Answer

I don't know. It's hard for me to believe that those ages were actually as stated. It wasn't all that long ago (certainly not on the evolutionary timescale). I did once hear from Professor Aviezer that he has some explanation for this matter. Maybe it's worth searching online.
In any case, why according to my approach is it written this way? Maybe it's a parable expressing some message, or perhaps it isn't talking about individuals at all, but rather about families or communities of some sort that lasted for periods of about a thousand years.
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Questioner:
What about the ages of the three patriarchs? There too, do you see this as a family age or as allegorical?
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Rabbi:
As far as I'm concerned, that too is open to different interpretations. The Rashba's ban dealt with their very existence. See also the book by my friend Rabbi Amit Kula, "Existence or Did Not Exist," about the unimportance of historical truth to faith.
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Questioner:
What is your interpretation of the patriarchal narratives? Did they happen, or are they allegorical?
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Rabbi:
The patriarchal stories do look like a factual historical account. Maybe there are literary details or a dream element involved (as Maimonides writes regarding the angels of Jacob and Abraham).
Above I even raised a question about their very existence. But beyond the question of what I think is probably true (this is only an estimate and not knowledge, of course), in my view it doesn't matter much whether the stories are true or not.
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Oren:
So if I understood you correctly, you believe that the patriarchs literally reached such extraordinary ages?
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Rabbi:
That's not what I wrote. I explicitly wrote that there could be inaccurate details there as well (parable, etc.). There could also be corruptions that entered the biblical text. A lot of things are possible. What I said was that the story as a whole looks like a historical account and not like a parable.
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Avi:
If I remember correctly, Aviezer said that the Holy One, blessed be He, inserted a certain gene into humanity after the Flood, when it says, "his days shall be one hundred and twenty years." He argued that the number of generations that passed from then until life expectancy reached that number is what would actually be required biologically. This is all from memory; I read his book years ago and don't have it with me now.
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Gadi:
It seems to me that in one of your books you wrote that you see great importance in the question of whether they really happened or were allegorical, and that was how you explained the Rashba's ban. Or were you only explaining his view?
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Rabbi:
I explained the Rashba and inclined toward his position. In the meantime I've matured, and in my view that remains an explanation of his position.
In any case, this applies only to foundational events and figures, not to every detail.
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Shimon the Jerusalemite:
Are you retracting the criticism you wrote of Rabbi Amit Kula's book "Existence or Did Not Exist"? Because
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Rabbi:
Your comment got cut off. But generally speaking, the answer is no. Where in what I wrote here did you see a retraction of what I wrote there?
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Shimon the Jerusalemite:
Because you referred to that book for an explanation of the unimportance of historical truth to faith, apparently. But in the past you argued the opposite.
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Rabbi:
Where did I argue the opposite? Read my review of the book again.