Problems of radiocarbon dating

The result is that the public assumes the dating methods used at any given time are adequate, whereas the dating specialists working with those methods know that this is not necessarily the case.

Only when they feel they have devised a better method for a specific time period, do they publicly admit the weaknesses of the method they had been using previously.These admissions have profound implications for human evolution.In the Science article on ostrich-eggshell dating,[3] the authors state that many of the dates assigned to human fossils in this 40,000-to-200,000-years ago period based on the older methods were only "provisional," and that all such dating is "uncertain." These are remarkable admissions.(Anatomically modern Homo sapiens fossils that are dated more recently than 40,000 years of age are not of great significance for evolutionary purposes and are not under consideration here.) There are four Neanderthal fossil individuals that are dated more recently than 40,000 years.They are the Amud I and Shukbah remains from Israel and the Saint-Cesaire and Arcy-sur-Cure remains from France.