Hi Corp,

Corpuscles Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Hi Thanos

> I would like to make a comment. It is of course
> not meant to be "hostile" but my manner of
> 'speech' often seems to come across like that.

No worries. Fire away.

> What backs up the claim of dating?
>
> More specifically my gripe with all the scholars
> and the "experts" is when they make a claim that a
> civilization dates to "x years BC + or - 1000
> years they make no effort to include an
> explanation of why!?

Valid question. When dealing with such dates personally I like to put a "c." in front for "circa" to denote its an estimate. It reminds me of when physics gives a date of the universe at 13.82 billion years. ".82", huh? How TF do we really know to be able to get it down to anything beyond a round number? But I digress...

> Is it RCD (radio carbon dating)?
> Is there some other valid method of declaring
> dates, surely not that the style of the pottery
> was "consistent with the period"?

Archaeological Dating Methods.

A few other methods equally important not mentioned above are textual reference and cross-cultural comparative analysis.

The bottom line is dating is accomplished by creating context derived by an amalgam of various methods. It is not perfect nor absolute, and some of it is just plain wrong, so when someone gives a date of 2500 BC it is really just an approximation based on the preponderance of derived context. If one is looking for absolute dates in ancient history there are none, just best guesses and refined approximations. RCD has +/- error rates which archaeologically derived context is no different. Good or bad right or wrong context is history.

Pottery found in stratigraphy is a very useful chronological indicator.

> Beyond 5000 yrs RCD becomes very unreliable, and
> IMHO it should be worded as "at least" because
> anything that can be RCD'd is likely the part of
> the LAST remnant not the very first!?

Indeed.

> How would one RCD a city like London? What about
> Hiroshima , or even Berlin ,in say 1946?

RCD in the atomic age is very unreliable.

> Also just as a note but not meaning to derail.
> There is heaps of reasons to believe that Buddhism
> started around 500 BC. Therefore Vedic literature
> was far earlier as the Buddha was a revolutionary
> basing almost all his stuff on the vedas.

I didn't say Vedic literature did not predate Buddhism.

> Anyway.... very interested in how you are so
> certain of these ..dates!?

I never said I was "so certain" of the dates, but I am reasonably certain of much of the context which provides for a +/- error rate which is why I often use "circa" when providing accepted dates to denote the lack of absolute certainty. When taken as a whole the best we can do is derive various levels of "likelihood" which could mean within decades or hundreds of years.

I don't see anyone challenging conventional wisdom the 4th Dynasty dates to somewhere around 2,600-2,500BC just that the pyramids, Sphinx et al are much older. Why is this do you think? Some antiquarians dated the 4th Dynasty as much as 2,000yrs earlier. If some want the pyramids to date to 12,000yrs ago why not put the 4th Dynasty back several thousand years as well if all of this means nothing? There is no scientific basis for it, no absolute dating to challenge this notion that can't be contested by the pedantic. Why not? Could it be...context?.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 27-Jul-15 05:34 by Thanos5150.