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Can you believe this ? Some redwood trees are over 2,000 years old ? That is so old it is older than the year zero when our ancient calendar began. But, they are not the oldest trees. The oldest living trees in California – and in the world - are the Bristlecone Pine Trees. How old are they ? One is over 4500 years old ! 4500 years ago the original Californians had not yet been joined by the native peoples who were migrating down from the higher plains of the great basin to live in California. 4500 years ago the ancient Greek Civilization was not even developed in Athens.

Earth's oldest living inhabitant is a tree named "Methuselah". At 4,765 years, Methuselah has lived more than a millennium longer than any other tree. It is a Bristelcone Pine Tree living in the White-Inyo Mountains of eastern California and was discovered in 1957. But it might not have been the oldest tree had awareness of the rarity of these trees been more widely understood … a Bristelcone Pine Tree was unfortunately cut down in Nevada in1964 on an amateur scientific expedition and proved to be 4,950 years old.

Tree ages are now determined by examining the number of rings in a cross section of the tree. Each year is a ring, and some rings are wide during rainy years that afforded growth, and some rings are just lines upon lines when there were droughts that allowed for nearly no growth. If you look on the end of a piece of firewood you will see the arc of these rings. Or if you find a cut tree you can see the full rings. Scientists do not need to cut a tree down to date it, they can take a tiny core sample and then test it in a laboratory causing little harm to the living tree in the wild.

Once such scientist back in the 1930s-1950s was studying the climate changes of the southwest over the last few centuries. He discovered how accurate the tree ring dating could be, and began using it to search for climate patterns – drought years, wet years, and so on. Edmund Schulman first found a few 500-1,000 year old trees. And then he heard about the Bristlecone Pines rumored to be even more ancient. The Bristlecone live at elevations usually over 11,000 feet, thriving in a terrain where humans rarely enter. The first California Bristlecone tree he examined turned out to be 36 feet around and 1500 years old. As he went up further in elevation, he found the Bristlecones clinging to rock, growing in places nearly unimaginable. The higher he went, the more impossible the terrain seemed to support life, the OLDER the trees were ! They were 3,000-4,000 years old, with Methusalah becoming the oldest at 4,723 years old.

Schulman wrote "The capacity of these trees to live so fantastically long may, when we come to understand it fully, perhaps serve as a guidepost on the road
to understanding of longevity in general."

There is now a Schulman Memorial Grove designated inside the 28,000 acre Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest to honor this man’s remarkable discoveries that changed our view of time, life, and climate. The Forest was dedicated in 1958.