[franze]

Spending a lot of time in greece in rural areas in the 90ies in my teens. Quite a lot of older greek did not even know or care about their birthday, as it was not celebrated. Name day was the big thing.

And I loved the stories when the government introduced a new land registry (based on reality) and the chaos the ensured, as suddenly lot of land was owned 2 or more times, officially unknown villages were officially discovered ...

I would definitely question the validity of the historic birth register, a lot.

[mfer]

The researchers questioned these details, too. Any place labeled a blue zone has to have excellent records they could trace. One of the blue zones is in California. It’s worth looking at their process

[teruakohatu]

Half the residents of that town are 7th Day Adventists according to Wikipedia:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loma_Linda,_California

Blue zones could simply be a result of The modifiable areal unit problem (MAUP):

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modifiable_areal_unit_proble...

[mfer]

7th Day Adventists have food and lifestyle differences from the surrounding population. They are the ones living longer. There have been a bunch of ongoing long term studies on them.

One of the findings is that diet matters. They’ve looked at diet differences and certain characteristics show up for people who live longer and have more good years. Those same things show up in the other blue zones.

[nextos]

I guess as time progresses, centenarians will come from cohorts with records that can be better trusted. This will confirm or invalidate the blue zone findings.

[bobthepanda]

It’s not necessarily so easy.

I’m reminded of the Okinawan case, where postwar rule by the US introduced younger cohorts to much unhealthier eating habits.

[throw0101a]

> Name day was the big thing.

For anyone curious:

> In Christianity, a name day is a tradition in many countries of Europe and the Americas, among other parts of Christendom.[1] It consists of celebrating a day of the year that is associated with one's baptismal name, which is normatively that of a biblical character or other saint.[2] […]

> The custom originated with the Christian calendar of saints: believers named after a saint would celebrate that saint's feast day. Within Christianity, name days have greater resonance in areas where the Christian denominations of Catholicism, Lutheranism and Orthodoxy predominate.[1]

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name_day

[mc32]

Some French I knew followed this and received gifts(IIRC) --or at least they referenced these things as the source of their names --they did not ignore their actual birthdays though.

[tarte-au-poire]

Indeed. I had no idea it was so exotic. It’s kinda of a old people thing. It’s associated with your name a specific saint for it. ( multiple saint are named James or John or Anthony, your name day is specifically for one of them. Anthony of Assisi is not the same day as Anthony of Padou and so on on so forth.)

You usually get a card from your religious grandma and a 20$ bill.

[peoplefromibiza]

having spent a good part of my life with Greek relatives, I beg to differ.

Birthdays might not be accurate due to difficulties in registering births, civil wars and fascist coups (they burnt every record so that people from, for example, Macedonia had to take Greek names) but the difference from on paper age and actual age is on average a few months off (plus or minus, so they balance in the end).

They also care a lot about celebrating birthdays with very big family gatherings.

On other note: if we believe that somewhere they kept false records of births, what should make us believe that in other parts of the World they kept perfect records?

What should make us think that birth records in Azerbaijan, Colombia, Ohio or Fiji are more accurate?

[BeefySwain]

> And I loved the stories when the government introduced a new land registry (based on reality) and the chaos the ensured

Could you provide some links expanding on this? Or a phrase to Google? Sounds fascinating.

[franze]

a quick google showed this

https://www.elra.eu/the-present-landscape-of-land-registrati...

The traditional land registry was from 1853 which seems was just a good enough description of what one owns.

In 1995 a land cadastre was created and it came into law in 1998 to replace the old system. A land survey was started to move presume land ownership from the old into the new system. This land survery / chaos was definitely still going on end of the 2000 years in Crete.