LIVING LONGER: WHAT'S THEIR SECRET?; TOWN'S OLD FOLKS KEEP GOING AND GOING.

Byline: Michael Specter The New York Times

Something appears to be keeping people in this breathtaking mountain village alive longer than anywhere else on Earth. It could be the clean water, the bracing air or a life of backbreaking labor.

It might be luck, and it's probably genetics. But it isn't yogurt. Despite well-known American commercials in which the people of this Caucasus mountain region were said to attain their legendary longevity by eating yogurt, the stuff is not very popular here.

``I never eat it,'' Mirzahan Movlamov said dismissively. ``Never.''

In his case, never is a long time. At 121, Movlamov is the oldest man in a village famous for centenarians and, according to his birth documents, one of the oldest people in the world. He lives in a bare room with his third wife (nearly half a century younger than he is) and is usually surrounded by dozens of children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren.

This place may be as close on Earth as it gets to Shangri-La - the mythical land where people seem to live forever - but it certainly is bizarre. There are scores of astonishingly old people living here, on a mountain ridge just a few miles from the Iranian border.

For a while the Guinness Book of World Records recognized somebody from a village nearby, Shirali Muslimov, as the oldest man who ever lived. Born in 1805, he died 25 years ago, reportedly at the age of 168.

People here don't really have family trees; they have family forests. Movlamov, for instance, has a 41-year-old son (conceived when he was 80 and when his current wife was 36) and he has an 84-year-old grandson, who descended from Movlamov's first wife.

In between, there are scores of others, some children from his most recent marriage who are decades younger than grandchildren he has from his first marriage. He has one son, a grandson and a great-granddaughter all born within two years of one another.

His first wife was his true love. They were married in 1905, when he was 28 and she was 12.

``I stole her,'' he said, matter-of-factly, speaking in a rare mountain dialect, which was then translated into Azeri by one grandson and from that into Russian by another. ``I rode into the next village on my horse and grabbed her. I was in the czar's cavalry at the time. I loved her very much.''

He and his first wife were happily married until she died in 1954 - at the age of 61, which passes for adolescence in these parts.

American obsession

For the millions of Americans obsessed with gurus, diet doctors, spiritualists and New Age herbalists who promise to tell them how to live forever, a trip to this part of the world might seem appealing. But it isn't likely to answer their questions.

It's hard to say why people here - poor, poorly served by medicine and mostly ignorant - live a long life. They don't eat much, and they work like beasts. Vegetables, fruit and sour cheeses are dietary staples. The water 300 miles south of Baku is as clear as the azure skies. The crisp mountain air seems good enough to eat.

Still, when Azerbaijan was part of the Soviet Union, doctors descended on the place and took a bunch of blood tests. They found nothing conclusive, and most researchers tend to attribute longevity here to a combination of clean, stress-free living and genes that are programmed to last.

The simple life

Simplicity might also play a role. Look at Saray Nuriyeva. Her family says she is either 114 or 110; it's not clear from documents, and she is getting a little vague when it comes to dates. She lives in the tiny settlement of Mondiga, five miles straight up into the mountains from Lerik. She has been there her whole life, surrounded by her family, living literally on the border of Iran, a country whose existence she is not aware of.

She does know all about Moscow and Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan. But she has never been to either place and says she isn't sad about it. To the degree that a life that started before the Soviet Union existed, has been consumed by wars and consists largely of doing nothing but working and sleeping can be said to be typical, hers has been.

She was engaged at the age of 9 to a boy from a village a mile away. But a series of blood feuds between the villages lasted two years, so she couldn't marry him until she was 11.

``I came here then,'' she said, again speaking through a relay of family interpreters, ``and I have been here ever since.''

She had 10 children, seven of whom are still alive. She still walks outside every day, although she is clearly growing frail. She drinks a lot of milk (it's not yogurt, but it's close), and when she feels bad she chews on local herbs.

She has never taken a pill or a drug in her life, her grandson, Vassim Gabayev, the 77-year-old family spokesman, said.

Her husband and his two brothers left in 1941 to fight in World War II. Each was over 50 at the time; none returned. Her first son died in 1990 at the age of 80. Since then, two other children have died.

Perhaps not surprisingly, with dozens - or more - of people living to 100, younger people in this region sometimes get less attention than perhaps they should.

``Come over here a minute, would you?'' Novruz Novruzov, the village mayor, asked of an extremely old woman wrapped entirely in black scarves. The woman hobbled toward him.

``May I see your passport?'' he asked. She took out a battered old Soviet document that listed her birth year as 1909, which would mean she's not even 90.

``Oh, take it back,'' he said, abruptly returning the passport. ``We don't need you. We're only looking for old people.''

CAPTION(S):

Photo

PHOTO (Color) Saray Nuriyeva, who is either 110 or 114, is visited by members of four younger generations at her Mondiga, Azerbaijan, home.

James Hill/The New York Times