A new study has found that the absolute limit to human lifespan is no more than 125 years.
Scientists at Albert Einstein College of Medicine say they found no human has lived longer than 122 - the age reached by a Frenchwoman, Jeanne Calment, in 1997.
She greatly outlived her husband, who died at 73, and achieved the longest documented lifespan of any person in history.
Since the 1970s, the maximum duration of life - the age to which the oldest people live -- has risen. But according to the researchers, this upward arc for maximal lifespan has a ceiling - and we have already touched it.
"Demographers as well as biologists have contended there is no reason to think that the ongoing increase in maximum lifespan will end soon," said senior author Jan Vijg, Professor at Einstein.
"But our data strongly suggest that it has already been attained and that this happened in the 1990s," Vijg noted.
For the study, Vijg and his colleagues analysed data from the Human Mortality Database, which compiles mortality and population data from more than 40 countries.
Scientists at Albert Einstein College of Medicine say they found no human has lived longer than 122 - the age reached by a Frenchwoman, Jeanne Calment, in 1997.
She greatly outlived her husband, who died at 73, and achieved the longest documented lifespan of any person in history.
Since the 1970s, the maximum duration of life - the age to which the oldest people live -- has risen. But according to the researchers, this upward arc for maximal lifespan has a ceiling - and we have already touched it.
"Demographers as well as biologists have contended there is no reason to think that the ongoing increase in maximum lifespan will end soon," said senior author Jan Vijg, Professor at Einstein.
"But our data strongly suggest that it has already been attained and that this happened in the 1990s," Vijg noted.
For the study, Vijg and his colleagues analysed data from the Human Mortality Database, which compiles mortality and population data from more than 40 countries.
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