(Credit: Martin M303/Shutterstock)Scientists may have miscalculated the age of an olive branch that has served as a key piece of evidence in dating the Santorini eruption, according to a new study.The findings cast doubt on the accuracy of an analysis of the millennia-old branch, suggesting it may predate by several decades the natural disaster that fundamentally altered the political landscape of the Mediterranean and has been used to anchor much of the chronology of ancient history.
The conclusion that the branch dates to somewhere between 1,600 and 1,627 BCE — rather than 1,500 BCE, the date given by archaeologists — was based on the assumption that the outermost ring of an olive tree corresponds to the last year the tree was alive and growing. However, the new study contradicts this notion. After measuring the radiocarbon concentrations in 20 samples from the trunk of a modern tree, and another 11 from ...
