Methuselah - The Tree

stop barking up the wrong tree

Tonight we finish the story of Methuselah with a tree of the same name. This is an "educated guess" as the location and details of the tree are closely protected by the forest service.

This may be one of the oldest trees on earth. Its exact location is closely guarded in the White Mountains of California. Isn’t it amazing that the oldest of living things may be in California! This bristlecone pine was seeded in 2833 BCE. The tree is known as Methuselah. Biblical scholars date the flood and Noah’s to about 500 years later so the water must not have gotten too high.

Editor’s Note

I have a cousin “P” with whom I have great chats on a steady basis. If a little time goes by with no communication I know something is wrong with him or me. “P” is retired and ENJOYING retirement. He likes to describe that he works every day but like a turtle, slow and steady. My Newsletter, after a very slow and almost private start, has been growing steadily (like a turtle I guess). A few days ago I reached 50 subscribers. I expect my next milestone will be 500 unique readers. The plan is still to reach 100 subscribers this year and 1000 unique readers. Whether that is turtle, tortoise, or terrapin-like, I will be satisfied. I have been participating in a program Substack GO and I can feel that others feel pressure to “get more readers”. There is joy in letting go and just seeing where it leads, at least for me. That’s a longish way of saying trust the process I guess.

The Inspiration

Today I am going to pivot to a story of wonder and success of 200+ generations of humanity to not intervene. Sometime before the completion of the Pyramids of Giza, a seed was germinated and a tree took root in the White Mountains of California. Bristlecone pines are not towering and majestic. In high altitude conditions, their diameter may only grow an inch per century. The tree grows low and sturdy, surviving windy conditions for the long haul.

The Setup

If you missed Part 1 of the story, here’s a link. I don’t do this two-part stuff very often but I’m trying hard to keep to my 5-7 minute post (or thereabouts) goal. The location and details of the Methuselah tree remain a closely guarded secret of the National Forest Service. The fear is vandalism and the loss of a treasure. For a long period, this was considered the oldest grove of trees in the world. Recent scholarship has identified a Norway pine in Sweden near the arctic that is likely twice as old nearing 9500 years. Both of these trees present a challenge to a worldview claiming all of the animals of the world came to be during a busy week of creation about 6000 years ago with a great deluge of water occurring perhaps 1500 years later.

The recent discovery and naming of “Old Tjikko” in arctic Sweden estimate the age of this tree at 9500 years ago. That is about 5000 years prior to a written language. Humans are still living in the stone age. The first known petroglyphs are being carved in North America.

I made the observation in “Age is Just a Number” stating that aging things on the planet are hamstrung if the “opinion” was presented prior to 1946. That is the problem with being sure of something when you lack evidence. In 1946, the world was introduced to carbon-14 dating. The science (and limitations) of Carbon-14 dating have progressed in the time since. Companion studies of different isotopes and other approaches to dating our world have emerged or continued their refinement in the intervening period. It is without a doubt that while the 1946 claims of C-14 dating were remarkable, they were also not absolute. The genius of the scientific method is the refinement and increased accuracy that has resulted because we studied and improved. This is simply an inherently better approach than just stating the age of something without evidence.

The Details

Layers of rock and sediment with wonderful fossils provide a comprehensive explanation of both the history of dinosaurs and humans. It is convenient and convincing that the deeper you dig into rock layers, it is not a shock that older stuff is found the deeper you dig. For that matter, just counting tree rings is accepted by people of all shapes and sizes. Wonderful new branches of science like dendrochronology expand our understanding of this wonderful world. All of this must be set aside to accept stories like the biblical Methuselah. Luckily, we have another Methuselah to talk about today!

So how does this story pivot? My goal in my writing is to be positive, and inspirational. The story of Methuselah, the bristlecone pine is inspired because of a wonderful chart that places the tree in context. It offers the added advantage of being based on fact, not conjecture.

The history of our world in a tree…

A bristlecone pine, even one as special as Methuselah begins with a pinecone spreading a seedling. The seedling in question takes root as the Great Pyramid of Giza is completed. Despite having wandered the earth for nearly 250,000 years, it was only approximately 900 years previous to this time when humans established a written alphabet and language. Before that time, if the primitive basics of language even existed, there was no means for there to be any stories, mythology, or history since we could not pass it on except by word of mouth.

As written language emerges all over the globe, Methuselah continues to grow at a slow and steady pace far away in the White Mountains near the Sierra Nevada range. As we learn more there are other trees that reproduce by cloning. Such trees present a profoundly longer continuous history of living things on the planet. There is even a stand of Quaking Aspens in Utah that are clonal and share a root system dating back 80,000 years. While committed creationists have contrived an “explanation” for why dinosaurs really aren’t 100,000,000 million years old, and trees like Methuselah might have grown double rings for thousands of years to give the false impression of their age (akin to a fake ID), facts such as these raise the bar even higher for an explanation.

The ability of mankind to find and nurture a SINGLE living thing on this planet for nearly 5000 years gives me hope. The counter-idea of groups of men huddling to propose a means to undermine counting tree rings, carbon-14 dating, and many other methods all in an effort to validate dinosaurs as less than 6000 years old and a six hundred-year-old ship captain is disturbing as a counter. I am saddened that we have come to a point where people, all with a frontal lobe actually pretend to propose the two alternate ideas as EQUALLY REASONABLE to teach children. We can do better.

Here’s a song that is on point.