Here’s a Time article about an Italian village brimming with octogenarians that makes me think of the Howard Foundation.
But Agostino Vargiu, who serves up those same ingredients at his downtown restaurant, has another hypothesis. “The food and the air probably help,” Vargiu says. “But the point is that there’s very little intermarrying with outsiders here. In Orroli, we’re all practically relatives. It’s in the genes.” That same logic — and the same noted propensity for long life in nearby towns — prompted molecular biologist Luca Deiana to launch a sweeping genetic study of every 100-plus person across the entire island. “You look at a Sardinian phone book and you see there are relatively few last names,” says Deiana, a researcher at the University of Sassari in northwest Sardinia. The project — dubbed A Kent’Annos after an old Sardinian salute meaning, “May you live to be 100″ — confirmed that the island has the world’s highest documented percentage of people who have passed the century threshold. Of 1.6 million Sardinians, there are at least 220 who have reached 100, twice the typical ratio. Five of the world’s 40 oldest people live on the island, and until the January death of Antonio Todde at 112, Sardinia boasted the oldest of them all.
Hat tip to Kate from alt.fan.heinlein and member of The Heinlein Society.
2 Responses to “‘It’s in the genes’”