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Massive stars rapidly change their masses through strong stellar winds andmass transfer in binary systems. We show that such mass changes leavecharacteristic signatures in stellar mass functions of young star clusterswhich can be used to infer their ages and to identify products of binaryevolution. We model the observed present day mass functions of the youngGalactic Arches and Quintuplet star clusters using our rapid binary evolutioncode. We find that shaping of the mass function by stellar wind mass lossallows us to determine the cluster ages to 3.5$\pm$0.7 Myr and 4.8$\pm$1.1 Myr,respectively. Exploiting the effects of binary mass exchange on the clustermass function, we find that the most massive stars in both clusters arerejuvenated products of binary mass transfer, i.e. the massive counterpart ofclassical blue straggler stars. This resolves the problem of an apparent agespread among the most luminous stars exceeding the expected duration of starformation in these clusters. We perform Monte Carlo simulations to probestochastic sampling, which support the idea of the most massive stars beingrejuvenated binary products. We find that the most massive star is expected tobe a binary product after 1.0$\pm$0.7 Myr in Arches and after 1.7$\pm$1.0 Myrin Quintuplet. Today, the most massive 9$\pm$3 stars in Arches and 8$\pm$3 inQuintuplet are expected to be such objects. Our findings have strongimplications for the stellar upper mass limit and solve the discrepancy betweenthe claimed 150 $\mathrm{M}_\odot$ limit and observations of fours stars withinitial masses of 165-320 $\mathrm{M}_\odot$ in R136 and of SN 2007bi, which isthought to be a pair-instability supernova from an initial 250$\mathrm{M}_\odot$ star. Using the stellar population of R136, we revise theupper mass limit to values in the range 200-500 $\mathrm{M}_\odot$.

The ages of young star clusters, massive blue stragglers and the upper mass limit of stars: analysing age dependent stellar mass functions