A tree grows in the arid soil of Kibbutz Ketura in southern Israel. A subspecies extinct for nearly a thousand years, this Judean date palm was resurrected from a tiny 2000-year-old seed found in an ancient clay jar unearthed in 1963 by archaeologists excavating around Herod the Great’s palace at the ancient fortress of Masada.

Radiocarbon dating found that the seed, one of six preserved in the jar by the arid climate, dated from sometime between 155 BCE and 64 CE. Dubbed Methuselah for Noah’s grandfather, who lived to the age of 969, the palm represents the oldest verified germination of a seed assisted by a human.

Date palms once flourished in the Judean Valley and were an important source of food, shelter and medicine. The palm’s fruit — the honey of the “land of milk and honey” — was large, dark and seductively sweet.

When the Roman Empire invaded ancient Judea, thick forests of date palms covered the valley, from the Galilee in the north to the Dead Sea in the south. Over the centuries, the Judean palm was decimated by years of war and foreign conquest. Eight hundred years ago, Crusaders destroyed the last remaining specimens, rendering the plant extinct.

The seeds found at Masada were preserved and stored at Bar-Ilan University in Tel Aviv. More than 40 years later, Elaine Solowey from the Center for Sustainable Agriculture at the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, decided to try to resurrect three of the seeds.

She first soaked them in hot water to activate absorption, then immersed them in a nutrient-rich solution and fertilizer made from seaweed. On January 25, 2005, she planted them.

In 2010 Methuselah has reached a height of six-and-a-half feet. By 2015, Methuselah had produced pollen that was used to pollinate contemporary female date palms. It is hoped that Methuselah, now 2,000 years old, may yet become a father.

Arava Institute photo