News stories in archaeology from around the world. Excavations around the world sifted out great blocks of a human past far deeper and richer than any suspected as the century began. It came not from the earth, but from the mind. The invention of radiocarbon dating hit archaeology like a thunderbolt. And nothing was ever the same again.
Age is a basic piece in the puzzle of the past.
If A came from Egypt and B from England, the situation was almost hopeless. Here was a tool that, for the first time, could assign an absolute age, for the past 40,000 years, to virtually any carbon-bearing material. It was an instant hit, as archaeologists were almost intoxicated by the possibilities. It did neither, of course. But it gave to archaeology a scientific sophistication many in the field had been desperately seeking.