Science rings changes about ancient history

Everything we know about the chronology of ancient civilisations around the Mediterranean may be wrong.

The new model for carbon dating helps to resolve conflict between Egyptologists and scientists over the date of Tutankhamen. Picture: News Limited

Everything we know about the chronology of ancient civilisations around the Mediterranean may be wrong.

The prevailing scientific understanding of when major events took place and under whose rule they happened around the Mediterranean is decades off, researchers have claimed.

A team of archaeologists and scientists said assumptions used in radiocarbon dating across most of the northern hemisphere do not hold true for the Mediterranean region, potentially distorting timelines of Ancient Greece, Egypt and the Holy Land.

They said that their improved model, based on wood samples from ancient Gordion, the capital of mythology’s King Midas, changed the dating of events such as the volcanic eruption on the island of Santorini that led to a crisis in Minoan civilisation. It also helps to resolve conflict ­between Egyptologists and scientists over the date of the Pharaoh Tutankhamen.

Radiocarbon dating, which was developed in the 1940s, measures the decomposition of carbon-14, an unstable isotope of carbon created by cosmic radiation and found in all organic matter. Cosmic radiation is not constant at all times, meaning carbon-14 levels can be used to date many artefacts.

These dates are “calibrated” using carbon-14 samples taken from tree rings of known ages from different sources. The reference data used for most northern hemisphere archaeology is ­largely compiled from samples from central and northern ­Europe and North America.

To assess its validity, the team compared radiocarbon data from trees from northern Europe and from the Mediterranean in the 2nd and 1st millennia BC. They discovered “critical” periods of variation and “substantive” differences in carbon levels between the two regions. This led to faulty dating. When they used Mediterranean carbon-14 data to date artefacts from the wider region, it resolved contested timelines. For example, the new method agreed with Egyptologists’ dating of the burial of Tutankhamen to the 1320s or 1310s BC, decades earlier than previous readings.

The study, published in Science Advances, also addresses a debate over the date of the eruption on Santorini, formerly Thera. It is now thought to have happened about 1550BC — earlier than archaeologists thought, but later than scientists believed.

The researchers said that even seemingly small differences of 50 years or less would be very ­important.

Sturt Manning, professor of classical archaeology at Cornell University, said: “Getting the date right will rewrite and get our history correct in terms of what groups were significant in shaping what then became classical civilisation. An accurate timeline is key to our history.”

The Times