History & CultureHow it works
How a roof beam reveals the year it was felled.
Trees add one ring per year, wide in good years, narrow in dry ones. The pattern works like a barcode for a region. Overlap rings from living trees, old beams and bog wood and you get a continuous chain; for Central Europe it reaches back over 12,000 years. A beam that still has bark can be dated to the year.
Useful: For a timber-framed house, ask for the tree-ring report, not the legend above the door.
Source: en.wikipedia.org