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Unpopular opinion: That 10,000 year old site in Florida might not be as old as they claim
I was talking to a geologist buddy of mine after work last week, and he pointed out that a lot of those dating methods rely on stuff like pollen layers or soil shifts. He said at one dig in the panhandle, the team found a spear point mixed in with sediment that was way older, but it could have just washed down a hill during a storm. It made me rethink how sure we are about dates when the ground itself gets moved around by floods or erosion. Anyone else ever question the timelines on these big finds?
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cora_west51d ago
Drop a coffee mug on my kitchen floor once and I swore it was older than some of these artifacts. But yeah, the whole washing down a hill thing makes me wonder if half these dates are just educated guesses based on dirt that moved around more than my furniture during a party. Like imagine a flood pushing a spear point from 2000 BC into a layer from 8000 BC, and then some poor grad student has to explain why their whole timeline is off. I'd probably just blame the weather and hope my advisor doesn't ask too many questions. It's basically archaeology's version of "the dog ate my homework" except the dog is a hurricane and the homework is human history.
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miaprice1d ago
Wait wait wait, "just washed down a hill during a storm"? That's wild. So we could be totally wrong about how old something is just because of some bad weather thousands of years ago?
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