Wikipedia:Timeline of senescence research

People were always interested how to make their lives longer and healthier in old age. Already the most anсient Egyptian, Indian and Chinese writing books contain reasoning about aging. Ancient Egyptians used garlic in large quantities to extend their lifespan. Hippocrates (c. 460) in his Aphorisms and Aristotle (384 – 322 BC) in On youth and old age expresses their opinions about reasons of old age and gave advices about lifestyle. Medieval Persian physician Ibn Sina (c. 980 – 1037), known in the West as Avicenna, summarized achievements earlier generations about this issue. Descriptions of rejuvenation and immortality remedies are often in writing of alchemists. But all those remedies did not allow even alchemists themselves to live longer than 100 years.

Though average lifespan of people through the last next millenia increased significantly, maximum lifespan almost not changed. Super-long lives of people, that is mentioned in ancient books, apparently, highly exaggerated, since archaeological data show that even the eldest from ancient people lived no more than modern supercentenarians. In some cases exaggeration, it is possible, is not intensional but occur because of specifics of ancient system of chronology. Though rare cases of life for more than a century took place even in ancient times (for example, Terentia who lived for 103 or 104 years). Absolute official fixed record belong to Jeanne Calment who lived for 122 years. And the species limit of human life is estimated by scientists at 125–127 years.