in The sixth century bce, the poet Homer wrote his famous epic poems of the Iliad and the Odyssey. Or was it in the Seventh century? A study released by the scientific journal Plos One could well question the chronology of Greek antiquity, and by the same occasion, the exact dating of the writing of these two works.
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A group of archaeologists from the austrian Academy of sciences managed to develop a system of dating is much more accurate. Usually, scientists use carbon-14 to find the age of an organic material, for example a work of art, a fossil or the rock. Each living organism has a certain amount of radiocarbon, that decreases then exponentially to the death of the body. By comparing this remainder of carbon with the one present in a reference sample, it is possible to date up to 50,000 years back in time of the objects. Beyond that, the dating becomes too imprecise.
50 to 150 years away
This technique has therefore enabled the design of a time grid of Greek antiquity. With a precision all relative: the amount of carbon-14 can vary depending on environmental conditions. To resolve this problem, a scale calibration has been devised with different measures of objects whose age is known, to be compared with the “ages carbon-14” is obtained. The researchers of the austrian Academy of sciences have used this process on a Greek archaeological site, located in a suburb by the name of Sindos.
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Thanks to the discovery of pottery, whose age could be determined with precision, the team was able to re-evaluate the chronology of the Greek history, and get a new one more accurate. According to these results, significant historical events, as well as the origin of many innovations in philosophy, literature and the policy should be dated from 50 to 150 years earlier. “Thus, the advantages of the method are complementary, the advantage of a precision of dating that until now, had not been reached for this period,” says archaeologist Stefanos Gimatzidis with the news site dedicated to the archaeology News Network Archeology .
Sindos, archaeologists have found pottery that they were able to date with precision. Stefanos Gimatzidis/Bernhard WeningerÀ also read : Pompeii, a graffiti contradicts the dating of the catastrophe of the Vesuvius
Now, dating errors could be greatly reduced. These findings also suggest a new reading of the history of the Ancient world. “We can now design the dissemination of the alphabet, or the symposium in Greece and in Italy as a longer process which began in the Ninth century.”
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