Who Is The Oldest Person Alive? Carmelo Flores Laura, Bolivian Herder, Is 123

At the end of July, news broke that South Africa woman Johanna Mazibuko, who lives in a small town southwest of the capital of Johannesburg, could be the world's oldest person, at 119 years old. But she might have a challenger: if Bolivia's public records are correct, the Associated Press reported on Wednesday, Carmelo Flores Laura, a native Aymara goat herder who speaks no Spanish, cannot read and lives in a dirt-floor hut in a 13,000-foot-high village, turned 123 years old a month ago. Flores Laura's memory isn't entirely clear on the subject - he estimates his age at "100 years old or more" - but an 1890 listing in Bolivia's civil registry would seem to match up.

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A group of Associated Press reporters drove up into Flores Laura's village of Frasquia from the capital of La Paz after seeing a report on local TV about him. He told the AP he walks without a cane and doesn't wear glasses. "I see a bit dimly. I had good vision before. But I saw you coming," he said.

Flores Laura has no birth certificate, because the South American country didn't start keeping them until 1940, but the director of Bolivia's civil registrar, Eugenio Condori, showed the AP reporters the public registry listing the man's birthdate as July 16, 1890. Flores Laura does have a baptismal certificate - the way births were registered before the state authenticated them.

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"For the state, the baptism certificate is valid because in those days priests provided them and they were literate," Condori told them, adding that he couldn't prove that there existed such a document because they're considered private.

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The AP describes Flores Laura as being a bit of a creature: he "hobbles" down a dirt path, unshaven with several months of beard, long fingernails and clothes which he hasn't changed for quite some time. But the cattle and sheep herder's simple regimens appears to have served him well.

"I walk a lot, that's all. I go out with the animals," he said. "I don't eat noodles or rice, only barley. I used to grow potatoes, beans, oca (an Andean tuber)." He added that he doesn't drink alcohol anymore, though he did when he was younger, eats a lot of mutton (and not much pork), and liked to hunt and eat fox as a young man.