Want A Date?

After visiting Israel last summer and seeing Masada, I
found this article fascinating (like only Spock could say).


A Judean date palm, long extinct, has been "brought back to life" by scientists who unearthed a 2,000 year-old seed of the plant and germinated it. A healthy 4-foot-tall seedling, named Methuselah after the oldest living man in the Bible, now holds the record for the oldest germinated seed.






The seed itself, perhaps the last link to the vast date palm forests that once grew in the Jordan River valley, was first discovered in 1965, as archaeologists excavated the ancient Israel site of Masada. Seeds discovered at the site were put into storage for 40 years.






In 2005, the date palm now known as Methuselah was planted and sprouted. After it germinated, fragments of the seed shell clinging to the roots were carbon dated, placing the age of the date seeds sometime between 60 B.C. and A.D. 95, about the age expected for a seed that could have survived the famed attack on the Masada fortress described by the ancient historian Josephus.

Following the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 by Roman forces, a group of Jewish zealots retreated to the mountaintop fortress of Masada, a nearly impregnable palace originally built for Herod the Great. These resistors to Roman rule withstood siege from Caesar's army until A.D. 73, when, according to Josephus, the nearly 1,000 people bunkered there burned their remaining stores (all but one food stash, to demonstrate that they weren't starving to death) and committed mass suicide.

The discovery of these date seeds from Masada at about the same time period leads to some intriguing historical speculation.

"These people were eating these dates up on the mountain and looking down at the Roman camp, knowing that they were going to die soon, and spitting out the pits," Sallon said. "Maybe here is one of those pits."