2,500-year-old olive tree burned down in Evia fires in Greece | Hacker News Reader

2,500-year-old olive tree burned down in Evia fires in Greece

greekreporter.com

94 pointscurmudgeon2229 comments

That tree was planted in the era of Classical Greece; if it could speak of the epochs and people it saw, it would have had many tales to tell.

This is as much a cultural loss as it is an economic loss. I have no connection to Greece or it’s people, but this saddens me.

Talking about old:

There is another tree in Crete that is 4k old.... (yes, 4,000 years old). It even pre-dates the Greeks, as they arrived in the area only around 1400-1450bc. It was planted by the Minoan people... and it is still there today making olives.

They're not sure how old it is. The best guess range is 2,000 to 4,000 years:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olive_tree_of_Vouves

Both, Olive tree of Vouves (aka "Elia Vouvon", 2000-5000 y.o)[0] & 'Olive tree burned in Eva fire' (unnamed, 2000 y.o.)[1], are in the List of oldest trees (with estimated ages) on Wikipedia.

Here is photo of 'Olive tree burned in Eva fire', uploaded on Jan 19, 2004 (photo taken not later than that date).[2]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_trees#cite_ref-...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_trees#cite_ref-...

[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20110827125521/http://outdoors.w...

[img] https://web.archive.org/web/20121027221058im_/http://image09...

Well, that English chap Ventris proved that the Myceneans were in fact Greek, as per his “Greek nightmare”, but was killed before he could prove that Linear A & hence the Minoans were Greek. But the majority of scholars contend that King Minos etc were Greek

The Myceneans were likely ethnically Greek and seem to have spoken an early version of Greek. I have not seen anything to indicate if the Minoans (who were distinct from Myceneans) were ethnically Greek, but their language does not appear to be Indo-European. If it were, it would be easier to translate. If the Minoans were ethnically Greek, that suggests that there were a population of people on the mainland and on Minos that spoke a non-Indo-European language and that that language was larger displaced on the Greek mainland by Indonesia-European immigrants who transferred their language to the native people and that evolved into the various kinds of Greek language.

It's really hard to follow your logic, especially your version of the 'facts'. The Myceneans are proven to be Greek beyond doubt, and their writing system Linear B is Greek- is a settled among scholars. The Minoans, outside of their homeland of Crete, had colonies in mainland Greece, other Aegean islands (Santorini), Sicily, and as far as Spain. Using the indo-european language is a tortured logic thread

How hardy are olive trees? I wonder if it'll grow back from the stump

They’re extremely hardy but not in that sense. They’re hardy by being drought resistant and by growing absolutely massive (but stout) and incredibly strong. Figs on the other hand are rather flimsy but regrow from roots all the time.

Good to know! I actually had fig trees in mind when I asked the question, so good analogy. To bad then. Hopefully they've done something to propagate it in the past.

A strange thought just occurred to me... they said that it was fertile with olives until it was destroyed by the fire. Plants grow and create fruit through cellular division, right? How is it possible for a plant to live for 2500 years without spontaneously developing a malignant mutation / cancer? Is it possible for plants to have cancer?

Cancer isn’t even guaranteed in animals. Naked mole rats are notable for being mammals largely immune to tumors. They’re fascinating in other ways, especially their eusociality.

Cancer-like growths in trees exist, but they don’t have the problems with metastases animals do.

How have we observed enough naked mole rats to be confident of this? How did cancer rates in them become an object of study in the first place? Is there a reason to think they don't get cancer?

It’s not just naked mole rats. Some sharks, turtles, and other animals exhibit the same phenomenon. They’re not immune to cancer, but their defenses (mostly multiple layers of contact inhibition) prevent tumors from establishing themselves and metastasizing or growing to a dangerous size in their natural environment. The adaptations themselves tend to be mutation resistant so the probability that a cell will become malignant and lose those layers of protection is astronomical, whereas most animals have many single points of failure, so to speak.

Naked mole rats reportedly develop cancer when living in zoos where they are exposed to much more oxygen than they’re used to. Their genetics naturally prevent cancers when they’re living in a hypoxic underground environment but when exposed to the oxidative stresses of living above ground, the mutation rate can overcome their natural defenses

Right. But how did anyone come across this knowledge? Who would suspect that a particular creature might be better at fighting cancer than all the others?

Someone does a couple hundred necroscopies of dead individuals and finds no cancer deaths and decides to go digging, I suspect. There are captive colonies of the things, as they're more obviously interesting in a variety of ways.

Contact inhibition is among the most studied topics in biology due to its significance in cancer formation, aging, dermatology, etc. Scientists are always on the look out for species with interesting adaptations.

The general process goes: naturalists, zoologists, etc gather data on a species. Oncology/aging/whatever researcher notices a peculiar data point - in this case the naked mole rats' extreme longevity compared to other rodents - and investigates. The peculiar data points (lifespan, rate of cancer, etc.) percolate until someone stumbles on a plausible mechanism [1]. Rodents reproduce like crazy so it wouldn't take long to notice.

[1] https://www.pnas.org/content/106/46/19352

I’d encourage you to read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naked_mole-rat. They are awesomely bizarre creatures.

See also: "Why Blue Whales Don't Get Cancer - Peto's Paradox"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AElONvi9WQ

Plants can get tumors as a result of mutations.

However, they don't develop metastatic cancer because plant cells are not mobile as they are in animals. A malignant mutation won't spread. And they don't have central organs like hearts, lungs, etc. that can fail and kill the organism.

So, if your plant has cancer, you can just cut it off.

tragic, the tree is gone but maybe we can plant its children. maybe the next 2500 years will be kinder?

Not sure how olive trees work, but perhaps it can regrow from the root system?

I'm so glad that Turkey has just sent full equipped planes to help Greece.

I read just some days ago that Turkey couldn't even take off their canadair because they didn't maintained them, and has leased planes from Poland and other countries.

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