Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The World's Oldest Things

Starting point is 00:00:00 People are fascinated by extremes. We're interested in the biggest, strongest, fastest, and tallest, and I'm certainly no exception. One of the things I've been fascinated with is the past, and in particular, very old things, things which have withstood the test of time. So let's learn more about the oldest things in the world, and even the universe on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you.

Starting point is 00:00:42 back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the Thuline podcast from NPR. We might as well start a discussion of old things with the oldest thing that there is, the universe. In a previous episode, I discussed the age of the universe and how it's been determined. They've used the Hubble constant to determine the age of the universe.

Starting point is 00:01:15 and the current estimate is that it's approximately 13.787 billion years old. As I've previously done an entire episode explaining how the age of the universe is estimated, I'll refer you to that episode if you want to know more about it. However, since I did that episode, new discoveries have been made from the James Webb Telescope. It has discovered galaxies that are far older than should be possible. They've observed galaxies that would have to have been formed only 300 million years after the Big Bang, yet they display features that would have made the galaxy several billion years old. There's a star in our galaxy known as HD140283, also known as the Methuselah star.

Starting point is 00:01:57 It's been dated to be older than the universe, which obviously is impossible. These discrepancies have caused some astrophysicists to challenge the accepted age for the universe, and some of them are now estimating that it might be as old as 26.7 billion years, almost twice as old as we previously thought. This is going to be a very active field over the next several years as more and better data is gathered from more and better astronomical instruments. As we gather more data, better explanations will be required to explain the observations, which should give us a more accurate estimate of the age of the universe.

Starting point is 00:02:30 In talking about old things, let's get a bit closer to home. How old is the oldest rock in the world? There are only a few places on Earth where the oldest rocks from the original formation of the Earth can be found, in particular, Canada, Australia, and parts of Africa, mostly in Ethiopia. The current record for the oldest rock on Earth comes from the Northwest Territories in Canada. Discovered in 1999, it has been radiometrically dated to be 4.031 billion years old. There was also a rock sample taken from the Apollo 14 mission, which had a piece of rock that was believed to have come from Earth, and that was dated to a similar age.

Starting point is 00:03:08 However, these rocks are not the oldest things on Earth. The Merchanson Meteorite, which fell near Merchanson, Victoria, Australia in 1969, has been dated to 7 billion years old, far older than the Earth itself. I've also done a previous episode on radiometric dating, which gives a more detailed explanation as to exactly how rocks can be dated with accuracy. So, sure, rocks are old, but what about things that are living? This is much harder to determine, because there are certain organisms that do not appear to age.

Starting point is 00:03:42 They reach maturity and then just seem to keep going with no apparent signs of change. Some organisms even revert back to an earlier stage of life and do this in a cycle. So it's entirely probable that there's something out there that's really, really old, but we just have no way of knowing what it is. The list of the oldest living things is, in some cases, an estimate, and in a few cases it can be verified. The oldest life forms that we can be reasonably sure of are colonial life forms. Colonial life forms appear to have multiple life forms, but in reality are just one under the surface. Just off the coast of

Starting point is 00:04:17 the island of Formantara, one of Spain's Belaeric Islands in the Mediterranean Sea, is a colony of Posenonia Oceania, a type of seagrass. Each blade of grass is part of the same organism which is connected below the seafloor. Estimates place the age of the colony at approximately 200,000. thousand years old. Another colonial life form are aspen trees. Aspen trees are all clones of each other, and a grove of aspen trees are all one single life form. The oldest grove of aspen trees is the trembling giant in the state of Utah, which consists of almost 50,000 quaking aspen trees, and it has an estimated age of 80,000 years old. But colonial organisms aren't what we usually think of when we think of something alive. We usually think of a single

Starting point is 00:05:02 organism. If we look at single organisms, then the oldest are probably Antarctic volcano sponges. They grow in the cold waters off the coast of Antarctica and have an incredibly slow rate of growth. However, given the size of some of them, the largest are believed to be as much as 15,000 years old. For a single plant, we have to turn to the Great Basin Bristlecone pine. Bristlecone pines are scraggly, long-lived trees that grow in the mountains in the American West. The Oldest trees live in the arid Great Basin of Utah, Nevada, and eastern California. The oldest tree ever found is known as the Methuselah tree, which is believed to be 4,800 years old, and is located in the mountains of eastern California.

Starting point is 00:05:46 The exact location of the tree is kept hidden, so no one goes to harm it. The oldest tree whose age can be verified, because it was planted by humans, would be the Jaya Shri Mahabhati tree in Sri, in Sri. It was planted from a cutting from the original tree under which it is believed the Buddha received enlightenment. It was planted approximately 2,300 years ago. There's a rose bush that was planted alongside the cathedral in Heidelsheim, Germany. The bush has been flowering ever since it was planted in the year 815. But what about animals? Something a bit more complicated than just a sponge. There was a clam harvested off the coast of Iceland in 2016 that was

Starting point is 00:06:26 estimated by researchers to be 506 years old. The Greenland shark, which lives in the cold, waters of the North Atlantic is believed to have a lifespan of somewhere between 250 and 500 years. It's the vertebrate species that has the longest lifespan. This is based on samples that have been captured and in some cases the same shark was captured decades apart. The longest-lived mammal is believed to be the bowhead whale. Specimens have been found that were believed to be somewhere between 200 to 250 years old. The longest-lived land animal that can be verified is a Seychelle tortoise by the name of Jonathan. Jonathan was born in 1832 and moved to the island of St. Helena in 1882. Jonathan is still alive today and I've actually met him when I visited the island of

Starting point is 00:07:12 St. Helena. A major Mitchell's cockatoo by the name of Cookie lived to be 83 and passed away in 2016. And there's a Laysan Arbitross that was first tagged on Midway Island in 1956 and is still laying eggs as of 2020. The oldest house cat ever was named Cream. Puff and lived to be 38 years old. The oldest dog was an Australian sheepdog who lived to the age of 29. The oldest chimpanzee lived to the age of 80, and the oldest horse lived to be 62. But what about people? I previously did an episode on Jean Clement, the woman who claimed to have lived to an age of 122. However, there is doubt as to her claim, and she really may have only been 102 at the time of her death. Outside of her, the oldest human ever recorded was Kane Tanaka, who passed away,

Starting point is 00:08:01 in April of 2022 at the age of 119. While individuals may have lived well over the age of 100, evidence of humanity dates back much further. The oldest hominid fossil, something that can reasonably be considered to be an ancestor of modern humans is a judgment call. It all depends on where you want to draw the line. The absolute earliest fossil that can be considered hominid comes from a species known as sayhalanthropis Chadensis. A cranium skull fossil was discovered in northern Chad in 2002, and it's believed to be approximately 7 million years old. The oldest stone tools were found near Lake Turkana in Kenya, and they date back about 3.5 million years, and they're actually way older than modern humans. The oldest examples of human art date back about 73,000 years.

Starting point is 00:08:48 Samples of ochre were found on cave walls in the Blombos Cave near Cape Town, South Africa. And there are examples of human hamprints that have been found in limestone in Tibet that may date back as far as 200,000 years. The oldest human construction, something that would be considered an edifice or a building that we currently know of, would be Golbeki Tempe in Turkey, on which I've done a previous episode. It dates back as far as 11,500 years. The oldest city in the world is a matter of definition. However, the oldest walled city that we know of is the city of Jericho, located in the Palestinian West Bank. It still inhabited today and may have been founded as early as 9,000 years ago.

Starting point is 00:09:27 The oldest sample of a written human language comes from the Kish tablet in Mesopotamia. It came from the Sumerian civilization and is written in cuneiform, and it's believed to be about 5,300 years old. Almost all ancient ruins are made out of stone and brick because anything that's made out of wood seldom survives. However, the oldest wooden building in the world is the Harugi Temple in Japan. It was first built in the year 607 and was destroyed by fire. It was rebuilt in 670, and that very first built in 670, and that very first built. version of the temple is still what exists today. I've actually visited Harugi when I traveled from Kyoto to Nara. Not many people know that it exists and so they don't visit it, but it was

Starting point is 00:10:07 actually one of my highlights of my trip to Japan. The printing press revolutionized the world, and the two oldest printing presses in existence can both be found at the Museum Plantain Mortis in Antwerp, Belgium. Both presses were built around the year 1600. The oldest university in the world that is still operating is the University of Bologna in Italy. It opened its doors in the year 1180. The oldest company in the world, which has been in continuous operation, is the Congo Gumi construction company in Japan. It was founded in 574 until it was sold to the Takamatsu Construction Group in January of 2006, of which it is now a subsidiary. There have also been surprising longevity feats in the realm of technology. The longest functioning light bulb has been operating almost

Starting point is 00:10:54 continuously since 1901 at Fire Station number 6 in Livermore, California. The bulb currently only uses about 4 watts of electricity, and it has been on almost continuously since it was first installed. The oldest functioning computer is the Harwell computer located in Harwell, England. It was built in 1952 and then decommissioned in 1973. However, it was later refurbished and now still functions, and is used to perform demonstrations at the British National Museum of Computing. It weighs 2.5 metric tons and has computing power much less than pretty much anything you will ever encounter in your life with a processor in it. And I should end with the newest thing on this list, but the one that's probably the most relevant, the world's oldest podcast. The longest

Starting point is 00:11:40 operating podcast, which is still being produced today, is open source by Chris Leiden. It began in 2003 and was based on a radio program and recently celebrated its 20th anniversary. This is, of course, just a sampling of some of the oldest things in the world. And I could probably do several more episodes with notable accomplishments of longevity. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Peter Bennett and Cameron Kiefer. I wanted to give a big thanks to everyone who supports the show on Patreon.

Starting point is 00:12:15 Your support helps me put out a new show every day. And if you're interested in Everything Everywhere Daily merchandise, Patreon is currently the only place where it's available. And if you'd like to talk to other listeners of the show and get notified of future episodes and projects, please join my Facebook group or Discord server. Links to everything are in the show notes.

Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The World's Oldest Things

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