Mbah Gotho, the Man Claimed to be the Oldest Human Ever to Live on Earth, Dies the Age of 146, but How True is it?
Saparman Sodimejo, commonly known as Mbah Gotho, who unverifiably claimed to be the oldest person ever recorded has died recently. There are certain controversies and remarks about his claimed age, which we will discuss in this session.
The Rise of Fame
In May 2010, Solopos, an Indonesian daily newspaper published in the city of Surakarta, Central Java reported that enumerators of that year’s census had recorded his age next birthday as 142, which would make him 19 years older than the official oldest recorded person, Jeanne Calment, who died in 1997.
A heavy smoker until the end, he outlived ten siblings, four wives, and all his children.
The Liputan 6 website reported that Mbah Gotho’s estimated age was 140. Likewise, it also reported that he could not remember his date of birth but claimed to remember the construction of a sugar factory in 1880 in Sragen.
After a television report on Liputan 6 in August 2016, many international media houses reported Mbah Gotho’s claim. They also documented the photographs of his ID card (which was issued in 2014), which displays his claimed date of birth.
While Indonesian officials at the local record office confirm his date of birth, there is no independent, third-party verification of his claimed age, which is a requisite for the longevity claim to be recognized by record authorities such as Guinness World Records.
If his birth date is correct, it would mean that he was born in the same year as the Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin and a year after the Suez Canal opened.
He will have lived through two world wars, resulting in the Japanese invasion of the Dutch East Indies, with seven British monarchs reigning in his lifetime.
His remarkable life experiences made him a great storyteller in the village, with wars against Japan and Dutch colonizers making him a hero in his village.
Various Comments
Robert Young of the Gerontology Research Group said,
“The claimed age is fiction, unbelievable and falls in the same category as Sasquatch [Bigfoot], the Yeti, and the Loch Ness Monster.”
Scientists are likely to question whether his claim could be possible with a study conducted last year claiming that the natural limit to human life is no more than 125 years.
Researchers led by Jan Vijg of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, New York, concluded that there was an age limit beyond which humans just cannot pass naturally.
Last year, his grandson Suryanto said that his grandfather had been preparing for his death ever since he was 122, but it never appeared to come till now.
He said,
“The gravestone there was made in 1992. That was 24 years ago.”
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Death
Known as Mbah Gotho (Grandpa Gotho), Sodimejo was taken to the hospital on April 12 after his health worsened. But Gotho persisted in going back home six days later.
‘Since he came back from the hospital, he only ate spoonfuls of porridge and drank very little,’
Gotho’s grandson Suyanto told the BBC.
‘It only lasted a couple of days. From that moment on to his death, he refused to eat and drink.’
In his long life, he outlived his ten siblings, four wives, as well as all of his children. Gotho’s nearest living relatives at the time of his death were his grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and great-great-grandchildren.
The oldest person ever recorded with substantiated documents to date is Jeanne Calment, a French woman who passed away in 1997 at the age of 122.
The 2010 Liputan 6 story also noted others of similar claimed age instances. It included a woman named Maemunah, known as Ambu Unah, who was supposedly born in 1867, in Pandeglang Regency.
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Short Bio of Mbah Gotho
Mbah Gotho was an Indonesian man, who claimed to be the oldest person ever recorded. However, there are no solid strong shreds of evidence for this claim. More Bio…
