Tom Parr - The 150 Year Old Man | Random Thursday | Feb 1, 2018 | Joe Scott
Posted on 09/26/2019 8:10:37 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
...One of the most disputed stories of extreme age belongs to a 17th century man named Thomas Parr, who claimed to be 152 years old at the time of his death...
Most of what historians know about the life of Tom Parr comes from John Taylor’s pamphlet, published the year of Parr’s death, “The old, old, very old man or the age and very long life of Thomas Parr.” Parr lived most of his life as a farm laborer in the county of Shropshire, and married his first wife when he was 80 years old...
Parr, at some point, started to tell his neighbors that he was born in 1483. It’s not clear what proof he had or what he said to make his story believable. There are no written documents to verify his birth date because birth records were not kept in England until the 19th century. Before this, evidence of live births was dependent on church record-keeping for baptisms and weddings... there was likely no one alive from Parr’s generation to either support or dispute his claim because he would have outlived at least two generations of his neighbors.
Many historians believe that Tom Parr was less than one hundred. In An Illustrated History of Health and Fitness, from Pre-History to our Post-Modern World, Roy J. Shephard writes that “Some historians suggest that Parr’s records were confused with those of his grandfather, putting Parr’s death at a more reasonable age between 70 and 100 years.”
King Charles I arranged for Tom Parr to be buried in the south transept at Westminster Abbey.
(Excerpt) Read more at strangeremains.com ...
Tom Parr - The 150 Year Old Man | Random Thursday | Feb 1, 2018 | Joe Scott
There are no written documents to verify his birth date because birth records were not kept in England until the 19th century... Roy J. Shephard writes that "Some historians suggest that Parr’s records were confused with those of his grandfather, putting Parr's death at a more reasonable age between 70 and 100 years."
Weird, no records, but his records were confused with his grandfather's...
John Taylor’s pamphlet, published the year of Parr’s death, “The old, old, very old man or the age and very long life of Thomas Parr
https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A13482.0001.001?rgn=main;view=fulltext
Thomas Parr mentioned by Fiddlstix:
http://freerepublic.com/focus/chat/3465441/posts?page=9#9
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/9580673/thomas-parr
https://images.findagrave.com/photos/2004/284/9580673_109750316317.jpg
If his skeleton is available I think modern tests could determine an age range. I know they are cartilage, but the ears grow continuously, so he would have had abnormally large ears. Carbon 14 dating could probably date him too, as we gain Carbon 14 as long as wee are alive and eating, and then it slowly decays after we die.
The ears are not the only thing that gets bigger with age.
Is he voting democrat?
C-14 Dating can only tell us how long ago a living organism died - not its age at the time of death.
Regards,
This is what I love about Free Republic. In the middle of all the whistle blower brouhaha we find something like this.
I think it can be done. We have cemeteries full of bodies that were buried around the same time, which can provide a basis for what we would expect C-14 levels to be for someone who died at the time he did. If he is older than the control skeletons, he would have more C-14 in his bones, because it accumulates as long as you are alive and eating. Oddly, this might result in his skeleton seeming far younger than the controls, as it may appear he his C-14 hasn't had the time to decay yet, not that he had more of it. But if he has the same amount as the control skeletons, then he did not live longer than the others.
Brew Haha would make a great name for a microbrewery. In fact, I'd be surprised if someone hasn't already got one.
Interesting idea, of course the drawback would be, can someone go pry open a vault in Westminster. :^) The C14 date would yield a good-sized margin of error due to the recent date, and would only give the death date, as alexander_busek said. There aren't that many parts of the human body that exceed six or seven years of age (the cells die off, to be replaced by new cells). The teeth are an exception, and would seem perfect since the teeth form early in life -- but RC dating on tooth enamel is kinda new, and only works with post-1943 births, due to the elevated C14 levels from (believe it or not) nuclear weapon detonations in the atmosphere. If we're in a similar demographic, we all probably remember those days when we were told not to eat the snow or use it for making homemade icecream (that's usually not a winter activity though). As the instrumentation sensitivity improves, probably dating teeth will become a thing for archaeology as well.
LOL. Nope, if having a dead non-citizen vote worked, you'd see a huge surge in Demagogic Party members (besides Mitt I mean) joining the LDS just to get full access to the genealogy records.
We like our beer in these parts.
You think wrong.
What you are proposing would not yield the results you predict.
If he is older than the control skeletons, he would have more C-14 in his bones, because it accumulates as long as you are alive and eating.
No, you are evincing a fundamental misunderstanding of the C-14 cycle.
The concentration of C-14 in a living organism does not accumulate or increase over the course of the life of that organism. Rather, it is more or less constant.
Thus, the concentration of C-14 in the body of an unborn baby is roughly the same as in the body of its (obviously: much older) mother. We start out life with approx. the same concentration of C-14 in our bodies that we have when we die, even if a century later.
The C-14 Dating Method is based upon the (very compelling) premise that living organisms are in equilibrium with their environment, and that, only upon death, when living organisms cease constantly exchanging C-14 with the biosphere - where "fresh" C-14 is constantly being created due to incident cosmic rays transmuting atoms in the upper atmosphere - does the C-14 in our (now dead) bodies cease being continually replenished; the concentration of C-14 can then finally begin diminishing, due to radioactive decay.
Regards,
Oh, well that's entirely different. Nevermind!
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