As Gandalf said, Treebeard is the "oldest living thing" in Middle-earth.Tom Bombadil, on the other hand, is technically older, but he's also otherworldly.
Tom Bombadil's exact age is not known, but it is said he existed since sometime before the first Dark Lord (Melkor) rose to power. His exact race is not known, and he remains mysterious—although with some apparent magical and spiritual abilities.
Treebeard, or Fangorn in Sindarin, is a tree-giant character in J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. He is an Ent and is said by Gandalf to be "the oldest living thing that still walks beneath the Sun upon this Middle-earth." He lives in the ancient Forest of Fangorn, to which he has given his name.
It's believed that many of Treebeard's mannerisms were based on Tolkien's friend C.S. Lewis, a loud, bombastic man known for his powerful stride and overwhelming presence. The Top Trumps card game lists Treebeard as being 17,051 years old. in both adaptions , both of Treebeard's voices are named John.
Are any of the elves who first awoke Cuiviénen still around by the time of LOTR? The oldest elf in LoTR is Círdan the Shipwright, the oldest Elf still remaining in Middle-Earth, who appears at the end of Return of the King to sail to Valinor.
'"A power that walked the earth, ere elf sang and hammer rang ... "' implies that Ents were around before elves and dwarves and is in direct conflict with Treebeard's ancient list.
Both Tom and Treebeard were referred to as the oldest living creatures of Arda, though it is not clear which of the two is the oldest. However, according to Tolkien's letters, it is implied that Bombadil was the oldest living being in Middle-earth.
In the books, Gandalf even suggests that Treebeard is the oldest living creature in all of Middle-earth. If Treebeard dates back to the First Age, this would make him as much as 25,000 years old by the events of The Two Towers.
Tom Bombadil's strength lies not in physical prowess but in his unwavering goodness and connection to nature. He is a creature of immense antiquity, predating even the likes of Sauron. His power is unobtrusive, but it distinguishes Tolkien's understanding of strength versus might.
Hargrove suggested that Tolkien left clues that Bombadil is one of the Valar, a god of Middle-Earth, specifically Aulë, the archangelic demigod who created the dwarves.
Cirdan is certainly the oldest elf in Middle Earth during the period of the LotR. Treebeard and the other ents are probably older. Gandalf, as a Maia, has got to be older than all left in Middle Earth. Probably true, though as Gandalf himself refers to Treebeard as old.
The most common theory is, therefore, that Bombadil is just a "rogue" Maia who perhaps stayed behind and did not follow the other Ainur at the Breaking of the World. In contrast to the seven Valar, the Maiar are an unknown number, so it's easy to associate Tom with them.
As Johnston summarizes: What we know about Bombadil is that he is a powerful and ancient being, older than Gandalf and older than the elves, and he has no interest in “trinkets” that are used to dominate others. Although he is aware of evil, he has no fear of it.
In that scene, Treebeard referred to Gandalf as "young master Gandalf," which would be the most obvious sign of Treebeard's age. However, Gandalf only appeared in the Third Age of Middle-earth. So, of course, Treebeard would be older than him.
It is computed by the lore-masters that the Valar came to the realm of Arda, which is the Earth, five thousand Valian years ere the first rising of the Moon, which is as much as to say forty-seven thousands and nine hundred and one of our years.
Since Bombadil wears a blue coat and little is known about the movements of the blue wizards, some fans speculate that he could be one of these absent sorcerers in disguise, though this is highly unlikely due to Tom residing in Middle-earth long before the wizards arrived.
For one thing, Gandalf tells us there are only five wizards in Middle Earth: the Brown Wizard, Radagast, who is definitely not Tom; Saruman the White who shows up elsewhere in Lord of the Rings; the two Blue Wizards, Alatar and Pallando, who went into the east and have not been heard from again; and, of course, Gandalf ...
As only The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, and The Road Goes Ever On were published during Tolkien's lifetime, some argue only those works should be considered "true" canon with respect to Tolkien's publication history.
In the Third Age, the Fangorn Forest was apparently the only place Ents still inhabited, although the Ent-like Huorns may still have survived elsewhere, as in the Old Forest. The Ents grew old without hope of having Entings without the Entwives. Some grew 'treeish' and ceased moving or speaking.
We're told that ents don't die of natural causes ('from inside'), but instead they 'grow tree-ish'. Treebeard compares it to falling asleep permanently; but from the human perspective, that might as well be death. So it seems that an ent's natural lifespan must be around 10–12,000 years at most.
In the time of The Lord of the Rings, how old is the youngest elf in Middle Earth? We only know the ages of a few elves. All of them were thousands of years old. The youngest of these was Arwen who was born in TA 241 and was around 2,778 years old during the War of the Ring.
