and here we have the judean date palm tree this is a very special kind of tree you know why because it was extinct 2 000 years ago but two women decided to bring it back to life [Music] this area was very famous for its dates when the romans came here 2 000 years ago and conquered this area there was a huge clash with the local jewish community [Music] the jews decide they're all going to commit mass suicide before they do they set fire to the food stores except for one which they leave they kill themselves
showing a full storehouse of food because they didn't want to be taken by the romans as prisoners and live in slavery [Music] after 2 000 years israeli archaeologists excavated masada they found right by the ruins of the food storage sites a trove of seeds [Music] they were kept in storage for the next 40 years until i came and asked to have a few of them judean dates were famous every year they were brought as a present to the emperor in rome and they were also known for their medicinal properties as well for example they were
good against depression they were used as aphrodisiacs [Music] it's a very important symbol and icon of the land of israel but the dates themselves were also very important so they were big export they were like the the high tech of of the ancient world if you like [Music] it was very difficult to get the seeds it took a lot of time and effort and persuasion when people said what do you want them for i'd say we want to try and grow them and they just said you're mad [Music] this project started over 15 years ago
when she got in touch with me and asked me to grow some plants i saw i got some seeds from the dig at masada it took me quite a while to figure out how i was going to try to sprout these seeds it seemed to me that the first step would be to hydrate them slowly so i had a bottle warmer in those days left over from raising my shoulders and i put them in a bottle warmer waited not expecting much happens [Music] a few weeks later one of them came up quite fast i did
not realize the ramifications of it for instance when i told sarah i said oh yeah sarah by the way one of those seats came up and she said what one of them came up so i said yes what should i do with it she says keep it you know this is incredible and that was the story of methuselah [Music] people always ask me you know why did you choose the names of these particular trees well originally i chose methuselah because i wanted to give it a more personal flavor i mean you know it could be
hmx r3 or something but it's something historic and symbolic and i think it should have a name [Music] he was a male so we had pollen but you need the other side of the equation they're really a bit like human beings they the male pollen pollinates the female flower and they produce baby dates and i then thought we'll go on and we'll try and grow more perhaps we'll also maybe get a female this time [Music] we got another actually quite a few more around another 30 days and out of those 32 or 33 that elaine
planted another uh six came up of which two were female hannah and judith [Music] there's adam he started out as eve then there was jeremiah but jeremiah happened to be a female after some years we discovered so i changed the name to hannah and jonah well actually elaine just called jonah jonah because she liked the name [Music] when i heard that hannah was going to give fruit of course we were all very excited and she was pollinated by methuselah and we were terribly pleased when the first dates appeared we're the two mothers of of methuselah
and these other dates and there's something about about nature itself which is nature has always been worshipped as a feminine force there is a certain mothering quality about growing plants you really have to invest yourself in them i come from medicine elaine comes from agriculture but somehow we meet in the middle which is to save nature bringing back these plants that were destroyed purposely i think it's a victory [Music] where you wipe out entire sections of agriculture for your own particular purposes it's totally unjustified we would like to have plantations of the judean date and
that we'd like to bring it back into cultivation and give it to the world you
