Date Palm from Ancient Israel Returns to Life

World Net Daily has an interesting story about the revival of an extinct date palm from ancient Israel.

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.

Read it all.

The ancient date seeds are from Masada, the site in Israel where Jewish resistance fighters held off Roman legions for three years. Masada is a tall elevation where a fortress for King Herod was built millienia ago. In 73 AD, when Roman legions were finally able to scale the steep sides of Masada, the Jewish resisters committed mass suicide rather than surrender and be crucified.

It is speculated that the ancient seeds were from dates eaten by the Jewish resisters of Masada.

It's interesting to note that the ungerminated seed has lain in the ground almost since the time of Christ, six hundred years before Muhammad. And today, one of those seeds has germinated and the plant lives again.

Those Israelis are pretty tough, and that includes their plants.