Temple in the Kingdom of Tikal, one of the most prominent of the Classic Period [Credit: © Science/AAAS].
Posted on 01/05/2016 12:43:59 AM PST by SunkenCiv
Potters at Maya cities on the Caribbean side of Central America fused volcanic ash with local limestone to form household and ceremonial pottery, because the ash made their ceramics easier to fire. The distinctive recipe was a hallmark of the Late Classic Period from A.D. 600 to 900, Ford said.
With thousands of people living in cities such as El Pilar and Tikal, the Mayan potters burned through several tons of volcanic ash every year, Ford has estimated. But no one can figure out where the ash came from.
The mystery begins with the fact that there just aren't any volcanoes in eastern Central America. Nor have archaeologists found evidence the Maya mined ash locally...
Coffey zeroed in on Ilopango volcano in El Salvador as a likely source. A devastating eruption from Ilopango destroyed and buried nearby Mayan cities in the fifth century, similar to Mount Vesuvius and Pompeii, and coated Central America in ash...
But instead of solving the mystery, the researchers' findings ended up eliminating Ilopango from the list of sources
Zircons in volcanic ash and lava start to crystallize in the underground magma chamber, before the volcano erupts, so some are older than the actual blast. Some of the Ilopango crystals are as young as the eruption, while others are up to 250,000 years old.
The El Pilar potsherd zircons were much older; none were younger than 1 million years old, and one crystal was more than 1 billion years old. These ages present a new riddle for researchers to investigate: Where did this old ash come from? "It's very puzzling, because [the zircons] suggest these are much older volcanic deposits," Coffey said. "It's hard to preserve volcanic ash in the jungle," he added.
(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
Temple in the Kingdom of Tikal, one of the most prominent of the Classic Period [Credit: © Science/AAAS].
Isn’t there rock similar to (?) which when heated is reduced to volcanic ash in the area? (plus an abundance of rapid regrowth of trees)
Can’t recall if I got that from Readers Digest, National Geo or Athelstan Spilhause (or why I recall).
Am prepared for a quick slap down however.
I would suppose an event could have caused an eruption.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicxulub_crater
Considering the various ages of the ash it was a recurring event? This was likely one of them.
Would firing the pots artificially age the crystals?
Hey, those stairs aren’t ADA compliant!
MDA - Mayans (without) Disabilities Act
Or an unreliable age-testing method. If they use some crappy lash-up that inflates age in order to flack evolution and an old Earth; then it’s going to give bogus readings even if and when they’d prefer accuracy. IMHO, of course.
Firing was my first thought, too, so we must be missing something (or they don’t want to admit that high heat corrupts their dating methods).
Always a glitch...and to be fair and balanced I did not cite the creationists
Are Radioactive-dating methods reliable?
http://sciencevsevolution.org/Pontcharra.htm
Considering the Cosa Artifact, I'm going with this theory.
It's already been proven that determining the age of rocks is guesswork at best.
IF....it could be proven that radioactive elements decayed at exactly the same rate pre-Noahic Flood, as they do now.
There is going to be big changes after the return, too. Hadn’t considered physics, etc.
LOL
Interesting
Wow. Cool! :o])
Thanks!
Will this be another case where the experts will be shocked to discover trade was going on in the Western Hemisphere before Columbus?
A day or two ago there was a thread on FR about the recent banning of Microbeads. This led me to reading about pumice. Pumice is formed by lava that had air bubbling up through it. It is filled with open cavities, I suppose like Swiss cheese, or a sponge. Anyway, it floats. Giant rafts of pumice are adrift, to this day, in our oceans. They have been a means of transportation for plants and animals from one continent to another. I suppose the Mayans may have run into pumice (lava) washing up on their beaches. Evidently, there was intercontinental swapping even before “man”.
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