Longevity hot-spots

In a 1973 National Geographic article, Leaf gave a detailed account of his journeys to countries of long-living people: the Hunzas from Pakistan, the Abkhazians from the former Soviet Union, and Ecuadorians from Vilcabamba. In 1974, in a scientific paper published in The Gerontologist, Medvedev raised the question on the reason for such higher longevity : ‘A Biological or Social Problem ?’ admitting that no document evidence was available to prove that people in these regions live much that 100-115 years.  Therafter, in 1979, Mazess & Forman demonstrated that systematic age exaggeration was found after age 70 in the population of Vilcabamba. Finally, in 1982, Leaf acknowledged that a large number of the men and women he had met in Vilcabamba had exaggerated their age in order to improve their social status or to promote local tourism (Leaf 1982). Accordingly, the age validation of the oldest olds and more specifically of the centenarians is the first and inevitable step when studying extreme longevity.