The Oldest Living Things in the World Kindle Edition

The Oldest Living Things in the World [Print Replica] Kindle Edition
Author: Visit ‘s Rachel Sussman Page ID: B00L41G5CQ

Done.
File Size: 46708 KBPrint Length: 304 pagesPublisher: University of Chicago Press (June 3, 2014)Publication Date: June 3, 2014 Sold by:  Digital Services, Inc. Language: EnglishID: B00L41G5CQText-to-Speech: Not enabled X-Ray: Not Enabled Word Wise: Not EnabledLending: Not Enabled Enhanced Typesetting: Not Enabled Best Sellers Rank: #237,702 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store) #10 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Science > Biological Sciences > Biology > Developmental Biology #24 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Arts & Photography > Photography > Photographers, A-Z #49 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Arts & Photography > Photography > Nature & Wildlife

I agree with the other two reviewers who gave this book five stars, but I don’t think they touched on what was so meaningful to me about the book. The photography is good, even though many of the subjects don’t really lend themselves to easy framing or notable settings – try photographing a fungus if you don’t believe me. The theme is engaging as well, but what really made this book for me were the stories, thoughts, ponderings that accompany each chapter. Despite writing only about living things over 2,000 years old, Sussman has made this into an intensely personal book, part story, part quest, and all heart. Please read this, you’ll be better for having done so.

A tree 2000 years old, another a 13,000, and a clonal copse of trees 70,000 years old – or maybe a few hundred thousand. Bacteria somewhere around a half-million years old. Yet odder beings in the thousands to ten-thousand-plus range. If the individual organism isn’t at least 2000 years old, it doesn’t make the cut.

This book is simply awe-inspiring – to be among beings that live such lives, where ice ages might come and go around the one individual. That time scale simply boggles the mind. Then the chill sets in: a few of these beings have died since their pictures were taken. A tree of 3000 years succumbed to fire, another of 13,000 was killed in a construction project. What lived so long can die in minutes, and you can’t just plant some seeds and grow a new one, not 13,000 years old. Gone, after all that time, because of natural hazards or human carelessness.

And, in the current Great Extinction, we’ll lose a lot more, mostly never having known they ever lived. Environmental threats and climate change can move faster than these living things can respond. I find it humbling, too – so few human artifacts or cultures have the power to last as long as these beings have.

Although the naturalist who collected these images took care with proper identification, she’s not a scientist by trade. She’s an artist, a photographer. But she’s a part of the scientific venture, too, making it humanly understandable, even personal, and stirring the sense of awe and respect that underlies nearly all scientific research. (I first became aware of this book through a review in Science magazine.) Really, she just proves that the dichotomy of science and art is artificial and arbitrary, more an artifact of the viewer’s preconceptions than of the fields themselves. This has my highest recommendation.

— wiredweird

Author/photographer Sussman is motivated by the death of the Senator tree near Orlando Florida in early January, 2012 – 3,500 years old, killed by a fire likely human caused. (There was no lightning recorded in the area during the weeks prior, and the tree had recently been provided with its own lightning rod.) Fortunately she had already photographed it in 2007 as part of her focus on living organisms 2,000 years and older.

The Senator tree is not the only seemingly immortal treasure damaged/killed by man – there’s a 3,000+ year-old chestnut tree near Mt. Etna in which someone tried to grill sausages inside it. Fortunately, that tree was saved and a protective fence since erected.

Other such treasures are also threatened from time to time – thankfully she’s well into her work. Sussman has also traveled to Greenland that grow only 1 cm. every hundred years, Tasmania to record a 43,000-year old shrub, a dense bush in Chile’s Atacama Desert that is as much as 3,000 years old, etc.

I was surprised to learn that creosote bushes, of which there are many in my yard, have been estimated at 12,000 years-old in the Mohave Desert. Turns out they grow-out from a center via circular expansion of roots. So, mine may also be very, very old as well. The really good news – they can survive up to two years without water. Quaking Aspen in Utah, underground forests in South Africa, and other trees/bushes spread out similarly from a very old center. Olive trees may be 3,000 years old.

There’s also 5,500-year-old moss on Elephant Island in Antarctica (looks deceptively like ordinary moss), and younger (2,200 year-old moss) growing atop 9,000-year-old fossilized remains of its predecessors. Oldest of all – 400,000 to 600,000 year-old Siberian bacteria (microscopic), and still alive, per the experts.

Truly an awe-inspiring work.
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