How Old Tree Rings And Ancient Wood Are Helping Rewrite History

Science Daily ^ | 10-27-2007 | Cornell University

[blam]

How Old Tree Rings And Ancient Wood Are Helping Rewrite History

ScienceDaily (Oct. 27, 2007) — Cornell archaeologists are rewriting history with the help of tree rings from 900-year-old trees, wood found on ancient buildings and through analysis of the isotopes (especially radiocarbon dating) and chemistry they can find in that wood.

Sturt Manning talks to visitors during a demonstration of the tree-ring laboratory following his presentation during Trustee/Council Weekend. At the lecture, Manning explained how students and lab staff members precisely dated a wooden support beam from McGraw Hall to 1870. (Credit: Jason Koski/Cornell University Photography)"

By collecting thousands of years worth of overlapping tree rings, with each ring representing a tree's annual growth, the researchers have created long-term records in the eastern Mediterranean that allow them to precisely date such seminal milestones in history as when Hammurabi, "the law-giver," reigned, when the massive Santorini volcanic eruption occurred, and the timelines of the Bronze and Iron ages, as well as many more recent events.

Sturt Manning, director of the Malcolm and Carolyn Wiener Laboratory for Aegean and Near Eastern Dendrochronology at Cornell, summarized his work for Cornell council members and trustees, Oct. 19 in Statler Hall. Dendrochronology is the science of comparing growth patterns in tree trunks to date past events or climate changes. Cornell's dendrochronology laboratory now holds more than 40,000 tree-ring samples, including many from the eastern Mediterranean.

Trees of the same species from the same geographical area have fairly similar ring patterns, Manning said, because they are exposed to similar climatic conditions. By starting with living trees and then finding samples from slightly older trees used in buildings and still older trees from more ancient sites, archaeologists have been able to overlap tree-ring data to create chronologies that date back thousands of years.

Radiocarbon dating, statistical analysis, researchers' trained eyes and prior knowledge of events in the area are then used to match new samples with tree-ring chronologies from the same area. Manning and his staff in the lab have used such techniques to verify, for example, the likely origins of a Circle of Rembrandt painting (referring to an elite group of students that worked directly with the artist). He showed that the oak board of the painting came from the same tree as the board of another painting, whose origins are known and which hangs in a museum in Krakow, Poland.

Similarly, scholars have debated for more than 150 years about the dates of the ancient civilizations of the Babylonians, the Assyrians and the lifetime of Hammurabi, the Babylonian king who helped create the oldest set of written laws. Mainstream scholars have proposed dates for his reign that differ by 300 years.

"You can't do history if you have a difference of 300 years or so," said Manning. "That would place George Washington as a contemporary of some person living right now. ... You'd get entirely the wrong historical reconstruction if you didn't have the dates sorted out."

Using ancient beams from palaces of known contemporaries of Hammurabi, Cornell researchers combined radiocarbon dating techniques with dendrochronological evidence to date Hammurabi to around 1792 B.C., Manning said.

Similar techniques used on wood buried beneath volcanic ash allowed Manning and others to date the Santorini volcanic eruption, one of the largest in the last 10,000 years, as most likely occurring in the late 17th century B.C., 100 years earlier than previously believed. The discovery may rewrite the late Bronze Age history of Mediterranean civilizations, he said.

Adapted from materials provided by Cornell University.

[blam]

"Someone needs to ping few of those posters to get their reaction to this news."

Nah, just ignore them.

[Kevmo]

bmflr

[Coyoteman]

I just completed reading this book and they analysed an individual ring (Isotopes or some such) to prove a point.

That is the nice thing about tree rings; you have an exact date with which to calibrate other dating methods, as well as the historical record against which to cross-check the tree ring.

[blam]

"Given that Santorini has been linked to the miracles in Exodus, wonder how this new time line fits in with Biblical scholars?"

Ahem, looks like they'll have to shift the date of the Exodus, huh?

[SunkenCiv]

New Ice-Core Evidence Challenges the 1620s age for the Santorini (Minoan) Eruption
Journal of Archaeological Science,
Volume 25, Issue 3, March 1998, Pages 279-289
13 July 1997 | Gregory A. Zielinski, Mark S. Germani
Posted on 07/29/2004 3:25:45 AM EDT by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1180724/posts

ARCHAEOLOGY: New Carbon Dates Support Revised History of Ancient Mediterranean
Science Magazine | 4/28/2006 | Michael Balter
Posted on 04/27/2006 7:59:30 PM EDT by Lessismore
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1622847/posts
[particularly message 25]

Ancient Volcano, Seeds And Treerings,
Suggest Rewriting Late Bronze Age Mediterranean History (More)
Cornell University | 4-28-2006 | Alex Kwan
Posted on 04/29/2006 3:24:20 PM EDT by blam
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1623821/posts

Sinai pumice linked to ancient eruption [...not!]
Yahoo | Monday, April 2, 2007 | Katarina Kratovac w/ contrib by Nicholas Paphits
Posted on 04/07/2007 12:08:27 AM EDT by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1813465/posts

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks Blam.

· join · view topics · view or post blog · bookmark · post new topic ·

[SunkenCiv]

· join list or digest · view topics · view or post blog · bookmark · post a topic ·
	Gods Graves Glyphs	Thanks Blam. To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. GGG managers are Blam, StayAt HomeMother, and Ernest_at_the_Beach
· Google · Archaeologica · ArchaeoBlog · Archaeology magazine · Biblical Archaeology Society · · Mirabilis · Texas AM Anthropology News · Yahoo Anthro & Archaeo · · History or Science & Nature Podcasts · Excerpt, or Link only? · cgk's list of ping lists ·

[SunkenCiv]

So, you’ve rec’d it, read it, and did like it? :’)

[SunkenCiv]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1912063/posts?page=5#5

-and-

“Doubting the Story of Exodus.”
Source: Jewish World Review
Published: April 23, 2001 Author: Dennis Prager
Posted on 04/23/2001 12:15:31 PDT by jasowas
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3ae47f533d21.htm

[blam]

"So, you’ve rec’d it, read it, and did like it? :’)"

Yup. I'm left with one unanswered question though. They said that the 'rims' on the Carolina Bays could only have been formed by the extreme heat from an impact and/or some type acid. Then they go on to say that the Bays were formed by bigs chunks of flying ice. So???

[SunkenCiv]

They side with the impact scenario, in their case the impactors were ejecta from a single, large, northerly impact (more than one, an apparent doublet impact).

[SunkenCiv]

[rimshot!]

Shouldn’t that be the other way around?

[rimshot!]

[SunkenCiv]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1917591/posts?page=26#26

[SunkenCiv]

Geoarchaeology:
The Earth-Science Approach to Archaeological Interpretation
by George (Rip) Rapp, Jr. and Christopher L. Hill
reprised from here

"Artifacts from Akrotiri, linked to the Egyptian calendar [sic] put the Thera eruption at more than a hundred years later [than 1644 +/- 20 BC]. While the controversy remains open, it is our view that the volcanic activity recorded in the Greenland ice core more likely came from nearby Iceland than from the eastern Mediterranean (this may be testable by any chemical signature). [p 158-159]

"Living samples from a freshwater lake on limestone terrain have been known to give a radiocarbon date of up to 1600 BP." [p 166]

[Coyoteman]

"Living samples from a freshwater lake on limestone terrain have been known to give a radiocarbon date of up to 1600 BP." [p 166]

That is one of the poorest things to use for a radiocarbon date. Freshwater shellfish from limestone environments are equally bad.

There are ways to calibrate those kinds of samples but it is easier to use more reliable materials to start with.

There is a large body of literature on this problem.

[SunkenCiv]

The soil of Santorini is enriched in C12, and this has an impact on the RC dating of stuff on the island, including plants grown in the soil (samples from still-living plants having a much higher RC date). Seems like thermoluminescence, electron spin resonance, and perhaps other forms of radiological dating would be a better choice.

[Coyoteman]

The soil of Santorini is enriched in C12, and this has an impact on the RC dating of stuff on the island, including plants grown in the soil (samples from still-living plants having a much higher RC date). Seems like thermoluminescence, electron spin resonance, and perhaps other forms of radiological dating would be a better choice.

Sounds more like the soil, or some components of it, are deficient in C14. I know limestone can do this, but I am not sure how volcanic soils would do the same.

I would be curious to know that the C13/C12 ratio is, as that is often a good indicator of problems with C14, and it reflects on the material you are dating.

This is the kind of thing you have to watch out for in C14 dating.

Normally we date several different materials and compare, when possible, against other dating methods.

[SunkenCiv]

Yes, that was imprecise of me... the soil is deficient in C14.

[Renfield]

Similar techniques used on wood buried beneath volcanic ash allowed Manning and others to date the Santorini volcanic eruption, one of the largest in the last 10,000 years, as most likely occurring in the late 17th century B.C., 100 years earlier than previously believed. This supports Mike Baillie's claim of 1620 BC.