, and food in those times was more suitable for a long life.

Modern researchers can either believe that the ancient records and the collective memory of distant villages really testify to the incomprehensible life expectancy of the ancients, or look for symbolism, translation flaws or exaggeration in the numbers of ancient documents. For many, the longevity of our ancestors is still only a matter of faith.

Seva Bardin