Expert: John Shea - 7/23/2004

Question
From a scientic standpoint is it possible for a human being to live or have lived 200 - 500 years as it has been recorded in the Bible? In addition is there any study that documents changes is life expectancy over let's say the past 10,000 years?

Answer
Dear Michael,
To the best of my knowledge, such longevity is impossible.  I am not an expert of potential longevity, but the best reference to which I can send you is a book by S. Jay Olshansky et al. "The Quest for Immortality".
Archaeologically, we almost never see individuals whose skeletons indicate an age beyond their 30s before 40,000 years ago.  Older individuals (30's-40s' become somewhat more common after 40,000 years ago.*  In more recent times, one occasionally sees individuals of advanced age (60s or 70s), but these are probably elites of civilizations (kings, pharoahs, etc.), not nomadic pastoralists like the Biblical Patriarchs.  Essentially the average age of death for most human adult skeletal assemblages remains in the mid-20s until the 19th Century, after which point it nearly tripled, largely as the result of industrial agriculture and medical innovations.
*There is a recent paper by Rachel Caspari and Sang He Lee in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (July 6, 2004) documenting this change after 40,000 BP.
Cheers,
John Shea