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  • NO BAD SCIENCE

    Filed at 5:14 pm under by dcobranchi

    This is one of the dumber sciences pieces I’ve seen lately:

    CAIRO, Egypt (Reuters) — Egyptian archaeologists have found what they said could be the oldest human footprint in history in the country’s western desert, the Arab country’s antiquities’ chief said on Monday.

    “This could go back about two million years,” said Zahi Hawass, the secretary general of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities. “It could be the most important discovery in Egypt,” he told Reuters.

    Archaeologists found the footprint, imprinted on mud and then hardened into rock, while exploring a prehistoric site in Siwa, a desert oasis.

    Scientists are using carbon tests on plants found in the rock to determine its exact age, Hawass said.

    Carbon dating cannot go back to anywhere close to 2 million years. The half-life of C-14 is ~5500 years. Ten half-lives is about the limit at which you can get reliable numbers. 55,000 is just slightly shy of 2,000,000.

    6 Responses to “NO BAD SCIENCE”


    Comment by
    Lisa Giebitz
    August 22nd, 2007
    at 5:59 pm

    Pardon my ignant-ness, but could they date it another way?

    It seems like they throw the phrase “carbon dating” around a lot when they really mean something else…? Or is that just me?


    Comment by
    Daryl Cobranchi
    August 22nd, 2007
    at 7:07 pm

    Sure. But that’s no excuse for lazy writing.


    Comment by
    christine
    August 22nd, 2007
    at 10:39 pm

    Everyone knows the earth is only 6000 years old, how could a footprint be older than the world? Sheesh. That is bad science.


    Comment by
    Darren
    August 23rd, 2007
    at 9:31 am

    Okay, I’m not totally up on human descent, but if it’s 2 million years old, is it even human? Homo sapiens is only 100K, I think – maybe an upper limit of 200K is human.

    Unless “human” means merely “non-chimpanzee,” in which case I guess 2 million would work?


    Comment by
    Daryl Cobranchi
    August 23rd, 2007
    at 5:20 pm

    I think they’re using human in the sense of Genus “Homo” which does indeed go back that far. Homo sapiens sapiens goes back ~130,000 years.


    Comment by
    Colleen Noel
    August 24th, 2007
    at 3:20 pm

    Pardon me, but if the universe really IS only 6,000 years old, we are the product of a blatant lying fabricator. If we are not the product of a blatant lying fabricator, then the universe is about 13.5 billion years old and this earth is about 4.5 billion years old. So human life can easily be millions of years old… Human, as in the evolution from one form to another form, not with some ‘more perfect goal’ in mind.

    A god who lies, or no god at all? I choose no god at all. Is religion under attack? Considering that it constantly attacks any advancement in knowledge (it only took the Roman Catholic church 350 years to accept that Galilleo was right), religion is not being attacked but fought back against. He who casts the first stone is guilty of the attacks, not the respondent.