[extropy-chat] Addwaita:250 years is a long time.

[ilsa]

hello, this is my first posting though i have been reading a few weeks. i do
not have much to say though i like this story and thread.  smile,  ilsa

On 3/27/06, Robert Bradbury <robert.bradbury at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> My dictionary ("The Collaborative International Dictionary of English",
> apparently derived from Webster (1913)) defines "anecdote" as:
>   "A particular or detached incident or fact of an interesting nature; a
> biographical incident or fragment; a single passage of private life."
>
> Joao's problem is that the documentation is a collection of stories... who
> brought the tortoise to India, how long Lord Robert Clive kept him in his
> garden, etc. -- the more robust documentation is only from when the tortoise
> became a resident at the Calcutta zoo in 1875.  But there is no good way of
> verifying that that tortoise was not obtained from the Seychelles in 1875
> instead of much earlier (all of the people involved are now dead).  So one
> may only have individual accounts (dairies, an occasional newspaper story,
> etc.) and so one may have significant difficulty confirming them.
>
> The somewhat less anecdotal tortoise longevity story involves a Madagascar
> radiated tortoise (*Geochelone radiata*), known as "Tui Malila" which
> Captain James Cook presented to the Tongan royal family in 1773 or 1777.
> That tortoise was either 188 or 192 years old at its death in 1965.
>
> Joao is one of the world's authorities in this area (documenting the
> maximum longevities of various species).  If he could reasonably extend  the
> longevity of a species I suspect that he would -- but one doesn't become an
> "authority" by making assertions that can easily be questioned.
>
> It will be interesting to see if efforts to date Addwaita using carbon
> dating will yield any useful information (I don't believe the carbon dating
> can be used with much certainty for periods of hundreds of years).
>
> Robert
>
>
> --
> don't ever get so big or important that you can not hear and listen to
> every other person.   john coletrane
> www.hotlux.com/angel.htm
>
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