THE OLDEST THINGS ON THE PLANET
That distinction goes to the Bristlecone pine trees, which are found at extreme elevations in the great basin. These trees live pretty much at tree line which is about 10,000 feet in this park. They thrive where essentially nothing else does, and are thought to live for over 4,000 years. Even when they eventually die, their wood does not rot. It just lays there in the elements for maybe thousands more years?
This tree was born around 1500 bc and is now 3600+ years old! And still doing fine, thank you.
How do you put perspective on the age of something this old? I have some shots below of places I have been and how old this guy was when they were built. I think it really puts this tree’s age into perspective.
Temple of Concordia, Sicily. Built 440 BC. The tree above was over 1,000 years old when this was built!
Karnak temple, Luxor Egypt. Built 1330 BC. Our tree was about 170 years old then.
The Roman city of Palmyra, Syria. Peaked around 260 AD. Our tree was one thousand seven hundred years old then!
These little seen living trees are truly one of the most remarkable things on earth. Just for their age and resiliency against such odds. Let’s all hope that climate change is not their final undoing.
Beautiful for their bright gnarled trunks, this one is sort of mostly dead I guess. I wonder how long it has been standing there?
A close up of the trunk of one. See the true bark to the far right on the trunk? That is essentially all that is still “living” as we define it.
Still alive.
Two that are now gone. When they died I do not know nor how long they will stand there.
Dead how long? Scientists have core dated living and dead bristlecone pines building a history of over 9,000 years! So this beautiful log might have been here in total for 5,000+ years?