Virtually all of us accept who our mother is with second hand witnesses. why does age affect witness testimony? Wouldn’t other factors like corroboration be of greater importance? For example, the OT required 3 witnesses for death penalty. Personally I would be more impressed with multiple witnesses from ancient time than a single present witness.
Exact corroboration is not even required to build a reasonable hypothesis. In fact, if two accounts of an event are exactly the same, I would view it with more skepticism than if they had differences. No two people see things the same.