We regularly announce the name of the oldest human on Earth, his gender, his nationality, we stop on his life. But, in reality, of all living beings, humans are far from being the longest-lived. Thereupon, the trees beat everyone flat.
Evidenced by this study conducted by a researcher at the CNRS climate and environmental sciences laboratory, Jonathan Barichivich, who has just given a precise age to the tree which is, it seems, the oldest in the world. : 5484 years. Five and a half millennia of roots for this Patagonian cypress found in southern Chile, in the Alerce Costero National Park. A colossus of the same family as the redwoods that the locals have long nicknamed: “Gran Abuelo” (“the great-grandfather“).
The whole challenge was to give him an age while he is still alive. To do this, it is usually a matter of counting the rings of the trunk, each attesting to a year of growth. Jonathan Barichivich therefore took several samples from one meter deep in the trunk. Knowing that it is four meters in diameter, he did not reach the heart but he analyzed these samples and used several computer models taking into account the size of the tree or its growth rate, until obtaining this value of 5,484 years. A value not yet published in a scientific journal to be taken with caution, estimates may vary by tens or even hundreds of years. But what is certain, explains the researcher to Euronews, is that this tree is more than 5,000 years old, which makes it beat the current record holder, a 4,800-year-old Californian pine, or 600 less.
A dizzying longevity on our human scale. 5,500 years ago, it was the beginnings of animal husbandry and agriculture, the first writing system and the wheel were just being invented in Mesopotamia, there were still cedars in Lebanon, primary forests in Europe and no chainsaw in Brazil. What to realize in hollow that this tree, so enduring it is, is fragile, and that it must be preserved.
Protect it, for example, from hundreds of annual visitors who, according to the researcher, not only trample its roots but sometimes take away pieces of its bark as a souvenir. Hence the hope of getting it classified, accessible but protected. In short, respected and esteemed like any good old man he is.