The 2,000-Year-Old Seed That Grew

this palm tree grew from a seed that is two thousand years old.

Here's how it got there. In your village, fruit means figs and grapes. You eat them all summer and dry them for winter. Dates are different. You've had maybe one in your life.

The best ones grew around Jericho. The historian Josephus called it the most fruitful part of Judea, packed with palm trees.

Those groves were so valuable that Mark Antony gave them to Cleopatra as a gift. Herod, the king, had to lease them back. Imagine renting your own trees.

So when Savta brings a handful of Jericho dates to a wedding, you hold yours like it's gold. You make it last six bites.

Decades later, during the war with Rome, the rebels holding Masada burned their own storerooms. The walls collapsed over the grain, the oil, the wine, and the dates. Dates just like yours.

Archaeologists dug them up and catalogued the seeds. About forty years later, someone planted one.

It sprouted. A kind of date that had long since disappeared came back to life. They named the palm Methuselah, after the oldest man in the Bible.

Today it stands about ten feet tall. And you? You ate your date and spat the seed into the dirt. But somebody's ended up on Masada, and that's why