Basic HTML Version
REWRITING HISTORY
THEWORLD'S
LDESTLMNGTHIN
At nearly 5,000
year.~
of age, bristlecone pines are revolutionizing man 's understanding
of c/imate, history and arclraeology.
by
Robert A. Ginskey • Photos
by
David Muench
IHI
igh in the mountai ns of the southwestern Uni ted Stares, the twisted. misshapen and
battered forms of bristlecone pines cling precariously to the sparse soil that
somehow sustains them. But the stunted, gnomish appearance of thc bristlecones
beli es their incred ible age- an awesome antiquity tha t antedates recorcled history. lncleecl,
in the White Mountai ns of Californ ia, nearly 20 br istlecones have lived more than 4,000
years. One tree, known as Methuselah, is over 4,600 years old. The Methusclah tree was
already hundreds of years old when the Egyptians built the Great Pyramid.
It
had lived
over a millennium when Moses led the Israelites ou t of Egypt. And it had survived over
3,000 mountaintop winters when Cha rlemagne was proclaimed emperor of the Holy
Roman Empire in A.D . 800. An even older bristlecone pine, growing in Nevada. was
19