Mbah Gotho

Saparman Sodimejo,^[1][2] known more commonly as Mbah Gotho (born, reportedly, 31 December 1870) is an Indonesian man who is claimed to be the oldest person ever recorded. In May 2010, Solopos reported that enumerators of that year's census had recorded his age next birthday as 142,^[3] which would make him 19 years older than the official oldest recorded person, Jeanne Calment, who died in 1997.^[1][2] The Liputan 6 website reported that Mbah Gotho's estimated age was 140, that he could not remember his date of birth but claimed to remember the construction of a sugar factory built in Sragen in 1880.^[4]

In August 2016, after a television report on Liputan 6, numerous international media outlets reported Mbah Gotho's claim,^[5][6][7][8] including photographs of his ID card (issued in 2014), which displays his claimed birth date. Although Indonesian officials at the local record office confirm the birth date^[9] there is no independent, third-party verification of his claimed age, which is required for the longevity claim to be recognized by record authorities such as Guinness World Records.^[5][6] Robert Young of the Gerontology Research Group said the claimed age was "fiction", "unbelievable" and "in the same category as Sasquatch ["Bigfoot"], the Yeti, and the Loch Ness Monster."^[10] The 2010 Liputan 6 story noted others of a similar claimed age including a woman named Maemunah and known as Ambu Unah, supposedly born in 1867, in Cimanuk, Pandeglang Regency.^[4][11]

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