Archaeologists identify spear tips used in hunting a half-million years ago

Phys.Org ^ | Provided by University of Toronto

[SengirV]

So what you are saying is that anything over hmmmmmmmm 6,000 years is BS?

[frithguild]

Stones are very hard to date directlyI know what you mean. Isn't carbon dating owned by match.com?

[Charles Henrickson]

What I'm saying is that dating methods that may possibly work for up to 2,000-3,000 years ago may not necessarily work for going back further than that. It assumes you can extrapolate. It does not allow for other factors that may have intervened and skewed the data.

I am not saying that the earth is only 6,000 years old. No one knows--or can know--how old the earth is. That is beyond the realm of science.

[Docbarleypop]

Took flint napping in college, if I remember right there is a way to determine the age of the fracture based on the exposed cortex of the stone. I will have to look in my books to see what i can find. If the stone was heat treated, you can use thermo-luminecense(sp?) to date the heating event. North American indians often heated flint and other stone in order to make them easier to work with.

[SunkenCiv]

GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach	join list or digest view topics view or post blog bookmark post a topic subscribe
Thanks Red Badger. To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list.

[SunkenCiv]

GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach	join list or digest view topics view or post blog bookmark post a topic subscribe
Thanks Red Badger. To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list.

[bert]

think atl atl

[bert]

A lonely road in Virginia is pretty vague. Perhaps it could be discovered if you were more specific.

I live near many many lonely roads in Southwest Virginia and might be the discoverer if pointed in the right direction.

Would that be cheating?

[Pharmboy]

Yeah...those durn dumb 'scientists' again. The same dumb ones who came up with antibiotics, beta blockers, monoclonal antibodies for treating cancer, nuclear fission, lasers, internal combustion engines, computers, etc. etc. etc. What could they possibly know?

[afraidfortherepublic]

For goodness sake! I take it that Mark Twain was NOT an admirer of James Fennimore Cooper’s work. Methinks I note a bit of jeolousy there. He certainly can turn a phrase.

[null and void]

Too clever by halft...

[Red Badger]

I get the point...........

[null and void]

Yeah, it’s much smarter to assume that all dating methods and aging processes change randomly over time, or that they all magically skew in the same direction by the same amount.

THAT WAY YOU DON’T HAVE TO QUESTION ONE MAN’S COUNTING OF YEARS IN ONE BOOK.

Much simpler.

[null and void]

All these dating guesses are based on a very shaky presuppositon: i.e., that the method used for dating would hold true all the way back to the beginning,

Like assuming that every "day" is exactly 24 hours, even if you are counting "days" before the darkness was divided from the light.

[null and void]

They know how old the rock is, but how do they know when the rock became an arrowhead?

Cleaving rock exposes a fresh surface, that surface oxidizes and hydrates slowly over time.

If you know the minerals and know the rates of oxidation/hydration, and can measure the depth of the altered crust, you can get a pretty good idea of how fresh the surface is.

[null and void]

What I'm saying is that dating methods that may possibly work for up to 2,000-3,000 years ago may not necessarily work for going back further than that.

True that.

Which is precisely why they don't Carbon-14 date anything older than ~50,000 years. There simply isn't enough ¹⁴C left to provide an accurate date.

Let me correct that, no honest scientist will do that.

I've seem museum displays where "creation scientists" have carbon "dated" artifacts far, far older, then blandly said they must be much younger than those evil atheist scientists claim.

[Charles Henrickson]

Yeah, it’s much smarter to assume that all dating methods and aging processes change randomly over time. . . .

Note, I did not say "randomly."

THAT WAY YOU DON’T HAVE TO QUESTION ONE MAN’S COUNTING OF YEARS IN ONE BOOK.

I am not accepting without question any man's counting of years: either a) an age of the earth as 6,000 years, which failed, e.g., to take into account the "telescoping" of genealogies; or b) an age of the earth as bazillions of years, which is based on the presupposition that nothing could have intervened (a worldwide catastrophe, for instance) to affect the results of a dating method that may work up to a certain point. I have said that no one knows, or can know, when "the beginning" was. It is beyond the realm of science.

[null and void]

Note, I did not say "randomly."

True that, you said that they all magically skew in the same direction by the same amount.

I have said that no one knows, or can know, when "the beginning" was. It is beyond the realm of science.

I agree that no one knows.

I disagree that knowing is impossible, although any estimation of the exact moment will have some error, in the same sense that the exact distance from New York to Los Angeles can never be specified to the nearest micron.

It is not beyond the realm of science to tease out all the confounding factors. That's what these guys and gals live for!

[goat granny]

yep and all those modern spears killed off all the dinosaurus....mans fault...

[dfwgator]

How did Helen Thomas manage to survive?