Posted on 10/22/2018 10:51:15 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
The dating of a piece of olive tree found on Thirasia will move the dating of the eruption of Santorini's volcano a few decades later than current estimates, the Ministry of Culture and Sports said on Friday.
The wood was found in the area "Kimissi Thirassias", the prehistoric settlement which lies on a hillside of the island once connected to Thira, or Santorini, at least up to the Middle Bronze Age, before the volcano exploded.
The settlement is on top of a hill on the southern side of Thirasia, and on the edge of the caldera that existed before the volcano explosion, that is variously dated from 1627 BC to 1600 BC. The wood belongs to the last stratigraphic phase before the explosion, the ministry said.
The University of Arizona at Tucson team that tested the wood show that "the wood dates absolutely to the early 16th century BC, therefore places the Minoan-era blast some decades after the date supported until now."
(Excerpt) Read more at en.protothema.gr ...
The article doesn’t state what the dating method was. The usual dating methods are estimates and not precise. I’m not sure they have the resolution to change the estimated date by the relatively small amount of several decades.
I’ve been to Santorini 3 times and it’s truly worth the visit. One can read Charle’s Pellegrino’s “Unearthing Atlantis” to get more background on Santorini and the volcanic explosion.
Thanks KamperKen. The dating method used was radiocarbon dating, which ordinarily is a good one to use for the <50,000 year old organic material, but on Santorini the uptake of "dead carbon", C12, into biological systems growing in the soil there makes dated items appear older than they are.
C ratios: for example, plants on the Greek island of Santorini, near the volcano, have apparent ages of up to a thousand years.
wikipedia
search also for "Evidence for magmatic carbon bias in 14C dating of the Taupo and other major eruptions".
The olive-branch dating of the Santorini eruption March 2014
This discussion just gets crater and crater!
I’m having a blast...
Assuming the dating of the olive tree fragment on the top of a hill above the caldera is correct, all it proves is that the tree may have survived beyond the generally accepted date of the eruption. By the way, the generally accepted date are supported by more than one artifact.
we know that olive trees are exceptionally hardy and live for a long time. Now if this artifact proved itself to antedate the accepted timeline via testing, that would perhaps move the date of the eruption back a few decades or more, but relying on one artifact for anything is unreliable in my opinion.
Exceptionally hardy doesn't mean it would survive the alleged supereruption.
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