They were here long before us

Minehead on the Bristol Channel in the UK is perhaps a surprising place to find record-breaking evidence about early life on earth. What now appears as smooth rock, over which you can walk, once stood a forest. In fact, a study published this month in the Journal of the Geological Society shows that this is the location of the oldest known forest on earth – the fossilised trees date back 390 million years.

The earliest evidence of Homo Sapiens dates back just 300,000 years which means that trees and forests have been a part of terrestrial life on earth for over a thousand times longer than our species.

I often stand gazing up at a gnarled tree – an oak or a yew for example, last month it was a baobab – and imagine what passages of human history have rolled by since it was a sapling.

Trees pre-date us spectacularly. Not only have they stood through the seasons while kingdoms have risen and fallen, they have survived from before the rise of the dinosaur to long past their extinction. It has only been in the last few hundred years that our species has begun accelerating its manipulation and destruction of our planet’s resources, forests included – less than half of global forest cover exists today compared to the dawn of the industrial revolution.

Perhaps this sense of just how long trees predate humans underscores our own sense of transience and adds further to the wonder we feel when we are surrounded by trees. We are in the company of ancient races. We have a responsibility for this remarkable heritage. Let’s protect them together!

Plant and protect trees

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