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Methuselah: the 2,000-year-old seed that brought back an extinct tree

This palm tree grew from a seed that was already old when the Romans besieged Masada.

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The real story

In the 1960s, archaeologists digging at Masada, Herod's clifftop fortress above the Dead Sea, found a jar of ancient date seeds. They sat in a university drawer for about 40 years. In January 2005, the agricultural researcher Elaine Solowey of the Arava Institute planted three of them. Eight weeks later one sprouted, and radiocarbon dating put the seed at roughly 2,000 years old.

Judean dates were famous in the ancient world: Roman writers praised their sweetness, but the plantations disappeared over the following centuries and the variety went extinct. Methuselah turned out to be male. Later, six more ancient seeds were germinated, and in 2021 a female named Hannah, pollinated with Methuselah's pollen, produced the first Judean dates eaten in many centuries.

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The facts we checked

  • Seeds of the extinct Judean date palm were found in excavations at Masada, an ancient fortress by the Dead Sea
  • In January 2005, a scientist planted three of these roughly 2,000-year-old seeds; one sprouted about eight weeks later, and was named Methuselah
  • Later, more ancient seeds sprouted too, and the revived palms have produced dates again

Sources

We checked every number and date on screen before the video was made.

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