Neahkahnie/carbon dating

[big_chicken]

Good Afternoon
I found the article on this mountain, simply great. I learned alot of information that I had no idea existed. I even went and visited the area since I only live a couple of hours away, and must say even if you are not interested in the legend it is a really beautify area of the coast.

I, too found the carbon dating interesting, but felt it really didn't fit in with the story, at least time wise. I had also seemed to remember some faint information about some classes I had taken in the past so I decided to do some research and possible determine if the date could be matched with a date that fit the story better.

First of all, the half life of carbon is 5730 years, the time we are looking at is approx. 1000 years ago, doing the math that would leave us with approx. 88% of the orginal carbon-14 left in the wood. Now if the wood was actually from the 1500s, difference of about 500 years, then there would be approx. 94% left. This is a difference of about 6%.

This 6% may be explained in a variety of ways

A. The creation of carbon-14 happens when light reacts with carbon in the air, the carbon is then incorporated into the tree. Now it is possible that the amount of light can vary to a certain degree and in fact there is an outside possibility that it could be as much as 10% in the last million years. I don't believe that this is the major reason for any variation in the carbon dating.

B. As mentioned previously about the possibility of wood sitting around for extended periods of time before being burnt. On the surface knowing the climate of the northwest and esp. the coast (rain constant for half the year) would rule out the idea of the wood sitting around for hundreds of years, but.... one must not forget that the wood inside the tree is dead and was made, in the case of large trees, possibly hundreds of years previous. So the fact is that the wood could have been "lying" around for a few hundred years sompletely protected from the environment. If a person considers that the wood might have been from the inside of a tree for 250 years this reduces the difference between the 1000 year date and the more plausible date of 1500s to about 3%. I think this one is quite plausible to explain much of the difference.

C. And finally science in many ways is an inexact art and sometimes there can be large statistical devations with results. Variations in many things are much wider than people frequently realize. Now I don't know the exactly nature of carbon dating and how precise it is, but in many fields variation in measurements up to 5% is generally acceptable. I feel there might be some error in the lab results and when we are dealing with differences of 6% or even 3% it really could change things.


I found the article extremely interesting. My veiw is that the story of the treasure is probably the native american myth of Drake and his crew landing and doing various surveying work that was changed slightly over the years. It would be interesting to gather all of the information together to see if I can make the Drake story fit the clues, but probably won't have time till I am out of school.

However, I had once read another article about Drake and some evidence he landed in a bay further to the south ( can't remember where) where they found some special stones in the bay. Unfortunately I can't remember where I read that to past it on, but if I do I will post it.

Another thought about Pirate treasure, maybe the pirates came back and got it and the native american didn't see it or didn't remember it. If I was a pirate I wouldn't just leave gold all over and never intend to go back and get it.


Big Chicken


Information web sites

Carbon dating
http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~lindsay/creation/carbon.html


and
Half-life calculator
http://www.1728.com/halflife.htm