Gooch's dad

What assumptions? As several people have pointed out, we have tree ring data (dendrochronology) that corroborates the carbon dating of artifacts. This is about as ironclad as any historical science can be. Tree ring dating extends back something like 12,000 years, so nearly any wooden artifacts that are found in a dig site can be pinned down to the exact year in which the tree was cut down to make the item.

Do you understand that?

budgie

Moderators?! Moderators?! We don't need no stinkin' moderators!

Spanner365, how old is the universe? How do you know? How long have humans inhabited this planet? How do you know? When did humans begin writing? How do you know?

There are at least two primary sources for the answers to these questions:
The Bible
Reality

Which do you prefer and why?

-jim

Sparrow

CX, are you saying that the myth didn't exist until it was written down? Spanner 365 seems to think civilization cannot exist without writing. I thought it was reasonably well established that much of the OT was an oral history of sorts. Clue me in, please.

lpetrich

Carbon-14 dating is often used to date the remains of nonliterate societies; it is calibrated by doing C14 dating on trees. And trees, in turn, can be correlated over as long as 10,000 years. This is done by checking on the patterns of wide and narrow tree rings, which represent good and bad years for growth. If log 1 had some pattern near its center, and log 2 had that pattern near its outer edge, then one concludes that log 2 came from a tree that was older than log 1, and that log 2 came from a tree that died shortly after the sprouting of the tree the log 1 came for. Counting tree rings helps make such intuitions more precise, by giving precise dates.

Carbon-14 is useful even when literacy is present, because the written records may be either undated or else dated in a way whose fit into our calendar is either unknown or uncertain. Thus, if we were to use a system common in many early societies, dating by the years in the reign of some leader, this year would be George Walker Bush 4 in the US and Tony Blair 8 in the UK. But if one did not know that GWB became President in the year TB 5, one would not know that GWB 4 and TB 8 are the same year. The problem also exists in another direction. I was born in Dwight David Eisenhower 8. But if one did not have on hand a list of Presidents between Eisenhower and GWB, one would have a hard time finding out my age.

As to why it took so long to invent agriculture, I'm not sure that anyone really knows why. Was it the climate shift at the end of the last Ice Age to something more agriculture-friendly?

Even after the invention of agriculture, writing was not invented right away, but after technology had developed enough to make possible sufficiently large-scale societies.

Writing was invented from scratch only a few times in the history of humanity, once in Sumeria, perhaps once in China, probably once in Central America, and perhaps a few extra times elsewhere. But after it was invented, it has spread all over the world; either by borrowing or by stimulus diffusion -- the presence of writing suggests that it is possible to write. Thus, some Egyptian traveler who went all the way to Sumer may have noticed some scribe making marks in clay tablets that represent words. He would then get the idea that it is possible to make marks that represent words, and he would then invent the first hieroglyphics.

spanner365

In this series of breathtaking 360° panoramas, place yourself 10,000 feet up in California's White Mountains, on the windswept hillside where the world's oldest tree has stood for almost 5,000 years.

Refused

Spanner,

What's your point? You copy/pasted from a creationist web site, then ask for evidence, then... well, what?

Your opening post has been shown to be fallacious, but I don't even know what argument you are putting forth.

Can you please answer some of the other posts?

Oh, and again, when moderators post, they post as plain ole members most of the time... it's only when things get out of line that they put the mod hat on. So why are you commenting on who responded to you first?

- Refused :huh:

Mageth

Yeah, those Bristlecone Pines are awesome.

But what's your point?

chapka

Of course, since the Bible claims there was a worldwide flood less than 4,500 years ago (1,600 years after creation according to this site, which gives extensive biblical citations for its numbers), those trees tend to disprove the idea of literal Biblical history.

DougP

nice catch.

One thing I would like to ask is what do you mean by "man"? Im not exactly sure when homo sapiens evolved, but there were several before that of course that may be considered "man". Either way, It seems like this is certainly rigged for a certain opinion, as you dont present any of the arguments for the other side.

Refused

Wow, according to that site:

I have NEVER heard that it hadn't rained before the flood.

Sorry to derail the thread... come on back, Spanner.

- Refused