Civilization / Humanities & Culture

Radiocarbon Dating

Libby shows (1949) that the decay of carbon-14 in wood, bone and charcoal gives their age up to about 50,000 years.

Willard Libby's method (Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1960) put absolute dates on archaeology worldwide; tree rings and later calibration curves corrected its early biases. With other dating methods it gives the timeline of human prehistory and past climate.