How Reliable are Scientific Dates? Part II

Continuing from the last post on how people have a tendency to agree with whatever is claimed in the name of “science,” accepting the claims, theories, and beliefs as though factual, more problems with this are presented here.

Take, as an example, the case of the five-toed llama. Conventional theory has claimed for years that the camel family appeared on the scene in Eocene times (56-million years ago), and then underwent rapid changes. By Oligocene times (34 million years ago) the feet were two-toed, the other three toes having completely disappeared.

Left: The time frame of the periods, epochs, and ages; Right: A drawing of the uncovered pottery jug with paintings of a five-toed llama, believed to have  been made by the Tiahuanacans, about 500 B.C.

Part of the camel family are the llamas, the modern day animals having two toes, but according to Edwin H. Colbert, at a very early stage of their evolution they had five toes (Colbert, Evolution of the vertebrates, Wiley & Sons, New York, 1955, p.386). The problem is, according to The Geologic Column by Bill Fraser, that at the time they had five toes, man had not yet evolved, and would not for millions of years after the five-toed llama disappeared, believed to be about 30 million years ago. This is a problem, because about 1920 an archaeologist was digging in the ruins of two coastal sites at Pisco, Peru, and came upon pottery jugs of the Tiahuancan (Twanaku) Empire, with paintings of five-toed llamas. The mystery deepened when the same archaeologist discovered the skeletons of llamas at the sites, all with five toes (Pierre Honore, In Quest of the White God, Putnam, New York, 1964, pp 164-165), yet it is claimed that these five-toed llamas became extinct about 28 million years before man is said to  have evolved.

An interesting point is also raised in one of the best known early chipped stone projectile points, called the Folsom point, found all over North America, and is compared identically to ones found in China. It is of particular interest that this point is dated between 9500 to 8000 B.C., and as early as 11500 B.C. in America, but no earlier than 2000 B.C. in China (Anthony G. Hilleman, The Hunt for the Lost American, University New Mexico Press, New York, Harper, 1997; Henriette Mertz, Pale Ink: Two Ancient Records of Chinese Exploration in America, Swallow Press, Chicago, 1972, p.99).

A Folsom Point chipped projectile. The theory, however, requires the points in China to be older, since it is argued by scientists that Asians came over the land bridge to America in 12000 B.C., but they are not--they are about 6000 to 9000 years younger

In addition, Dr. Robert V. Gentry, the world's leading authority on radiohalo research has published a remarkable series of papers in such distinguished journals as Nature, Science , and Annual Review of Nuclear Science, in which his findings are of great significance to the question of radiometric dating. Among his carefully drawn conclusions are the following: Earth's primordial crustal rocks, rather than cooling and solidifying over millions or billions of years, crystallized almost instantaneously. Some geological formations thought to be 100 to 200 million years old are in reality only several thousand years old (“Mystery of the Radiohalos,” Research Communications Network Report, February 10, 1977, p3; Robert V. Gentry, Annual Review of Nuclear Science, #23 1973, p347).

More trouble appeared several years ago with studies of bristlecone pine borings. These trees are considered by most scientists as the oldest living matter known on earth. However, C14 tests made with wood from these pines of at least approximately known age showed that C14 readings were in error from a few centuries up to a thousand years. This find cast further doubt on the assumptions of the method (The Reader's Digest, 12/1972, p.86-90).

The bristlecone pines are three species of pine trees (family Pinacae, genus Pinus, subsection Balfourianae) that are thought to reach an age far greater than that of any other single living organism known--up to nearly 5,000 years

Robert Fleming Heizer, one of the preeminent archaeologists of the twentieth century, and a longtime professor of anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, as well a pioneer in the field of scientific applications to archaeology, principally in research dealing with radiocarbon dating, notes a number of impossibilities according to commonly accepted geological dating: a hyena tooth sawed by a flint before it became fossilized, cutting operations on the fossilized bone of an extinct rhinoceros and on other animals at a site near Paris, and evidence of the use of a sharp tool on the horn of fossilized rhino remains in Ireland. Under the surface of the North Sea the trunk of an oak was removed from a long submerged forest, and the trunk showed 

the marks of a hatchet on it. (Heizer 1962. Man's Discovery of His Past, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1962, p.107-114).

Another strange account comes from the little village of Plateau City, Colorado, a short distance east of Grand Junction. A resident was digging a cellar in 1936. At a depth of ten feet he found paved tile laid in some kind of mortar, different from any other construction in the valley. While the tiles are dated anywhere from 20,000 to 80,000 years old, they lie in a Miocene formation, which could make them up to 25,000,000 years old by conventional dating. Obviously, one can tell the difference between a 25-million year old formation and a paved tile, but on the other hand, is the formation really 25-million years old when it has a 20,000 tile embedded in it? (Frank Edwards, Strangest of All, Ace Books, New York, 1962, p101). Edwards also wrote that in 1871 near Chillicothe, Illinois, well drillers brought up a bronze coin from a depth of 114 feet. This remarkable discovery was described in the Proceedings of the American Philosophic Society, suggesting that it was additional evidence that man had been present there.

The point of all of this is simply to show that though we have accepted as a society the claims of science that include radiocarbon dating as an unarguable issue, evolution as a definitive scientific explanation of life, and the geologic column as an absolute, we find that science cannot answer the simplest questions without making up long scenarios that border on the absurd. Who built the pyramids? Who built Stonehenge? Who settled the Peruvian Andes and built most of the ancient edifices there? Who settled Mesoamerica and built those magnificent structures? Why do we not find Peruvian and Mesoamerican like buildings of prehistory in northern Mexico, the United States, or Canada? Why are they not in Hawaii or Alaska? And even more importantly, why are they not found in Brazil or anywhere east of the Andes in South America? When South American cultures predate man anywhere else in the Americas, how could man have arrived in the Americas through Sibera and Alaska?

How can archaeologists and anthropologists glibly use radiocarbon dates of 10,000 B.C., 20,000 B.C., even 30,000 B.C., and beyond when the inventor of the radiocarbon time clock was astounded to find no human artifacts predated 5,000 years ago by his own measurements? How can scientists use C-14 dating with a surety that demands unquestioned acceptance when there are so many problems with it?

Perhaps the answer lies in the proceedings of the twelfth Nobel Symposium held in 1969 on Radiocarbon Variations and Absolute Chronology, held at Uppsala, Sweden, when Torgny Säve-Söderbergh (left) and I. Ulf Olsson introduced their report with these words: "C-14 dating was being discussed at a symposium on the prehistory of the Nile Valley. A famous American colleague, Professor Brew, briefly summarized a common attitude among archaeologists toward it, as follows: If a C-14 date supports our theories, we put it in the main text. If it does not entirely contradict them, we put it in a footnote. And if it is completely out of date WE JUST DROP IT. Few archaeologists who have concerned themselves with absolute chronology are innocent of having sometimes applied this method. . ." In fact, J. Ogden III, "The Use and Abuse of Radiocarbon," in Annals of the New York Academy of Science, Vol 288, 1977, pp 167-173, states: "It may come as a shock to some, but fewer than 50 percent of the radiocarbon dates from geological and archaeological samples...have been adopted as acceptable by investigators." The rest are discarded because they do not agree with evolutionary beliefs. In fact, Erich A. von Fange, "Time Upside Down," in CRS Quarterly, June 1974, p 22, states: "Conventional C-14 calibration has the effect of stretching out radiocarbon time and slowing down, for example, the rate of man's cultural development. By contrast, this revised approach has the effect of compressing radiocarbon time, and speeding up the rate of man's cultural development," which shows, by the way, an entirely different time frame of history--one measured in the thousands of years, not millions!