Dating can be tricky. If your timing is off, it can result in misunderstandings. This is especially true in fields like archeology and paleontology.
If an item is identified as hailing from an incorrect year, entire lines of research can be put into question. So when Sturt Manning, an archeologist from Cornell University, and colleagues received a radiocarbon date that didn’t appear to line up with the archeological evidence, they tweaked the dating technique and came up with a more definitive time of a famous ship’s sinking, then published their findings in a PLOS One report.
Although radiocarbon dating, which won a Nobel Prize in 1960, is considered reliable, there can be hiccups. It essentially depends on comparing the half-life of carbon-14 decay to the number of tree rings. But there are variables and confounding factors.
First, the carbon in the atmosphere has fluctuated over time, so the comparison isn’t ...
