The 3 Reasons This Tree Has Lived 5000 Years
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 19 ธ.ค. 2022
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Methuselah’s environment lacks nutrients, water, and oxygen. In other words, it’s the perfect place to grow very very old.
LEARN MORE
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To learn more about this topic, start your googling with these keywords:
- Great basin bristlecone pine tree: a species of pine tree that includes many of the longest-lived individual trees on Earth.
- Bark beetles: the common name for a subfamily of beetles that has destroyed millions of acres of forest across the Western United States.
- Terpenes: waxy chemicals that increase wood density in certain pine trees.
- Bark morphology: a trait of certain bristlecones in which strips of exposed wood extend up and down the tree, allowing them to pass nutrients even when other parts of the trunk have died.
- Dolomite: a type of rock high in magnesium and calcium that turns into extremely alkaline soils.
- Extremophile: an organism that is tolerant to environmental extremes.
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David Goldenberg | Script Writer, Narrator and Director
Lizah van der Aart | Illustration, Video Editing and Animation
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REFERENCES
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Bentz, Barbara (2022). Personal Communication. Research entomologist, US Forest Service. www.fs.usda.gov/research/abou...
Millar, Connie (2022). Personal Communication. Scientist emirata, US Forest Service. www.fs.usda.gov/research/abou...
Ababneh, L. (2006). Analysis of radial growth patterns of strip-bark and whole-bark bristlecone pine trees in the White Mountains of California: Implications in paleoclimatology and archaeology of the Great Basin. www.semanticscholar.org/paper...
Ross, A. (2020). The Past and Future of the Earth’s Oldest Trees. The New Yorker. www.newyorker.com/magazine/20...
Karlamangla, S. (2022). In California, Where Trees are King, One Hardy Pine has Survived for 4800 years. New York Times. www.nytimes.com/2022/10/08/us...
Bentz, B.J., Hood, S.M., Hansen, E.M., Vandygriff, J.C. and Mock, K.E. (2017), Defense traits in the long-lived Great Basin bristlecone pine and resistance to the native herbivore mountain pine beetle. New Phytol, 213: 611-624. doi.org/10.1111/nph.14191
Waldo S. Glock (1970). Bristlecone Pine in the White Mountains of California: Growth and Ring-Width Characteristics, Arctic and Alpine Research,2:3, 227-229. www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/1...
Pennisi, E. (2016). Greenland Shark may live 400 years, smashing Longevity Record. Science. www.science.org/content/artic... - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
![[Live สด] การออกรางวัลสลากกินแบ่งรัฐบาล งวดวันที่ 1 มิถุนายน 2567](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/3canzHC_d0k/mqdefault.jpg)
There was another Bristlecone called Prometheus which was actually older than Methuselah by about half a century. Unfortunately, they only discovered that after they cut down and killed Prometheus when one of the scientists couldn’t get a core sample from it.
ugh
How fittingly tragic.
'Earthlings cringe'
this just makes me hate us as a species even more, humanity is a parasite to earth. i wish we would go extinct
r. i. p. prometheus
Can't imagine the life the tree has had staying alive for so long it has seen alot, hopefully it continues to last long
Its good that this tree doesnt stand in netherlands some dutch morons decided it was a good idea to burn down our oldest tree
actually methuselah only died because it was chopped down so we could know how old it is
that one was the prometheus tree!
I wish I'm a tree in my next life or maybe a tube worm
Except, as talked about in the video, the ones that live longest have seen the least. They live so long because they are separated from everything else, so all they've "seen" is the same boring landscape for a lot longer time.
Another thing to factor in is that it’s been spared from invasive species such as European earth worms, as they turn the soil into a more nutrient one. If the tree is perfectly adapted to a certain environment, then any disruption to that environment could be disastrous. If I recall correctly, this happened to the American redwood trees some place.
I genuinely thought that you'd say "European Colonizers" at the beginning of your sentence.
well, both of them are pesky😆
This is probably more for the animals with long lifespans, but wouldn't harsher conditions also reduce the number of threats to their existence, namely larger predators? Even for plants and trees it means fewer animals to feast on leaves and such, right?
definitely!
@@MinuteEarth Aren't any of the extremophile organisms that seldom outlive everything since eons poisonous? Otherwise there may be a chance encounter with a relative of a hungry bear and it would be catastrophic.
@@MinuteEarth Im gay
@Computment Nobody cares if you're gay anymore. If you aren't non-binary with some odd neopronoun, you're just a normie.
@@Computmentok
at 0:41, when the video notes the growth rate of the bristlecone pine, it should say 0.4 cm/yr rather than 0.04 cm/yr. Excellent video, I have often wondered why all the most exceptional age statistics come from extreme environments.
There are small pockets of bristlecone pines in high altitude mountains all over the western US. I saw some when I went to Great Basin National Park. Even if I hadn't already known that they live thousands of years, just from the way they look I would've been able to tell that they were very old. It was fascinating looking at a whole grove of them and thinking about how many of them are older than Ancient Rome and some of them are as old as the Ancient Egyptians.
Loved this video! I think I noticed a tiny little error at 0:43? Wouldn't .15in be .4cm, not .04?
Yes, aka 4mm
Hi xidnaf! You're still alive?
Greetings from Spain!
Holy he is alive
I was just literally just talking about the Greenland sharks like a couple of hours ago and for something that niche and random to come up randomly in the elusive Minute Earth's new video thumbnail is kind of eerie not gonna lie lol
Ooooo magic!
Biology of Ageing is a very interesting topic. Did you know that there is a field of science studying this called biogerontology? It mainly researches the mechanisms of human ageing, age-related diseases and treatments that may be able to intervene in the process.
The research is important as many untreatable disease such as cancer, Alzheimer, strokes etc. become more likely with age.
If you would like to know more, the book 'Ageless: The New Science of Getting Older Without Getting Old' by Dr Andrew Steele gives a good overview on what human ageing is and what research is going on.
I always thought of a stroke more like an injury than an illness. Like heart attacks or aneurysms.
@@Gr3nadgr3gory Yes, you are right. I don't know enough about what causes strokes, but it has something to do with the plaque build up in our veins. With age it becomes more noticeable and the immune cells that try to clean it up get stuck there as well, contributing to the build up.
Finding a way to remove this plaque build up from our veins will likely contribute in us having a healthier circulatory system for longer.
The idea behind the biology of ageing is to find the root causes which together create a complicated knock-on effect that slowly destroys the integrity of the systems in our body.
The plaque build up may be caused by something else too.
@Rizon huh, didn't know it was a buildup of plaque. Most of what I know about strokes is because my step uncle had one a few years back. He's doing alright, but he still needs a special knife and other assistance.
@@Gr3nadgr3gory Ah, sorry to hear that! That's the reason why biology of ageing research should get more awareness, funding and skilled people of all kinds of disciplines. To prevent and repair such damages. I don't think it is right to say that we cannot do more or that such illnesses are just part of getting older.
Technology and biological sciences are progressing really fast at the moment, I can't say how health care will look like in just ten years if there is a will to do better.
@Rizon we might not be able to do much now, but blue baby syndrome was also incurable until a Genius physician found a way to operate on the hearts of infants. I have great hope for the future of medical technology. Especially with the advent of adult stem cell harvesting.
Very cool video, in my country there is a plant called Espeletia (Frailejon in Spanish) that also lives many years and grows in dificult conditions. So there is another example to show how good the research you guys do is.
its interesting how different species adapt to their specific habitats, and overall to see that almost all plants that are able to hit 1k in their counter are conifers. they truly show how earth wouldve been a millenia ago. and just to stir the pot, the title to oldest tree is being contested by el gran abuelo, a patagonian cypress growing in alerce costero national park. one might think this place is also barren, but in fact is a temperate rainforest, one of the most productive ecosystems in chile, with a climate similar to redwood national forest in the us. vivan los árboles 🌱
I thought the oldest living thing in the world would be a sponge, because there was a kind of sponge that was estimated to be 10.000 years old....
Wiki says :
"Glass sponges found in the East China Sea and Southern Ocean have been estimated to be more than 10,000 years old. Although this may be an overestimate, it is likely that this is the longest lived animal on Earth."
It's the legendary SpongeBob
They're still collecting data about it (scientists thought it was extinct until recently!) but it may take the title if they can prove its age!
you're in for a tree-t!
And pando is around that age
@@CapitanGreenhat Pando is older than methuselah, when Methuselah is called the oldest living organism, it really means oldest non-clonal organism, which pando does not count as
"We must cut the oldest tree to see how old it is" - Someone 2022
Ok this is kinda funny, but I'd feel bad laughing at it.
@@FormerLeashKidAndProud It wasn't just some random dude. The story I saw said it was a research assistant who'd been tasked with determining its age. A man who has only a hammer is going to pound the sh*t out of everything.
@@FormerLeashKidAndProudwell it was because a scientist couldn’t get a core sample and well nobody expects to have a tree you choose to be the oldest ever, and the trees aren’t super endangered I don’t think
@@sirsanti8408 no there critically endangered mostly thanks to people.
They should have just custom-made a longer device to determine it's age.
I thought that tree looked familiar. I saw that tree once, from a distance. The conditions defeated me before I could make it. My nose started bleeding in the dry air and literally did not stop bleeding until I descended the mountain.
2:40 "And here's something else that's extremely cool: we have made our own
✨️MOLECULES✨️"
(how my brain first parsed this)
So, only some sections of the 5000 year old bristlecone are alive?
Yeah. Most of it is just dead wood.
7777'00000. Years old💀💀💀
Original title: how suffering leads to longer life
The oldest living guy on earth: DAMIT Another Year!
Never thought one day I'll be rooting for a tree I didn't even know the name of! Great video mate.
What about when the lightning super heats the water in the tree isn't that what usually makes a tree explode when it's struck? Is there anything about the structure of Methuselah that would prevent that?
I'm guessing less water content means smaller steam explosion?
Internal boundary and thicker amour
Spotted an error: 0:44 0.15 in is 0.4 cm, not 0.04 cm.
d'oh! you're right!
@@MinuteEarth There's another error... using antiquated imperial units in a science video.
I HAVE FINISHED THE COURSE(I love it)
Nice Great Science Topic, Guys
Really puts into perspective that 5000 years is not that long as we think it is.
Awesome
So great
That’s where Vaatu is locked up
Nice
Pretty good metaphor too
There is a strange tree on the top of a mountain around here. It looks like one of those old trees. It is all gnarled and stuff, and it hasn't changed much in the 30 years I've been going up the mountain. (It is near the top of a ski lift.) Although the mountain can get over 10 feet of snow accumulation in the winter the tree is located in a spot where the wind prevents the snow from piling up. I wonder if it is a bristlecone pine.
I'm assuming Methuselah made a cameo in the game "the witness". I say "assume" because I don't have an easy way of verifying the apparent similarities.
Love it
So basically avoid competition and don’t grow too much, also learn to survive where most can’t
what do you use to edit videos
A video on Pando, which could be up to 14000 years old, would be interesting.
Jellyfishes: "ARE YOU CHALLENGING ME???!!!"
Tree: IM A SURVIVOR IM NOT GONNA GIVE UP IM NOT GONNA STOP IM GONNA GO HARDRT
I love the little easter egg ya'll put in of Grant the pokemon XY gym leader climbing the mountain XD
nice
Old Tjikko in Sweden is twice the age of Methusulah..
Random camper: I need some fire wood, hey look! A weird looking tree. don’t mind if I do…
Life is amazing
It's funny how the latest research on longevity says that we have some mechanisms that work in a similar way. The harsher the conditions, the more our bodies prioritise staying alive as much as possible instead of reproducing
Was totally confused by the changed thumbnail for a moment.
Methuselah: I’m built different
The Old Tree:..... I seen things things that should not be seen in my long life......
You don't gotta live that long to see a lot. There were people who saw both the American Civil War and Yuri Grigaran.
You know you are early when you get to see the title change, then change back into the original, and change again
Sort of the opposite of "Live fast, die young"
Live slow, die never.
"Let's not be hasty now."
Said a certain ent in lord of the rings.
its the only tree that can say "back in my day"
Cool
how do we calculate the age for those organisms? i know with trees it has to do with the number of rings they form each year, but if parts of them can die separately, i dont know how it would work
and what about sharks? or the two leaf plants in the desert
The only reason I know what a bristlecone pine is is because in school i did a project on nevada and the bristlecone pine is the state tree of Nevada.
God, Methuselah has seen more things that most history books record in an edition
What about that one asper tree that has 80,000 "trunks" that are all geneticly identical. Think it's around half a million years old or something?
There‘s an asterisk at the start if the video that says *Non-clonal organism. I think that‘s how they exclude that.
@@screwaccountnames OK that makes sense.
There's also a contagious tumor which started out as part of a dog around 15,000 to 20,000 years ago, and is still growing and spreading to this day. By some definitions it is the oldest living thing.
I'm not sure anymore.
Dunno, it seems kinda lonely to live that long
😢
Methuselah Tree?
@@Topckrock tree's don't feel emotions? they don't have thoughts.
There are many cures to loneliness. None to death.
@@Deltexterity How can you know if you're not a tree?
The other secret to long life is to live in a place where humans don't usually go.
and where human trash doesn't go
1:40 - that basic fact ... got it
*reads title* I'm Immortal!
at 0:41 the conversion ratio is wrong, inch to centimeter is 2.54:1 and the centimeter is smaller than the inch, when the inch should be 2.54 centimeters
I've always wondered if plants can die of old age. There's a limit to how high they can grow. But once they reach that height, can they just live indefinitely?
So what your saying is I’m indestructible? Oh no, a slight stress change could easily… Indestructible!
give me *more* tree videos I NEED MORE please
The tree of wisdom is filled with wisdom, the only way blocking you from having accessing his wisdom is the language barrior. You must learn The Speech of Tree's for 50 years so you can talk to him...
resume: stay away from people and fires. live long and happy
Good timber does not grow at ease,
The stronger wind, the stronger trees.
The further sky, the greater length,
The more the storm, the more the strength.
--Snippet of my favorite poem, author unknown.
What's with the title and picture change of the video?
Yggdrasil
Only me? Alright, joke fun for me tho
So to live long live life in the edge
I learned a new thing today: Brussel Sprouts love Pizza.
Ok you've convinced me, when I reach my 60s or whatever I am going to move to an isolated area in the far north, I will live in the wild with nothing but the animals of the forest as my companions, and when I return to the rest of humanity, I will know all there is about the wild, and how to live for an eternity.
We’ve bred plants to be larger so why not breed trees to be super huge and suck up a lot of co2
i think we are already
Methuselah, the real life wise mystical tree
In China, there is a 1400-year-old Ginkgo tree and it has been standing with no disruptions
so basically bristlecones are just built different
"How this tree..." and not one picture of the actual tree is shown. SMH
My great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great grandfather climbed this tree.
Oh dammit, you mean to tell me I'm gonna be here FOREVER?
"once in a century fires" as a californian, i can confirm that these fies are not one in a century, but twice a decade
2:42 why does this remind me of a raptor?
Why don't bristle cone pines live in large forests since these adaptations have given them enough time to reproduce?
Wasn't there a recent discovery of a tree in... Chile?... that's older than Methuselah?
Make a video about the oldest tree in the world
It has seeds which are in people’s brains
0:03 oh so thats what the r pentomino is named after
1:40 I see what you did there
I like that bristle cone pine seeds eat pizza...1:39😊
0:42
The Bristlecone growth rate in centimetres is 0,4 cm/year not 0,04 cm/year
So basically: Be where no others are at all costs, be alone.
Help my ads are Duolingo and it's forcing my finger to downlo
First thumb-up, first comment!
These long-lifers are crazy. The sixth mass extinction is such a shame. It's a travesty for future generations.
oh hey bro, cool that you were here before the premiere
@@spungboy join patron if you can
It is the wise mystical tree
The secret to a long life is a lot of alone time. Introverts celebrate.
is there a particular reason California seems to have such extreme trees (giant sequoia - largest tree; coastal redwood - tallest tree; bristlecone pine - oldest tree)? or is it just historical/evolutionary/environmental chance?
It probably has to do with a combination of the conditions and the relatively late discovery by western civilization North American ecosystems are relatively complete compared to those in Eurasia and North Africa and most of Europe's remaining refugia for biodiversity are areas which are similarly relatively inaccessible to logging. European woodlands really are fragmentary at best as the soil ecology of forests has largely been driven to extinction by the collapse of forest ecosystems throughout Europe as the drive for lumber pushed Europeans further and further abroad after they cut down all the indigenous forests.
If I recall correctly form the Hidden life of trees the closest functional/complete forest ecosystem to western Europe is in Poland with the so called "forests" of Europe being primarily tree plantations largely stocked with nonnative fast growing trees for lumber. In effect any similar ages trees in other Mediterranean climates as a general rule were cut down thousands of years ago to satiate lumber demands.
Cute
If one of the Greenland sharks that is 400 years old is going to die this decade, it would have been born in the 1520s. Crazy to think we are living on earth with an animal with a brain that has been thinking for that long.
Me gaslighting myself that suffering is making me stronger.
I’m finna live to 100 years old.
In truth, suffering makes us more aware of patterns that can lead to negative outcomes. Experience tells us how to prepare and how urgent things can get if we don’t take immediate action at the first indications of a negative outcome. Stronger? No, not really. But more capable of living through struggles in the future? Maybe.
My grandmother lived through the Great Depression, WWII, and so on. She out lived 3 husbands and survived cancer multiple times. She taught me many things about surviving on very little and how to stay safe and not look homeless as a homeless woman. She taught me how to plan and save and prepare for the future, because nothing ever lasts (the good or the bad). She taught me to be frugal and never spend more than I need to at any given time. She taught me how to provide food and shelter for a lot of people on very little. She taught me that exercising every day, eating healthy food, taking daily vitamins, and having a good sense of humor would help me live a longer life. She was the manager of two apartment complexes and drove a moving van in her 90’s, up until she was 97 years old and broke her hip. She survived that surgery and then broke her arm while trying to exercise in her room in the recovery ward because she fell out of the bed. She survived that and then broke her other hip while still recovering and went into surgery again. She has Dementia now and she’s healed from that period of time. She had laser eye surgery to remove cataracts in both eyes during her stay in the hospital. Next year she’ll be 100 years old. She’s still up walking around and socializing and doing things, and taking care of herself alright but she’s probably not going to make it to 110. The Dementia will probably get her before her body quits. But she’s an amazing woman and I genuinely appreciate everything she’s taught me about life and survival. ❤ she’s given her grandchildren and great grandchildren a better chance at reaching 100 themselves because of her wisdom. There’s still no guarantee that we will for sure get there, but the more struggles you can overcome the better the chances of your survival. Have a great weekend 👋.
My other grandmother taught me about home remedies and some basic first aid. She taught me how to grow food. She also taught me how to find food in nature and identify edible plants and animals. She taught me to sew and mend things and to do my own repairs and home improvements. She taught me to be warm, and gentle, and patient and to never be afraid of being silly, asking for help, or admitting when you don’t know something. She was my maternal grandmother. From her side of the family I learned to quilt and make jewelry and to create things for the simple desire of wanting them to exist. She taught me problem solving and communication and a love of learning.
Her life was also difficult starting from her childhood in poverty. At 18 she married my grandfather and their car rolled down into a ravine on their honeymoon. My grandfather was thrown from the car and mostly alright, but my grandmother got stuck in her seatbelt and tumbled to the bottom in the car with several broken glass jars of preserves that were wedding gifts from family. She broke both her arms and both her legs and her spine was severed, and she had so many glass shards in her body. She had been pregnant at the time and had a miscarriage because of the accident. They both eventually had healed, but she was in the hospital recovering and doing physical therapy for a very long time. Eventually she learned to walk and run again and regained the use of her fine motor skills, but she had pain every single day after that and eventually in her 50’s she started to have mobility issues again. She got diabetes and eventually died at 65 of a respiratory infection. Her sister lived to 72 before dying of heart failure. But my maternal grandmother was trained to be a nurse during her stay on a military base in Spain during some war or other that my grandfather fought in. They didn’t have many supplies so she had to learn from the locals about growing food and finding it in nature in exchange for her help with some of their basic medical needs. She never went on to be a doctor or anything but she made house visits while raising her own kids and helping others with theirs. Because of her love and kindness I’m able to give that love and kindness to my son, who looked just like her when he was born. I miss her all the time but I’ve used what she taught me, almost every day of my life. And it helped my family get through some difficult times as well. *from her side of the family I learned to hunt, track, trap, and fish and how to clean and prepare animals for food too. Those are the things that most people can’t handle, but they are a part of life for some people too. I use to catch wild rabbits by hand to feed my family for a period of time. It wasn’t easy and sometimes I’d be out all day. Sometimes I couldn’t catch any. It takes a lot of patience, a keen eye, and fast reflexes. Sometimes the hunting and fishing was bad too. But those are things I can do if needed, and that means a lot to me.
Makes me wonder about humans… Time to live in extreme climates to live forever!
Quick - to the fortress of solitude!
Reject the comfort of society, return to monk.
Should have put vise mystical tree on the thumbnail
I think I will be much too tired by the time I reach 70, but I wish them luck!
Basically a shut-in tree
50 MINUTES!?!??