Posted on 08/21/2004 7:25:32 PM PDT by blam
Neanderthal Man 'never walked in northern Europe'
By Tony Paterson in Berlin
(Filed: 22/08/2004)
Historians of the Stone Age fear that they will have to rip up their theories about Neanderthal Man after doubt has been cast on the carbon dating of skeletons by a leading German anthropologist.
Work by the flamboyant Professor Reiner Protsch von Zieten showed that Neanderthal Man existed in northern Europe. Calculations on skeletal remains found at Hahnofersand, near Hamburg, stated they were 36,000 years old.
Yet recent research at Oxford University's carbon-dating laboratory has suggested that they date back a mere 7,500 years. By that time, Homo sapiens was already well-established and the Neanderthals were extinct.
Chris Stringer, a Stone Age specialist and head of human origins at London's Natural History Museum, said: "What was considered a major piece of evidence showing that the Neanderthals once lived in northern Europe has fallen by the wayside. We are having to rewrite prehistory."
But Prof von Zieten, 65, the descendant of a famous 18th-century Prussian general, rejected the evidence from Oxford University last week.
"The new data from Oxford is all wrong," he told Germany's Der Spiegel. He said that the university's scientists had failed to remove shellac preservative from the specimens. As a result, the remains appeared to be much younger.
"Unfortunately, archaeologists and most anthropologists do not study physics or chemistry and therefore they cannot make judgments on carbon dating," he said. "Wrong measurements are made in all laboratories."
Prof von Zieten, who has a penchant for large Havana cigars and Porsche cars, has been considered an expert in carbon-dating techniques since the 1970s. He has tested hundreds of prehistoric bone finds from Europe and Africa over the past 30 years.
Now, however, important remains that Oxford scientists no longer believe are prehistoric include the female "Bischof-Speyer" skeleton, found near the south-west German town of Speyer with unusually good teeth. Their evidence suggests that she is 3,300 years old, not 21,300.
Another apparent misdating involved an allegedly prehistoric skull discovered near Paderborn in 1976 and considered the oldest human remain ever found in the region. Prof von Zieten dated the skull at 27,400 years old. The latest research, however, indicates that it belonged to an elderly man who died around 1750.
Germany's Herne anthropological museum, which owns the Paderborn skull, was so disturbed by the findings that it did its own tests. "We had the skull cut open and it still smelt," the museum's director, Barbara Ruschoff-Thale, said last week. "We are naturally very disappointed."
Concern about Prof von Zieten's carbon-dating estimates arose last year following a routine investigation of German prehistoric remains by the German and British anthropologists Thomas Terberger and Martin Street.
"We had decided to subject many of these finds to modern techniques to check their authenticity so we sent them to Oxford for testing," Mr Street told The Sunday Telegraph. "It was a routine examination and in no way an attempt to discredit Prof von Zieten."
In their report, though, both anthropologists described this as a "dating disaster".
The scandal engulfing Prof von Zieten goes further. Police are investigating allegations that he tried to sell 280 chimpanzee skulls from his university to buyers in America for $70,000 (£38,000).
Prof von Zieten denies the claims, saying that he legitimately obtained the skulls from a Heidelberg ethnologist in 1975. Frankfurt university last month suspended the professor from his post in the anthropology department while it runs its own inquiry.
i need to prove to you that im skeptical? heh, i dont recall YOU providing me with something from the creationist's to be skeptical of. its called timing.
and thanks for the "I seem to remember you as just another impenetrably dense YEC." bit, it will help me to chronicle that personal attacks are part of you modus operendei.
I heard, but haven't been able to find documentation of, a famous example of C14 calibration where artifacts from Pompeii were dated, and found to match exactly the date of the volcano's eruption. (79 AD) Do you know if this is true?
There's an actual statistical term called "degree of confidence." It gets to where your results almost can't be a coincidence. Thus, there are things we pretty much know. This does not mean that there aren't things we don't know, and things we merely suspect, and things we strongly suspect but of which we are not certain, or even that these things blend almost imperceptibly into each other at the edges.
Creation science, with no evidence for its body of doctrine, seems built upon endless unremitting "healthy skepticism" of all contrary knowledge. It is constantly lawyering upon the existence of any confusion, any controvery, any uncertainty anywhere as evidence that all of modern science is a house of cards ready to collapse. This, oddly enough, is why it doesn't get equal time. It is the UN-science, furiously trying to tear down all we have learned since about ... 1859. As Rodney Dangerfield might say, "It don't desoive no respect!"
Recent experiments on volcanoes of known ages have been done using the 40Ar/39Ar dating method, which seem to confirm its accuracy. Recent testing of volcanic material from Mt. Vesuvius was dated accurately with the 40Ar/39Ar method to within seven years of the actual event.3 40Ar/39Ar Dating into the Historical Realm: Calibration Against Pliny the Younger was written by P. R. Renne et. al. and published in Science 277: 1279-1280 (1997). Renne tested Ar-Ar dating by checking it against the 79 A.D. eruption of Vesuvius that destroyed Pompeii. Renne and his team noted that “Analysis of single crystals, for example by laser fusion, can obviate xenocrystic contamination, but single crystals are seldom large enough to yield measurable quantities of 40Ar* through radiogenic ingrowth in the Holocene [i.e. last 12,000 years].” Would Ar-Ar dating methods work such recent material? It apparently did. The testing returned an age of 1925±94 years. The true age was 1918 years. The test was off only 7 years. The conclusions of Renne and his team read as follows:Thus despite the presence of excess 40Ar, a sample less than 2000 years old can be dated with better than 5% precision, validating 40Ar/39Ar dating as a reliable geochronometer into the late Holocene. These results also demonstrate that excess 40Ar can be identified in volcanic sanidine, and while perhaps negligible in pre-Holocene rocks, it has important consequences for sample at the limit of the method’s applicability. Further improvement in precision of 40Ar/39Ar analysis of historically dated samples may lead to welcome refinements in the ages of neutron fluence monitors, currently a limitation on the accuracy of the 40Ar/39Ar method. Our results also substantiate validity of the 40Ar/39Ar method in establishing the eruptive histories of populated active volcanic regions, where such information is vital to volcanic hazard assessment.
"There's an actual statistical term called "degree of confidence." It gets to where your results almost can't be a coincidence."
i am aware of the degree of confidence. as for the last bit "almost" doesn't = "is."
but if you would like to get into it, the degree of confidence would apply to things like... the Big Bang (and other theories now forthcoming) and the existance of life on earth? if the degree of confidence is so revered, how come these two dont exactly get sucked into the BS bin at labs?
the timing to me, is not a true issue. it's the methods.
"Creation science, with no evidence for its body of doctrine, seems built upon endless unremitting 'healthy skepticism' of all contrary knowledge. It is constantly lawyering upon the existence of any confusion, any controvery, any uncertainty anywhere as evidence that all of modern science is a house of cards ready to collapse."
Creation science has no basis? pray tell, why does life exist? how come we can't reproduce it, or even bring things back to life?
when was the last time you were posting that you yourself didnt try to tear down a Creationist's views? some secularists views like yours are why i remain skeptic. something that doesnt see its own faults can't be all right.
“... [S]ingle crystals are seldom large enough to yield measurable quantities of 40Ar through radiogenic ingrowth in the Holocene [i.e. last 12,000 years].”
--- Evolutionist P. R. Renne, Science 277: 1279-1280 (1997)
The basis of creation science is what mainstream science does not yet know? Thank you very much. Dismissed!
Another shill unmasked.
awfully cocky. prepare your soul is all i can say.
and dismiss yourself, you pompous twit. im not your lap dog.
im here being skeptical. you are posting to me. i am responding to you.
another shill unmasked? thats like telling a jury they arent worthy of making their own calls. quit the personal attacks if you want me to listen.
Interesting, thanks! And yes, Google is our friend. I never thought of searching for phrases like that.
Thanks again.
BTTT
ah, another personal attack. great. i'll just chalk that up...
lets see, personal attacks got you... nowhere.
your personal beliefes are thus.... ignored! congrats, you got the bronze in a two man competition.
if you want to, we can do that long post thingy again... or you guys could talk to AndrewC and i could see where you guys dont answer his questions either.
Indeed. Amazing how they (creationists) do that isn't it?
As one scientific icon after the other falls, is it safe for one to entertain the possibility of a young earth?
I think what this argues is that all data and all theories are subject to revision. It seems to me that those who cling to any given scientific explanation as the last word on any matter are as guilty of this as anyone.
The data changed. In light of new evidence, it is appropriate to question models that were built on refuted evidence. Why is that hard for "science-oriented" people to see? Isn't that the essence of the scientific method?
From out here, committed proponents of evolution are every bit as blind to new ideas as committed creationists are.
Isn't it obvious? In the future mankind has discovered how to travel backward in time and they have used that technique to seed the ancient earth with life.
how come we can't reproduce it, or even bring things back to life?
Patience. Rome wasn't built in a day you know.
The statistical term "degree of confidence" is not quantifiable for extrapolation, and will get you flunked from most good statistics programs. Extrapolation is predicting results beyond the spread of the data, like trying to predict how much liquid water would be on earth if the average temperature was 120 degrees. We have no experience in or around those parameters, so we cannot make valid predictions there.
Carbon dating is extrapolation, because we do not have standards going back 50,000 years to calibrate from. While it is a useful theory, it is not proven over that interval. Use it if you want, but the idea that it is a provable, calibrated measuring system is simply not true.
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