Channelknight Fadran

Thinking about how old things are is a lot of fun - but some of those things are objectively cooler by virtue of still existing.

Sure, you could look at stuff like stars and galaxies, but like... we just can't comprehend that. Too many numbers. No good. Even if you look at just the history of Earth, stuff like multicellular life forms have existed long enough to remember when the galaxy finally calmed down a little and stopped making quite so many stars. And looking up at the stars doesn't exactly fill us with a sense of "holy moly, germs are old" - because they're just little dots. We can't really observe them.

When you're thinking about old things in Lord of the Rings, you don't look at Eru Iluvitar and call it a day. You look at how Elrond is still around and kicking during the events of LotR, knowing that he has been around for six thousand years old - and even he's little more than a child compared to Galadriel who's been around for roughly eight thousand.

They're old because they're still around, and they can remember the Old Days. No one cares about what Manwe is on about, because he doesn't talk to anybody anymore. We want the stuff that can tell us about the many eras they've been around for.

Anyways, back to not-so-middle Earth. Here are some old things to kick things off:

• Tish was a goldfish won at a fair in 1956 - he won a Guinness World Record for living 46 years.
• Harriet the Galapagos Tortoise died in 2006 - She was born in 1830, and collected by one Charles Darwin as a specimen for his expedition.
• The Greenland Shark is the longest-lived vertebrate, with one specimen being placed at upwards of 500 years old. Perhaps they lived alongside one Leonardo da Vinci.
• In the East China Sea and Southern Ocean, there are aquatic creatures known as Glass Sponges - it might be a slight overestimation, but it's possible that several have been around for upwards of 10,000 years, placing them almost as old as writing itself.

You might've heard that Cleopatra lived sooner to the moon landing than to the creation of the Great Pyramids. You might've heard that Cleopatra lived sooner to the internet than to the creation of the Great Pyramids. Truth is, Cleopatra will live sooner to the present day than to the creation of the Great Pyramids for roughly another five hundred years.

The Great Pyramids are 4.5 thousand years old by the estimates I found on the internet, and they're still around. Egypt is roughly 5000 years old, which is - if you recall - only half as old as some of those sponges up there.

What about geological features? The oldest glacier is roughly 7000 years old. The Namib Desert has been dry for 55 million. 

But I'm going to cut to the chase:

yeah

but I was curious, and looked up Oldest Geological Features. First I found someplace called Mount Roraima, which looks EPIC AS HELL:

and then I came upon a massive meteor that struck the Earth 3 BILLION years ago, nearly five times as large as the infamous Chicxulub asteroid (y'know - the dinosaur one)... which smacked into a special little place called the Barberton Greenstone Belt:

these, my friends, are the oldest things on Earth.