Oldest Person Ever

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This was originally Maria Olivia da Silva but stubbing that out, there are actually multiple modern claimants for having exceeded Calment.

The main thing is that since the first homo sapiens you are likely correct in arguing there has been a person that reached about 130 and almost certainly correct that someone has lived longer than Calment.

People that are centenarians today were born before 1920 and before lifespan really started increasing.

By the 60s of this century we should see Calment's record regularly broken and if then the 130 as well then that will confirm above, unless it's the result of technology that couldn't have happened naturally.

It's kind of absurd that a circus outfit like Guinness is taken as authoritative over the gerontological institutions as well as the fact that the latter can't do a better job with the known cases like Da Silva and the other woman. When you think about what Calment was like, you ought to expect someone could have done even better.

russian trolls

It's fascinating, from a cultural perspective, that in the late teens a conspiracy theorist in Moscow began to push the idea that Calment was actually her daughter and that she (Yvonne) had assumed her mother's identity at her (actual) death. At first this was allowed to go forward since it wasn't the product of an actual trolling operation but ultimately it got the sort of pushback and dismissal it deserved although it wasn't completely wiped, and can still be seen taken as worthy of report.

The fascinating thing to me is not the way the public information process works but rather what it says about modern Russian society, since the promulgator of the conspiracy theory is actually a credentialed academic. Calment's case must be a fraud according to him because no one can have exceeded the norms that far. A perspective it's hard not to attribute to the dismal state of Russian society. On the contrary, it's reasonable to think that Calment is not in fact the longest lived person ever, and later in this century we should start to see this verified as people enter the supercentenarian class by something other than the luck of good genes.