Who's older: Treebeard or Tom Bombadil?

From Wikpedia about Tom Bombadil:

Treebeard calls himself the eldest living being of Middle-earth and says that he was there before anyone else. However, Tolkien remarked in another context: "Treebeard is a character in my story, not me; and though he has a great memory and some earthy wisdom, he is not one of the Wise, and there is quite a lot he does not know or understand."

I believe Tom Bombadil is the older of the two. I remember it saying that the elves taught the trees to speak. Now I know the trees are different from Ents, but I assume that the elves would still have some association with the making of Ents. Now if this is true, then Tom Bombadil must be the older, for he was there before the coming of elves, and therefore before the trees and ents. That is if I'm correct in saying that the Ents were made around the time the elves taught the trees to speak. This is a total guess on my part.

Treebeard as an Ent was created as part of the Music of the Ainur, and the awakening of the first Ents is precisely datable to the same time as the Elves awoke, as is told in the Silmarillion chapter Of Aule and Yavanna:

'Yet it was in the Song', said Yavanna. 'For while thou wert in the heavens and with Ulmo built the clouds and poured out the rains, I lifted up the branches of great trees to receive them, and some sang to Ilúvatar amid the wind and the rain.'

And:

Behold! When the Children awake, then the thought of Yavanna will awake also, and it will summon spirits from afar, and they will go among the kelvar and the olvar, and some will dwell therein, and be held in reverence, and their just anger shall be feared.

This means that Treebeard's origin is at the very earliest Year of the Trees 1050, just immediately after Varda's second star-making.

If we take Tom's claims at face-value:

Tom was here before the river and the trees; Tom remembers the first raindrop and the first acorn.

This dates him to at the latest the time of the Valar's dwelling on Almaren and the time of the Lamps, because during that time (Silmarillion, Of the Beginning of Days):

Then the seeds that Yavanna had sown began swiftly to sprout and to burgeon, and there arose a multitude of growing things great and small, mosses and grasses and great ferns, and trees whose tops were crowned with cloud as they were living mountains, but whose feet were wrapped in a green twilight.

Since this was before the Years of the Trees, Tom Bombadil is therefore oldest (although whether he - whatever he is - could be called "living" is another matter).

Page 457 of the Lord of the Rings Treebeard speaks of the old Forest saying:

"there are hollow dales in this land where the darkness has never been lifted, and the trees are older than I am"

Hope this helps.

It's worth considering who is stating that Treebeard is oldest. It's Gandalf while he's only been on middle earth for 1000 years he's existed since before time yet he says Treebeard is

the oldest living thing that still walks beneath the Sun upon this Middle-earth.

Note that's this is quite a conditional statement.

• Living thing
• Walks
• Beneath the sun.

Now these conditions can take out things like static trees and tunnel beasts below Moria. But as far as we know Tom is living and walking in the sun. So it would seem we still have a contradiction.

But I think there is a difference. Tom was first. But Trerbeard is older because like Gandalf, Tom is ageless. What Tom is, is unknown but to have experienced "the first raindrop" would put him outside the realm of normal beings. He looks like a man, yet men only appeared after ents and elves so the form he is seen in is just a manifestation of Tom. He may have existed a long time but he had not gotten older

Where as Treebeard has always been Treebeard, slowly getting older year by year. He may age slowly but he does age.

It is also worth noting that Tolkien was a linguist Tom calls himself Eldest not oldest. Eldest seems to be properly used among kin. Oldest among more general objects.