The Importance of Pottery, Radio Carbon Dating, and Tree Rings
- stephenstrent7
- 4 hours ago
- 11 min read
This discussion is taken from chapter 9 of my forthcoming book, Noah’s Flood and the Philosophies of Men.
I do not consider myself to be a conservative or liberal; rather, I consider myself, and am registered as, fiercely independent. I am also a scientist, and believe in the power of data and truth. Some ultraconservatives, who often attempt to downplay data, tend to cherry-pick individual studies where they can argue against the data or the conclusions. Often, there is a specific agenda behind the attempt to limit data to those that support a specific position.
For example, Mike Riddle stated in a post at the website answersingenesis.org, “When a scientist’s interpretation of data does not match the clear meaning of the text in the Bible, we should never reinterpret the Bible. God knows just what He meant to say, and His understanding of science is infallible, whereas ours is fallible. So we should never think it necessary to modify His Word.”1
In my opinion, that is a very dangerous statement, because, for one thing, it tends to drive an unnecessary wedge between science and the Bible. I read the Bible daily and believe its messages, but I do not have to throw away modern cosmology just because Joshua said to the Sun, “…stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon.”2 Furthermore, this wedge tends to push thinking people away from religion because they mistakenly believe that religion requires blind belief, without question. True religion is unafraid of questions. My very religious mother always taught me, “Don’t believe anything you hear and only half of what you read.” I remain, to this day, a very religious skeptic.
In his article, cited above, “Doesn’t Carbon-14 Dating Disprove the Bible?”, Riddle attempted to downplay the importance of radiocarbon dating, because the dates derived from various radiometric dating techniques disagree with an ultraconservative interpretation of the Bible and the man-made precept that the earth is only 6000 years old—and that the “universal” Flood occurred only 4000 years ago.
Radiocarbon dating has been verified numerous times by dendrochronology and other data. However, Troy Lacey and Harry Sanders attempted to downplay the importance of dendrochronology dating by pointing out that pine trees may produce more than one ring per year, especially when stressed.3 The Lacey/Sanders paper is very interesting and, I believe, makes an excellent point, but most dendrochronological data are not based on pine trees—stressed or otherwise. Even though the bristlecone pine is included in Table 1 of Paula Reimer et al’s 2013 paper in the journal Radiocarbon, the majority of their data comes from the far more reliable annual growth rings of oak trees.4 Interestingly enough, Lacey and Sanders didn’t even mention oak trees in their post—maybe they just forgot.
According to Quan Hua et al, the mainly oak-tree, data of Reimer et al. has established an “…internationally agreed upon calendar calibration curves reach[ing] as far back as about 48000 BC”.5 Reimer et al. stated, “The IntCal09 and Marine09 radiocarbon calibration curves have been revised utilizing newly available and updated data sets from 14C measurements on tree rings, plant macrofossils, speleothems, corals, and foraminifera. The calibration curves were derived from the data using the random walk model (RWM) used to generate IntCal09 and Marine09, which has been revised to account for additional uncertainties and error structures. The new curves were ratified at the 21st International Radiocarbon conference in July 2012 and are available as Supplemental Material at…radiocarbon.org.”6 In other words, Reimer et al., and all the other scientists working in this field, are well aware of all the “issues” raised by ultraconservatives concerning radiocarbon dating, such as those writing in answersingenesis.org (who seem to think they are the only ones with the “secret” information they are sharing), and are constantly updating the calibrations accordingly.
The following statement comes from the US National Institute of Standards and Technology: “Many scientists, including Marie and Pierre Curie, Ernest Rutherford and George de Hevesy, have attempted to influence the rate of radioactive decay by radically changing the pressure, temperature, magnetic field, acceleration, or radiation environment of the source. No experiment to date has detected any change in rates of decay.”7
In 1954, Adam S. Bennion, an apostle in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, asked Henry Eyring, an internationally renowned chemist and active Church member, his opinion about the age of the earth. Eyring replied, “Here I will briefly sketch a few of the more or less familiar lines of evidence on the age of the earth. The world is filled with radioactive clocks which can be read with varying accuracy but usually within ten percent or so and often considerably better. The principle involved is essentially simple. The heaviest elements such as uranium are unstable and fly apart sending out particles which can be counted in a Geiger Counter. From the number of counts one can tell how much of the radio-active substance one has. As the substance continues to decompose, the counts decrease, always remaining proportional to the number of particles not yet decomposed. Now the particles that are shot out are helium so that if the decomposing uranium is enclosed in a rock this helium will also be entrapped. Thus by determining how much helium is entrapped and how much uranium is present in the rocks one can tell exactly how long it has been since the rocks were laid down in their present form, since it always takes exactly the same amount of time for a given fraction of the uranium to decompose. There is another check on this. Each time a uranium atom decomposes it leaves a lead atom behind as well as ejecting the helium atom. Thus the ratio of these residual lead atoms to uranium is another wonderful clock. Four and one half billion years must elapse in order that half of the uranium present will be gone. Half of what remains will decompose in another four and a half billion years and so on. Thosium, another radioactive clock, has a half-life of fourteen billion years and there are a variety of other long time clocks as well as some short time ones like carbon fourteen with a half-life of five and one half thousand years. The radioactive clocks, together with the orderly way many sediments containing fossils are laid down, prove that the earth is billions of years old. In my judgement anyone who denies this orderly decomposition of sediments with their built in radioactive clocks places himself in a scientifically untenable position.”8
What has happened to radiometric dating since 1954? As with almost every field of science since that time: improvement, improvement, improvement. We now have well over a dozen different radiometric dating methods, many of which can be used to provide multiple testing methods on the same sample. For example, metamorphic rock (called gneiss) in western Greenland, has been dated to 3.56 ± 0.10 million years ago by lead-lead dating and 3.6 ± 0.05 million years ago by uranium-lead dating.9 Based on those figures, the internal error rate for lead-lead dating is 2.8% and the internal error rate for uranium-lead dating is 1.4% (compared to the 10% stated by Eyring in 1954). The between method error rate, comparing the lead-lead to uranium-lead method, is 1.1%. To bring Eyring’s statement more up to date, one can now state that anyone who denies the data obtained from these radioactive clocks places himself in a highly “scientifically untenable position,” which is ten times more untenable than it was in 1954. Anyone who dismisses radiometric dating on the grounds that there is variation (at least all those that I have read) always fails to state the range of variation. Of course there is variation in radiometric dating, in the range of 1.1% to 2.8%.
So, radiocarbon dating and tree-ring dendrochronology are very reliable dating techniques back to about 48,000 BC. That information does not, in any way, shake my personal belief in the main storyline of Genesis—including the Creation story and the story of Noah’s Flood. Given those data, I will now turn my attention to the power of pottery.
The creation and use of pottery date back to at least 19,000 to 20,000 years ago. The oldest known pottery fragments are from that period and were discovered in the Xianrendong Cave in China. The cave was apparently inhabited by hunter-gatherers during the Late Glacial Maximum. The fragments are from ceramic vessels, likely used for cooking.10
From that time until the late nineteenth century, millions of people, all over the world, made pottery in distinctive styles, used it, and discarded it; giving it little, if any, additional thought. Then, in 1894-1895, the English Egyptologist, Flinders Petrie, excavated the Naqada cemetery in Upper Egypt, and uncovered a large number of previously unstudied Predynastic graves. Petrie realized that pottery, found among the grave goods in over 3,000 burials, over a time period of around 1000 years, from about 4000 to 3000 BC, differed in style from grave to grave and through time.11
Petrie divided the Naqada pottery into three periods: Amratian (named after the cemetery near El-Amrah; now called Naqada I and dated to about 4000 - 3500 BC); Gerzean (after the cemetery near Gerzeh; now called Naqada II and dated to about 3500-3200 BC); and Semainian (after the cemetery near Es-Semaina; now called Naqada III and dated to about 3200-3000 BC).12 Petrie worked out the pottery sequence without specific dates, which were added later by others.
Naqada I was characterized by “black-topped pottery”, with some painted pottery appearing. New pottery techniques were introduced during Naqada II, with “Marl” pottery, sometimes decorated, characterizing the period. “Cylinder jars” characterized Naqada III, and writing first appeared.13
Debbie Challis said in 2013, “Petrie’s Sequence Dating was a great achievement in what is known as relative dating. This type of chronological work puts things into an order – a sequence – but it does not actually measure time. There is no way of knowing how many years have passed between the use of one pottery vessel and the introduction of a new type. All relative dating tells us is what is earlier and what is later…More than a century later mathematical modelling is again being used to create a timeline for early Egypt. This time the focus has been radiocarbon dating, which is a technique that can measure time and give a date in years. It is a method of absolute dating. Once again Petrie’s pots and the other finds his Egyptian workforce uncovered are the primary data for cutting edge study.”14
Today, 130 years, or more, after Petrie, experts can identify where the clay was obtained for the pottery; whether it was hand formed, molded, or turned on a wheel; what type of kiln was used and at what temperature; and even what the pottery piece was used for—based on microscopic residues remaining in the container. In short, each pottery shard can tell a compelling story of the person who made it, often, right down to the fingerprints.
One of the most famous examples of the story told by pottery grave goods is that of the British Isles and the arrival of Beaker pottery from the continent (as discussed in my previous post). The Neolithic farmers who built the Newgrange passage tomb in Ireland, around 3200 BC, also made and used “Carrowkeel Ware” pottery (named for Carrowkeel, County Sligo, Ireland); which was thick, coarse, and heavily gritted. It was handmade, not turned on a wheel. The bowls were open round-bottomed vessels; bowls and cups were hemispherical. The pottery was decorated with a “stab and drag” or “impressed” technique. Some of the decorative patterns resembled the artistic patterns in the passage tombs themselves.15
The pottery associated with the Avebury Circle, Wiltshire, England (constructed over several centuries during the Neolithic period, between around 2850 BC and 2200 BC—with no evidence of being interrupted by any sort of flood) also has been found at the nearby Windmill Hill causewayed enclosure and is called “Windmill Hill Ware”. This pottery was also simple and handmade, typically with a pot-belly appearance, rounded rims, and often with small handles. Some Windmill Hill Ware was undecorated, and when present, decorations were typically simple dots or parallel incision lines running half-way down the pot from the rim.16
The pottery found at Durrington Walls; associated with the more famous Stonehenge, 25 miles south of Avebury, (built and remodeled over a period of 1500 years—around 3000 BC until about 1500 BC), and employing some of the same type of giant sarsen stones as at Avebury, but more dressed; is called Grooved Ware. It was handmade, mainly employing the coil-building technique. It is known for its flat bottoms and straight or slightly tapered sides toward an enlarged opening. Grooved Ware is so named because of ridges of wet clay commonly added to the sides, with incised grooves or geometric patterns in between.17
Bell Beaker pottery, so named because the ceramic beakers resembled upside-down bells, first appeared on the European mainland, especially Iberia, around 2750 BC. This pottery was also hand-made using techniques like coiling. It was decorated with horizontal zones made by finely toothed stamps. Grave goods associated with those beakers often included metal objects, such as bronze knives and axes—the first appearance of bronze metallurgy in Europe. The Bell Beaker culture first appeared in the British Isles around 2450 BC, and was associated with a significant population movement into Britain at that time.18
The Beaker culture in Britain lasted until about 1800 BC, when it was succeeded by the Atlantic Bronze Age culture (c. 2400 BC - 800 BC). Bronze Age pottery was more diverse, largely due to expanded trade during this period, both within Britain and with continental Europe. The Atlantic Bronze Age, particularly in places such as Cornwall, England, is associated with “Trevisker Ware” pottery, so named because of the archaeological site at Trevisker Round, an ancient enclosure near St. Eval, Cornwall, where that type of pottery was first identified. Again, this pottery was handmade by coiling. Although it was a distinctive style, originating in Cornwall, it was traded to other parts of Southern England and even influenced pottery styles in Ireland and Brittany throughout a significant portion of the Bronze Age. Bronze Age pottery also included other styles, such as Bell Beakers and Collared Urns.19
Wheel-made pottery did not show up in Britain until the first century AD, introduced by the Romans, which led to a significant increase in both the quantity and variety of pottery produced.20
The important take-home message here is that there is an unbroken line of pottery types in the UK, and elsewhere, that can be very precisely dated, with no evidence of interruption by a major global disaster, such as a flood, especially one that would have wiped out the entire British population, with a new and very small group of settlers coming in from the middle east around 2300-2200 BC. No amount of jury-rigging or denying the validity of scientific dating methods can change those facts.
Trent Dee Stephens, PhD
References
1. Riddle, Mike, Doesn’t Carbon-14 Dating Disprove the Bible? Featured in The New Answers Book 1, Ken Ham, 2013; answersingenesis.org/geology/carbon-14/doesnt-carbon-14-dating-disprove-the-bible/?srsltid=AfmBOorb7j2Qz8PQclcyFSyP1BtkT8D76digdEQjF_wAM7b96Nxmq_x9
2. Joshua 10:12-13
3. Lacey, Troy, and Harry F. Sanders, III, Ask the Trees: Why dendrochronology is not evidence for an old earth; Featured in Answers in Depth, 2021; answersingenesis.org/age-of-the-earth/ask-the-trees/?srsltid=AfmBOopGLWnNdBYajvMpQWX88oMTHrx8GuMajRKEPPZjgttiq_7sYmZF
4. Reimer, Paula J., et. al., INTCAL13 and Marine13 radiocarbon age calibration curves 0 – 50000 yrs cal BP, Radiocarbon 55:1869–1887, 2013
5. Hua, Quan, et. al. Atmospheric Radiocarbon for the period 1950-2010, Radiocarbon, 55(4), 2013
6. Reimer et al, 2013
8. Heath, Steven H., The Reconciliation of Faith and Science: Henry Eyring's Achievement, Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Vol. 15, Autumn 1982; Letter: Henry Eyring to Adam S. Bennion, 16 Dec. 1954, in possession of Henry Eyring family; photocopy in Steven H. Heath, “Henry Eyring, Mormon Scientist,” M.A. thesis, University of Utah, 1980.
9. Dalrymple, G. Brent, The Age of the Earth, Stanford Univ. Press, Stanford, Calif., 1994
10. Wu, Xiaohong, Chi Zhang, Paul Goldberg, and David J. Cohen, Early Pottery at 20,000 Years Ago in Xianrendong Cave, China, Science 336:1696-700, 2012
11. Petrie, W.M. Flinders, Diospolis Parva. The Cemeteries of Abadiyeh and Hu, 1898-9, The Egypt Exploration Fund, London, 1901; archive.org/details/diospolisparvac01macegoog/page/n10/mode/2up
13. Petrie, 1901
14. Challis, Debbie J, Making time for Predynastic Egypt, University College London, 2013; blogs.ucl.ac.uk/museums/2013/09/05/making-time-for-predynastic-egypt/#:~:text=Petrie's%20Sequence%20Dating%20was%20a,data%20for%20cutting%20edge%20study
16. Gibson, Alex, Prehistoric Pottery in Britain and Ireland, The History Press, Cheltenham, UK, 2002; see also Orton, Clive, Pottery in archaeology, Cambridge University Press, 2013
17. Ibid
18. Ibid; and Olalde, Iñigo et al., The Beaker phenomenon and the genomic transformation of northwest Europe, Nature, 555:190–196, 2018
19. Gibson, 2002; Orton, 2013
20. Ibid
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