Answer & explanation
The official answer, with Fermi’s reasoning step by step.
Answer & explanation
Official answer
4,858
years
How to estimate it
Fermi’s official “Napkin math”
Start with giant redwoods. Tour guides love saying they were already standing when Jesus was born, so about 2,000 years. How much older is the champion? It's a tougher tree in a harsher spot. Maybe twice as old.
- Old giant redwoods
- ~2,000 yrs
- Champion, maybe twice that
- × 2
- 2,000 × 2
- ≈ 4,000 yrs
Rounded assumptions may give a slightly different estimate. The official answer above is the game’s reference value.
Source calculation & reference
- Methuselah's age when Edmund Schulman cored it in 1957
- 4,789 rings
- Years since the 1957 core
- + 69
- 4,789 + 69 (sprouted about 2833 BC)
- ≈ 4,858 years
Reference cited by Fermi: Guinness World Records, oldest living individual tree: Methuselah, a Great Basin bristlecone pine (4,856 years as of 2024); Rocky Mountain Tree-Ring Research OLDLIST (Methuselah, crossdated, about 4,850 years)
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