MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

New candidate for longest ever living person dies in Eritrea aged 127

Other relatives believed was in fact 137 years old and baptized at the age of 10 because there was no clergyman in the city before.

Eritrean citizen Natabay Tinsiew has died last week at the age of 127, making him eligible for a berth within the Guinness Book of Records as the world's longest-living person, his family hoped.

This position is currently held by Frenchwoman Jeanne Calment, who died in 1997 at the age of 122.

“Patience, generosity and a joyful life” were the secrets of the late Natabay Tinsiew, according to his grandson, who was quoted by the BBC. The man died on Monday in his town of Azefa, surrounded by mountains and which has a population of 300 inhabitants. Zere also said his grandfather would be remembered as an “extraordinary, kind, considerate and hard-working man.”

His grandson further explained that church records and his birth certificate show the year of birth, 1894, in which he was baptized, although his family actually believed he had been born in 1884 and baptized ten years later, when a priest came to town.

Father Mentay, a Catholic priest who served the village for seven years, confirmed that the documents indicate Natabay's birth in 1894, adding that he participated in his 120th birthday party in 2014.

The grandson also admitted he had contacted publishers of the the Guinness Book to validate the birth documents.

Natabay married in 1934 and his wife died in 2019 at the age of 99. He owned many heads of cattle and saw five generations of his family grow up.