Carbon dating may be used to verify age of ‘126-year-old’ Brazilian

A Brazilian rest home for the elderly believes it may be home to the world’s oldest person.

The former agricultural labourer born in a runaway slave community is identified in documents stating he was born 126 years ago at a time when Brazil still had an emperor.

Nascido em quilombo, homem de 126 anos pode ser o + velho do mundo. José Aguinelo dos Santos nasceu em 1888, no Ceará pic.twitter.com/213yXpzzVQ

— Jony Crypto (@JonyNett) July 13, 2014

A birth certificate and identity documents issued by a judge in 2001 show that José Aguinelo dos Santos, a resident of the Vila Vicentina shelter for the elderly in Bauru, Brazil, was born on July 7, 1888, less than two months after the end of slavery in the country, said Cesar Siqueira, the rest home’s vice president.

While Dos Santos has none of the original documents proving his age, interest in his life has increased since the death on June 8 of Alexander Imich in New York, Siqueira said. Imich lived to age 111, and was certified as the world’s oldest man in April by the Gerontology Research Group of Torrance, California.

Siqueira said Dos Santos’ documents were granted by a judge based on interviews with the presumed centenarian.

“We are only saying this is his presumed age,” said Siqueira, who has worked at the rest home for 31 years. “But he is lucid, can speak well and does just about everything by himself, except bathe himself.”

Dos Santos has lived at Vila Vicentina, since 1973. He was born to a former slave in a quilombo, or Afro-Brazilian community founded by runaway slaves, and moved to Sao Paulo state where he worked as a labourer on farms and coffee plantations, Siqueira said. Dos Santos was not immediately available for comment. Vila Vicentina is trying to get more records from archives and the rest home’s managers have spoken with doctors and others about the possibility of using carbon dating to narrow down the birth date.

Until recently, many Brazilians born in remote rural areas had no formal documents.

Photos of Dos Santos and his documents were published on Sunday on Brazil’s G1 news website after journalists visited the rest home in Bauru, about 275 kilometrrs (170 miles) northwest of Sao Paulo city. If his birth date can be confirmed, it will show that Dos Santos was born a little more than a year before Brazilian Emperor Dom Pedro II was deposed and the modern Brazilian Republic proclaimed. At that time, Queen Victoria ruled the British Empire and Grover Cleveland was president of the United States.