At a secret location deep in the White Mountains of eastern California, grows a Great Basin bristlecone pine that is the oldest known tree in the world.
The tree is named after the biblical figure Methuselah, the father of Noah (of the ark), who was the longest-lived human recorded in the Bible - said to have lived 969 years.
Indeed the tree itself is far older than that. Estimated to be almost 5000 years old, it predates Stonehenge and the pyramids of Egypt. Methuselah grows in a harsh environment, with strong icy winds, barely any soil and extreme elevation. It is perfectly adapted to this semi-arid boreal climate.
Dendrochronologist Edmund Schulman began dating the trees of the Inyo valley back in the 1950s and soon determined the grove of trees were extraordinarily old. A core sample revealed Methuselah to be 4789 years old in 1957, making it 4858 in 2026. The previous record was held by another bristlecone pine - the Prometheus tree - at 4844.
Sadly Prometheus was accidentally destroyed in 1964, so Methuselah’s exact location is kept secret to prevent vandalism and other damage by humans.