The oldest living trees on earth were already ancient when the Egyptian pyramids were being built. They have no brain, no nervous system, no way to remember in any sense we’d recognize. And yet, locked inside their trunks is a physical record of nearly every major event in the last five millennia — every drought, every volcanic eruption, every decade of unusual cold. These trees don’t just survive time. They archive it. Meet Methuselah Pinus longaeva — the Great Basin Bristlecone Pine — grows in the White Mountains of California at elevations above 3,000 metres, in thin alkaline soil, under winds that would flatten most forests. It is one of the most inhospitable places on the planet. Which is exactly why these trees live so long. Dcrjsr, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons The most famous among the oldest living trees on earth is called Methuselah, estimated at around 4,855…