World's Oldest Living Person may be a 123-year-old Animal Herder in Bolivia

It may be difficult, if not impossible to prove, but if Bolivia's public records are correct, then the Aymara herder Carmelo Flores Laura is the oldest living person in the world.

According to Bolivian public records, Flores turned 123 in July, The Associated Press reported Thursday.

Like many of the indigenous Aymara people, Flores lives a humble life in the basin of Lake Titicaca, which shares boundaries with Bolivia and Peru.

Despite his remarkable age, Flores gets around without the need of a cane and can see well without glasses, the AP reported, adding that Flores said he has never fallen seriously ill.

"I walk a lot, that's all. I go out with the animals," said Flores of to what he owes his longevity. "I don't eat noodles or rice, only barley. I used to grow potatoes, beans, oca (an Andean tuber)."

Eugenio Condori, the director of Bolivia's civil registrar, showed the AP the registry that lists Flores' birthday as July 16, 1890.

Currently Japan's Misao Okawa, born March 5 1898, is officially the world's oldest living person, at 115.

According to the Guiness Book of World Records, the oldest person to have ever lived was the French woman Jeanne Calment, who lived to be 122 years and 64 days old.

If Carmelo Flores Laura is as old as the Bolivian records suggest he is, he will handily break the world record for the oldest person ever to have lived.

Because the use of birth certificates did not start in Bolivia until the 1940s, there is no state record of Flores' birth. Back then, baptisms certificates from the Roman Catholic church were used to register births.

"For the state, the baptism certificate is valid because in those days priests provided them and they were literate," Condori said, adding that he could not show the AP the baptism certification because it is a confidential document.