What is a Supercentenarian?
A supercentenarian is someone who has lived beyond the age of 110. Living to become a supercentenarian is extremely rare; only around 1,000 supercentenarians have been documented and verified, although undoubtedly more people than that have lived beyond 110. Once someone reaches 110, he or she has around a two percent chance of achieving the next big landmark, 115. This term first cropped up in the 1970s, when researchers wanted a superlative form of “centenarian,” the word used to describe someone who lives past the age of 100. The term “supercentenarian” was coined and seems to have stuck, although some people prefer it in the hyphenated form of “super-centenarian.” Thus far, no terms beyond “supercentenarian” have been coined, probably because so few people live beyond the age of 115; the oldest documented human being was Jeanne Calment, who died in 1997 at the age of 122. The United States and Japan both have high documented numbers of supercentenarians, which may have less to do w
