The little tree named Methuselah was sprouted in 2005 from a seed recovered from Masada, where rebelling Jews committed suicide rather than surrender to Roman attackers. Masada, was built by King Herod in the 1st century BC. as a winter palace overlooking the Dead Sea. “It has survived and flourished,” Dr. Sarah Sallon said. Previous attempts to grow plants from ancient seeds failed after a few days.
Since the seed was first germinated a few years ago, there had been some doubt whether it was really 2,000 eld old, like the others found at the site.
“At first we couldn’t break off pieces of the seed for carbon dating,” Sallon said in a telephone interview. “But when we moved the plant to a larger pot, we found fragments of the the seed on the roots, which we were able to carbon date.”
Radiocarbon dating is a dating method that uses the radioisotope carbon-14 (14C) to determine the age of carbonaceous materials. One of the most frequent uses of radiocarbon dating is to estimate the age of organic remains from archaeological sites.
They still don’t know whether the The Tree Named Methuselah is a girl. It will need to be 6 or 7 years old beforethey can tell. If the tree, which now stands 1.5 metres (5 feet) tall, is female, it might be able to help restore the species.
The Judean date region was also believed to provide a natural remedy for numerous ailments ranging from heart problems to constipation, something Sallon said she wants to test with boost research if the tree is female and bears fruit.
“People would take the fruit and attain it into a drink or tablet and take it as medicine,\” Sallon said.
The oldest documented seed to be grown previously was a 1,300-year-old lotus.The Tree Named Methuselah is coming from a seed much older than that.
