We often hear that Aboriginal peoples have been in Australia for 65,000 years, "the oldest living cultures in the world." But what does this mean, given all living peoples on Earth have an ancestry that goes back into the ...
Archaeology
Jul 6, 2024
0
22
Scientists in South Africa have been stunned to discover that termite mounds that are still inhabited in an arid region of the country are more than 30,000 years old, meaning they are the oldest known active termite hills.
Plants & Animals
Jul 4, 2024
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25
Historic shipwrecks often evoke dreams of sunken riches waiting on the bottom of the ocean to be reclaimed.
Archaeology
Jun 26, 2024
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113
Archaeologists have been investigating human bones found near the ruins of a bridge in the Three Lakes region of Switzerland. They seek not only to discover what took place, but also to better understand the Celtic heritage ...
Archaeology
Jun 17, 2024
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80
After analyzing the remains of 64 ancient sacrificed individuals, most of whom were children, researchers have revealed new details about human sacrifice at the ancient Maya site of Chichén Itzá.
Archaeology
Jun 16, 2024
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88
Five hundred years ago, in a mountain-rimmed ocean fjord in southeast Alaska, Tlingit hunters armed with bone-tipped harpoons eased their canoes through chunks of floating ice, stalking seals near Sít Tlein (Hubbard) glacier. ...
Ecology
Jun 8, 2024
0
9
All domestic horses living on the planet today, whether racetrack champions, pony-club companions, or heavy draft giants, find their origins in the western Russian steppes of the third millennium BCE. However, the exact chronology ...
Archaeology
Jun 6, 2024
0
239
Bronze cauldrons were used by the inhabitants of the Mongolian steppe around 2,700 years ago to process animal blood and milk. This is shown by a protein analysis of archaeological finds from this period.
Archaeology
Jun 5, 2024
0
188
Researchers at the University of Bern have for the first time been able to pin down a prehistoric settlement of early farmers in northern Greece dating back more than 7,000 years to the year.
Archaeology
May 21, 2024
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1036
A team of archaeologists at the University of York have returned to Skipsea in East Yorkshire to excavate the remains of a medieval timber hall uncovered near the site of a Norman castle.
Archaeology
May 14, 2024
0
80
Carbon-14, 14C, or radiocarbon, is a radioactive isotope of carbon discovered on February 27, 1940, by Martin Kamen and Sam Ruben at the University of California Radiation Laboratory in Berkeley, though its existence had been suggested already in 1934 by Franz Kurie. Its nucleus contains 6 protons and 8 neutrons. Its presence in organic materials is the basis of the radiocarbon dating method to date archaeological, geological, and hydrogeological samples.
There are three naturally occurring isotopes of carbon on Earth: 99% of the carbon is carbon-12, 1% is carbon-13, and carbon-14 occurs in trace amounts, e.g. making up as much as 1 part per trillion (0.0000000001%) of the carbon in the atmosphere. The half-life of carbon-14 is 5,730±40 years. It decays into nitrogen-14 through beta decay. The activity of the modern radiocarbon standard is about 14 disintegrations per minute (dpm) per gram carbon.
The atomic mass of carbon-14 is about 14.003241 amu. The different isotopes of carbon do not differ appreciably in their chemical properties. This is used in chemical research in a technique called carbon labeling: some carbon-12 atoms of a given compound are replaced with carbon-14 atoms (or some carbon-13 atoms) in order to trace them along chemical reactions involving the given compound.
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