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Tools excavated from a cave in central Mexico are strong evidence that humans were living in North America at least 30,000 years ago, some 15,000 years earlier than previously thought, scientists said Wednesday.​ Artefacts, including 1,900 stone tools, showed human occupation of the high-altitude Chiquihuite Cave over a roughly 20,000 year period, they reported in two studies, published in Nature. "Our results provide new evidence for the antiquity of humans in the Americas," Ciprian Ardelean, an archeologist at the Universidad Autonoma de Zacatecas and lead author of one of the studies, told AFP. "There are only a few artefacts and...

"The longest chronology in the world stretches back 12,000 years. But in the Mediterranean, the problem is that we don't have a full, continuous record going back to the time of Thera," Pearson said. "We have recorded the last 2,000 years very well, but then there's a gap. We have tree rings from earlier periods, but we don't know exactly which dates the rings correspond to. This is what's called a 'floating chronology.'" Filling this gap could help pin down the Thera eruption date and paint a climatic backdrop for the various civilizations that rose and fell during the Bronze...

Americans have long dreaded the “Big One,” a magnitude 8.0 earthquake along California’s San Andreas Fault that could one day kill thousands of people and cause billions of dollars in damage. The Big One, though, is a mere mini-me compared with the cataclysm forming beneath the Pacific Northwest. Roughly 100 miles off the West Coast, running from Mendocino, California, to Canada’s Vancouver Island, lurks the Cascadia Subduction Zone, where the Juan de Fuca Plate is sliding beneath the North American Plate, creating the conditions for a megathrust quake 30 times stronger than the worst-case scenario along the notorious San...

An intense blast of high-energy protons from the Sun pummelled the Earth in about 660 BC and left a distinct record of cosmogenic nuclei in the Greenland ice sheet. The discovery was made by an international team of scientists who say the event was one most powerful solar storms known to have struck Earth. The team calculates that the storm was about ten times more intense than any event that has occurred in the past 70 years. “If that solar storm had occurred today, it could have had severe effects on our hi-tech society”, says Raimund Muscheler of Sweden’s University...

Cave skeleton is European, 1,300 years old, man says Archaeologist group wants a look at evidence Sunday September 29, 2002 By Rick Steelhammer STAFF WRITER MORGANTOWN — The man who first advanced the theory that markings carved on in a Wyoming County cave are actually characters from an ancient Irish alphabet has found human remains at the site, which tests indicate are European in origin and date back to A.D. 710, he maintains. Robert Pyle of Morgantown says that a DNA analysis of material from the skeleton’s teeth roots was conducted by Brigham Young University. That analysis, he says, shows...

One of the most important dating tools used in archaeology may sometimes give misleading data, new study shows - and it could change whole historical timelines as a result. The discrepancy is due to significant fluctuations in the amount of carbon-14 in the atmosphere, and it could force scientists to rethink how they use ancient organic remains to measure the passing of time.

How Hannibal's crossing of the Alps with 30,000 soldiers was even harder than first thought as researchers find he took a perilous route on a narrow bridle path 9,500ft above sea level ****** Soil containing traces of horse manure has been carbon dated to 218BC, the time of HannibalÂ’s crossing, and shows that he took the Col de la Traversette, a narrow bridle path 9,500ft above sea level that links the Guil Valley in France with the Po Valley in Italy. Previous speculation that he took this direct route had been discounted because of its sheer difficulty, with gradients as...

Lightning Can Produce Carbon-14 November 29, 2017 | David F. Coppedge In a surprise announcement, Japanese researchers found that lightning bolts can be powerful enough to cause nuclear fission, leading to new isotopes— including carbon-14. For decades, we have been told that carbon-14 is generated only by high-energy cosmic rays striking the atmosphere, hitting nitrogen atoms. Carbon-14 (14C) is one of the leading dating methods for organic remains up to a maximum of 100,000 years. Now, researches from the Kyoto University watched lightning bolts generate gamma rays and positrons, indicating that nuclear fission was occurring. One of the products, they...

Radiocarbon dating of charcoal found elsewhere on this site has suggested people might have camped here and built fires by the north branch of the Potomac River, anywhere from 9,000 years ago to as much as 16,000 years ago... Some tools and bones have been found in Pennsylvania and Virginia that date well before the Clovis era, although scientists debate whether the dating is accurate.

Rediscovering AmericaThe New World may be 20,000 years older than experts thought BY CHARLES W. PETIT Late in the afternoon last May 17, a tired archaeological team neared the end of a 14-hour day winching muck to the deck of a Canadian Coast Guard vessel. It was in water 170 feet deep in Juan Perez Sound, half a mile offshore among British Columbia's Queen Charlotte Islands. For four days, team members had fruitlessly sieved undersea mud and gravel. Then, in the slanting light of sunset, a deckhand drew from the goop a triangular blade of dark basalt. Its sharp edge...

Did An 8th Century Gamma Ray Burst Irradiate Earth?Science DailyJanuary 21,2013 A nearby short duration gamma-ray burst may be the cause of an intense blast of high-energy radiation that hit the Earth in the 8th century, according to new research led by astronomers Valeri Hambaryan and Ralph NeuhÓ“user. The two scientists, based at the Astrophysics Institute of the University of Jena in Germany, publish their results in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. In 2012 scientist Fusa Miyake announced the detection of high levels of the isotope Carbon-14 and Beryllium-10 in tree rings formed in 775 CE,...

According to an Old English manuscript chronicling the history of the Anglo-Saxons, a mysterious "red crucifix" appeared in the "heavens" over Britain one evening in A.D. 774. Now astronomers say it may have been the supernova explosion that sprinkled unexplained traces of carbon-14 in tree rings that year, halfway around the world in Japan. Jonathon Allen, an undergraduate student at the University of California, Santa Cruz, made the connection this week after listening to a Nature podcast. He heard a team of Japanese scientists discussing new research in which they measured an odd spike in carbon-14 levels in tree rings...

Phil PlaitNovember 16, 2015 A new study says that violent space weather that could cost $2 trillion in damage is more common than previously thought In the years 774 and 993, the Earth was attacked from space. Not by aliens, but by a natural event—and it was very, very powerful. Whatever it was, it subtly altered the chemistry of our planet’s atmosphere, creating trace amounts of radioactive elements like chlorine-36, beryllium-10, and carbon-14. And those provide the clue to what the event was: Those isotopes are created when high-energy protons slam into our air. That means the source must have...

Human Remains in Ancient Jar a Mystery Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News Jan. 23, 2007 — For over 100 years, four blue-glazed jars bearing the nametag of Rameses II (1302-1213 B.C.) were believed to contain the Egyptian pharaoh's bodily organs. But analysis of organic residues scraped from the jars has determined one actually contained an aromatic salve, while a second jar held the organs of an entirely different person who lived around 760 years later. Now the question is, who was this individual? "We do believe that the unknown person was of importance for at least two reasons," said Jacques Connan,...

Radiocarbon dating which is used to estimate the age of every particular thing on earth is facing big threat from the fossil fuel and carbon in the atmosphere. Researchers said excess of carbon in atmosphere due to burning of fossil fuel could reduce the accuracy of Radiocarbon dating. Heather Graven, a climate-physics researcher at Imperial College London, after an analysis has found that emissions from fossil fuels are artificially raising the carbon age of the atmosphere. ... "Combustion of fossil fuels is diluting the fraction of atmospheric carbon dioxide containing radiocarbon. This is making the atmosphere appear as though it...

The tallest redwood tree in Muir Woods — a giant that was assumed to have sprouted up to 1,500 years ago in the Middle Ages — is a measly 777 years old, a puerile sprig in the hallowed halls of old growth, an analysis of tree-ring data has revealed. The study, by a Humboldt State University scientist, is the first definitive determination of the age of trees in Muir Woods. The findings by Allyson Carroll, a tree-ring specialist, mean that a 249-foot-tall coast redwood known by the lackluster name of Tree 76 sprouted seven centuries later than originally believed, at...

(Phys.org)—Until recently, the years 774 and 775 were best known for Charlemagne's victory over the Lombards. But earlier this year, a team of scientists in Japan discovered a baffling spike in carbon-14 deposits within the rings of cedar trees that matched those same years. Because cosmic rays are tied to carbon-14 concentrations, scientists around the world have wondered about the cause: a nearby supernova, a gamma ray burst in the Milky Way or an intense superflare emanating from the Sun? Now, Adrian Melott, professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Kansas and Brian Thomas, KU alumnus and professor...

Just over 1,200 years ago, the planet was hit by an extremely intense burst of high-energy radiation of unknown cause, scientists studying tree-ring data have found. The radiation burst, which seems to have hit between AD 774 and AD 775, was detected by looking at the amounts of the radioactive isotope carbon-14 in tree rings that formed during the AD 775 growing season in the Northern Hemisphere. The increase in 14C levels is so clear that the scientists, led by Fusa Miyake, a cosmic-ray physicist from Nagoya University in Japan, conclude that the atmospheric level of 14C must have jumped...

Archaeologists rewrite timeline of Bronze and Iron Ages, including early appearance of alphabet FOR RELEASE: Dec. 19, 2001 Contact: Blaine P. Friedlander Jr. Office: 607-255-3290 E-Mail: bpf2@cornell.edu ITHACA, N.Y. -- Using information gleaned from the sun's solar cycles and tree rings, archaeologists are rewriting the timeline of the Bronze and Iron Ages. The research dates certain artifacts of the ancient eastern Mediterranean decades earlier than previously thought. And it places an early appearance of the alphabet outside Phoenicia at around 740 B.C. Writing in two articles in the forthcoming issue of the journal Science (Dec. 21), archaeologists from Cornell University ...

The discovery of bison bones in Peoria County proves the animals were in Illinois about 1,700 years earlier than previously thought, according to scientists. Radiocarbon dating confirmed a group of eight bison died at a site along the Illinois River around 265 B.C., said Alan Harn, an archaeologist with Dickson Mounds Museum. Until the dating tests, scientists did not have evidence of bison in Illinois before 1450... Archaeologists also found two partial deer skeletons and two partial elk skeletons near the bison, Harn said.