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Dagestani Thought to Have Been 122 Years Old Dies

Labazanov in 2011

A man whose passport indicated that he was born in 1890 has died in his home in the village of Serebryakovka in the North Caucasus republic of Dagestan.

Magomed Labazanov, whose presumed age of 122 years would make him one of the oldest people to have ever lived, died from an unspecified illness on Thursday after not eating for several days, an unnamed official in the administration of Dagestan's Kizlyarsky district told Interfax on Tuesday.

Labazanov's passport indicates that he was born on May 1, 1890, but says that his birth certificate had not been preserved or had never existed at all, the news agency reported.

Labazanov was born in the village of Gadari in Dagestan province in the Russian Empire, Interfax reported. He lived in Chechnya for a time, was deported to Kazakhstan in 1944, then returned to Chechnya and eventually moved to the Kizlyarsky district of Dagestan, the news agency said.

Assuming Labazanov was born on the date indicted in his passport, he lived almost twice the average life span of a Russian man, for whom life expectancy is 64.3 years, according to state statistics. Life expectancy for women in Russia is 76.1 years.

According to Guinness World Records, the oldest person ever to have lived was Frenchwoman Jeanne Calment, who the organization says reached the age of 122 years and 164 days.

Guinness World Records says verified supercentenarians, or people over 110 years old, must possess original proof of birth issued within 20 years of being born and proof that the person being verified is the same as the person identified in the birth certificate, RT reported.

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