Sardinians

Out in the work shed behind his house in the village of Silanus, 75-year-old Tonino Tola emerges elbow-deep from the steaming carcass of a freshly slaughtered calf, sets down his knife, and greets me with a warm, bloody handshake. Then he takes his thick glistening fingers and tickles the chin of his five-month-old grandson, Filippo, who regards the scene from his mother's arms. "Goochi, goochi goo," Tonino whispers. For this strapping, six-foot-tall shepherd, these two things—hard work and family—form the bedrock of his life. They may also help explain why Tonino and his neighbors are a hot spot of longevity.

A community of 2,400 people, Silanus is located on the sloping fringes of the Gennargentu Mountains in central Sardinia, where parched pastures erupt into granite peaks. In a cluster of villages in the heart of a region called the Blue Zone by demographers, 91 of the 17,865 people born between 1880 and 1900 have lived to their hundredth birthday—a rate more than twice as high as the average for Italy.

Why the extraordinary longevity here? Lifestyle is part of the answer. By 11 a.m. on this particular day, Tonino has already milked four cows, split half a cord of wood, slaughtered a calf, and walked four miles (6.4 kilometers) of pasture with his sheep. Now, taking the day's first break, he gathers his grown children, grandson, and visitors around the kitchen table. Giovanna, his wife, a robust woman with quick, intelligent eyes, unties a handkerchief containing a paper-thin flatbread called carta da musica, fills our tumblers with red wine, and slices a round of homemade pecorino cheese with the thumping severity of a woman in charge.

Like many wives here whose husbands are busy tending sheep, Giovanna shoulders the burdens of managing the house and family finances. Among Mediterranean cultures, Sardinian women have a reputation for taking on the stress of these responsibilities. For the men, less stress may reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease, which may explain why the ratio of female to male centenarians is nearly one to one in some parts of Sardinia, compared with a four to one ratio favoring women in the United States.

"I do the work," admits Tonino, hooking Giovanna around the waist, "my ragazza does the worrying."

These Sardinians also benefit from their genetic history. About 11,000 years ago, hunter-gatherers from the Iberian Peninsula made their way eastward to Sardinia. After several millennia the Bronze Age Nuragic culture arose on the island's fertile coastal plains. When military powers such as the Phoenicians and Romans discovered Sardinia's charms, the natives were forced to retreat deeper and deeper into the highlands. There they developed a wariness of foreigners and a reputation for banditry, kidnapping, and settling vendettas with the lesoria, the traditional Sardinian shepherd's knife.