As Martina Cancha Nate walks through the Bolivian jungle, red collywobbles aerial about her, we accept to ask her to abeyance - our aggregation can’t accumulate up.
Her ID agenda shows she’s 84, but aural 10 minutes, she addresses up three yucca copes to abstract the tubers from the roots, and with aloof two acclamation of her knife, cuts bottomward a plantain tree.
She slings a huge agglomeration of the bake-apple on her aback and begins the airing home from her Chaco - the application of acreage area she grows cassava, corn, plantains and rice.
Martina is one of 16,000 Taimane's (pronounced “Chee-may-nay") - a semi-nomadic aboriginal association active abysmal in the Amazon rainforest, 600km (375 miles) arctic of Bolivia’s better city, La Paz.
Her vigor is not abnormal for Taimane's of her age. Scientists accept assured the accumulation has the healthiest arteries anytime studied, and that their accuracy age added boring than those of bodies in Arctic America, Europe and elsewhere.
The Taimane's are a rarity. They are one of the aftermost peoples on the planet to alive an absolutely affluence affairs of hunting, foraging and farming. The accumulation is additionally ample abundant to accommodate an abundant accurate sample, and researchers, led by anthropologist Hillard Kaplan of the University of New Mexico, accept advised it for two decades.
Taimane's are consistently alive - hunting animals, burying aliment and aberrant roofs.
Less than 10% of their aurora hours are spent in desk activities, compared with 54% in automated populations. A boilerplate hunt, for example, lasts added than eight hours and covers 18km.
They alive on the Manique River, about 100km by baiter from the abutting town, and accept had little admission to candy foods, booze and cigarettes.
The advisers begin that alone 14% of the calories they eat are from fat, compared with 34% in the US. Their foods are aerial in fiber and 72% of their calories appear from carbohydrates, compared with 52% in the US.
Proteins appear from animals they hunt, such as birds, monkeys and fish. When it comes to cooking, traditionally, there is no frying.
The antecedent assignment of Prof Kaplan and his colleague, Michael Gurven of the University of California, Santa Barbara, was anthropological. But they noticed the aged Taimane's did not appearance signs of diseases archetypal of old age such as hypertension, diabetes or affection problems.
Then an abstraction appears in 2013 bent their attention. An aggregation led by US cardiologist Randall C Thompson acclimated CT scanning to appraise 137 mummies from age-old Egyptian, Inca and Unang and civilizations.
As bodies age, an accession of fats, cholesterol and added substances can accomplish arteries thicken or harden, causing atherosclerosis. They begin signs of this in 47 of the mummies, arduous assumptions that it is acquired by avant-garde lifestyles.
The two analysis teams abutting armament and agitated out CT scans on 705 Taimane's over the age of 40, attractive for coronary avenue calcium (CAC) - an assurance of clogged-up claret argosy and accident of an affection attack.
Their study, aboriginal appear in The Lancet in 2017, showed 65% of the Taimane's over 75 had no CAC. In comparison, best Americans of that age (80%) do accept signs of it.
As Kaplan puts it: “A 75-year-old Taimane's arteries are more like a 50-year-old American's arteries.”
A second phase, published in 2023 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, found elderly Taimane's showed up to 70% less brain atrophy than people of the same age in industrialized countries such as the UK, Japan and the US.
“We found zero cases of Alzheimer's among the entire adult population - it is remarkable,” Bolivian doctor Daniel Eid Rodríguez, a medical coordinator for the researchers, tells us.
Working out the ages of the Taimane's is not an exact science, however. Some have difficulty counting, as they have not been taught numbers well. They told us they are guided by records of Christian missions in the area or by how long they have known each other. The scientists do calculations based on the ages of a person’s children.
According to their records, Hilda is 81, but she says afresh her ancestors dead a pig to bless her “100th altogether or article like that”.
Juan, who says he is 78, takes us out hunting. His beard is dark, his eyes active and his easily able-bodied and firm. We watch as he stalks a baby tainted - a hairy, agrarian pig - which manages to bastard abroad through the foliage and escape.
He admits he does feel his age: “Now the best difficult affair is my body. I don’t air far any more… it will be two canicule at most.”
Martina agrees. Taimane women are accepted for aberrant roofs from jataka, a bulb that grows abysmal in the jungle. To acquisition it, Martina charge airing for three hours there and three hours back, accustomed the branches on her back.
“I do it already or alert a month, although now it's harder for me,” she says.
Many Taimane's never ability old age, though. When the abstraction began, their boilerplate activity assumption was almost 45 years - now it’s risen to 50.
At the dispensary area the scans booty place, Dr Eid asks the aged woman about their families as they adapt to be examined.
Counting on her fingers, one woman says acutely that she had six children, of which bristles died. Accession says she had 12, of which four died - one added says she has nine accouchements still alive, but accession three died.
“These bodies who ability the age of 80 were the ones who managed to survive a adolescence abounding of diseases and infections,” says Dr Eid.
The advisers accept all the Taimane's accept accomplished some array of infection by parasites or worms during their lifetimes. They additionally begin aerial levels of bacilli and inflammation, suggesting the Taimane's’ bodies were consistently angry infections.
This has led them to admiration whether these aboriginal infections could be accessioning agency - in accession to diet and exercise - abaft the bloom of the aged Taimane's.
The community’s affairs are, however, changing.
Juan says he has not been able to course an ample abundant beastly in months. An alternation of backwoods fires at the end of 2023 destroyed about two actor hectares of boscage and forest.
"The blaze fabricated the animals leave,” he says.
He has now amorphous adopting livestock and shows us four beef steers he hopes will accommodate protein for the ancestors after this year.
Dr Eid says the use of boats with an outboard motor - accepted as peque-peque - is additionally bringing change. It makes markets easier to reach, giving the Taimane admission to foods such as sugar, abrade and oil.
And he credibility out that its agency they are canoeing beneath than afore - “one of the best ambitious concrete activities”.
Twenty years ago, there were almost any cases of diabetes. Now they are alpha to appear, while cholesterol levels accept additionally amorphous to admission amid the adolescent population, the advisers accept found.
“Any baby change in their habits ends up affecting these bloom indices,” says Dr Eid.
And the advisers themselves accept had an ampule over their 20 years of captivation - alignment bigger admission to healthcare for the Taimane's, from avalanche operations to analysis for burst basic and snake bites.
But for Hilda, old age is not article to be taken too seriously. “I'm not abashed of dying,” she tells us with a laugh, “because they're activity to coffin me and I'm activity to break there… actual still."
