Radiocarbon timestamps left in ancient tree rings by cosmic ray bombardments can date historical events with unprecedented precision. LongReads
One thousand years ago, according to Viking sagas, intrepid seafarers sailed west from Greenland to a coast they called Vinland. There they set up camps, harvested wild grapes, and skirmished with local people. At an archaeological site in a coastal town in Newfoundland called L’Anse aux Meadows, remnants of structures laid out like Viking longhouses and artifacts such as a bronze cloak pin and iron nails record their presence—likely the first Europeans to set foot in North America.
A decade ago, Fusa Miyake discovered two precise markers of time in the rings of an ancient cedar: carbon-14 spikes now called Miyake events.Science C values of items with a known age—usually based on tree rings—giving the sample’s age to within a few decades under ideal circumstances. C spikes left by violent space weather events—solar flares, other outbursts from the Sun, and exploding stars—that unleash short, exceptionally intense showers of high energy particles.
When Wacker read about Miyake’s 774–75 C.E. and 993–94 C.E. spikes, he recognized the radiocarbon beacon’s untapped potential. He trained it on a chapel in Müstair, Switzerland, supposedly built by the first Holy Roman Emperor, Charlemagne, on a site where he and his party had survived a horrendous blizzard. Another team of scientists had dated the chapel to 785 C.E.
A Miyake event in timber from Viking structures in Newfoundland gave them a precise date of 1021 C.E. In the wake of their headline-grabbing Vinland success, the Groningen team is tackling another alluring set of historical puzzles: “floating” chronologies, or ancient, internally consistent timelines that are untethered to specific dates. For instance, Dee has long hoped toto our modern calendar.
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