BONES, ROCKS AND STARS The Science of When Things Happened CHRIS TURNEY macmillanscience e-book BONES, ROCKS AND STARS 14039_85995_01_prels 2/3/06 14:22 Page i This page intentionally left blank BONES, ROCKS AND STARS The Science of When Things Happened Chris Turney Macmillan London New York Melbourne Hong Kong 14039_85995_01_prels 2/3/06 14:22 Page iii © Chris Turney 2006 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2006 by Macmillan Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world ISBN-13: 978–1–4039–8599–6 ISBN-10: 1–4039–8599–5 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. 10987654321 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 Printed and bound in China 14039_85995_01_prels 2/3/06 14:22 Page iv To Annette, my ever-patient wife 14039_85995_01_prels 2/3/06 14:22 Page v This page intentionally left blank CONTENTS List of figures and tables viii List of permissions and figure sources ix Acknowledgements xi Introduction 1 1 The ever-changing calendar 5 2 A hero in a dark age 12 3 The forged cloth of Turin 30 4 The pyramids and the bear’s groin 46 5 The volcano that shook Europe 62 6 The Mandate from Heaven 77 7 The coming of the ice 88 8 The lost worlds 104 9 And then there was one 119 10 The hole in the ground 135 11 Towards the limits of time 146 Epilogue: Time’s up for creationism 159 Further reading 168 Index 176 vii 14039_85995_01_prels 2/3/06 14:22 Page vii LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES Figures 3.1 Radiocarbon formation and movement in the environment 36 3.2 The decay curve for radiocarbon 38 3.3 The normal distribution 40 4.1 The ‘wobble’ in the Earth’s rotation causes the precession of the equinoxes 55 4.2 Making the alignment for the Great Pyramid of Khufu against Mizar and Kochab in 2478 BC 57 4.3 Dating the Egyptian pyramids of the Fourth and Fifth Dynasties 60 5.1 Using radiocarbon wiggles to date the Santorini eruption 74 6.1 Oak ring patterns for trees growing during the 1628 BC event at Garry Bog, Northern Ireland 81 7.1 The different controls on the Earth’s orbit around the Sun 94 7.2 Changing ice volume and solar radiation for the past 600,000 years 100 7.3 Temperature changes in Greenland over the past 90,000 years 102 Tables 2.1 Key sources, events and dates for the Arthurian period 21 2.2 Best-guess dates of key events for the Arthurian period 23 viii 14039_85995_01_prels 2/3/06 14:22 Page viii ix LIST OF PERMISSIONS AND FIGURE SOURCES Figure 4.3 entitled ‘Dating the Egyptian pyramids of the Fourth and Fifth Dynasties’ came from, Spence, K. (2000) Ancient Egyptian chronology and the astronomical orienta- tion of pyramids, Nature, 408, 320–4. The data used to plot part of the radiocarbon calibration curve used in Figure 5.1 ‘Using radiocarbon wiggles to date the Santorini eruption’ came from Reimer, P.J., Baillie, M.G.L., Bard, E., Bayliss, A., Beck, J.W., Bertrand, C.J.H., Blackwell, P.G., Buck, C.E., Burr, G.S., Cutler, K.B., Damon, P.E., Edwards, R.L., Fairbanks, R.G., Friedrich, M., Guilderson, T.P., Hogg, A.G., Hughen, K.A. and Kromer, B. (2004) IntCal04 terrestrial radiocarbon age calibration, 0- 26 cal kyr BP. Radiocarbon, 46, 1029–58. The data used to plot Figure 7.2 ‘Changing ice volume and solar radiation for the past 600,000 years’ came from Berger, A. and Loutre, M.F. (1991) Insolation values for the climate of the last 10 million years. Quaternary Science Reviews, 10, 297–318 and Imbrie, J., Shackleton, N.J., Pisias, N.G., Morley, J.J., Prell, W.L., Martinson, D.G., Hayes, J.D., MacIntyre, A. and Mix, A.C. (1984) The orbital theory of Pleistocene climate: support from a revised chronology of the marine δ 18 O record. In: Milankovitch and Climate, Part 1, Ed. by A. Berger, Reidel, Hingham, Massachusetts, 269–305. The data used to plot Figure 7.3 ‘Temperature changes in Greenland over the past 90,000 years’ came from Blunier, T. and Brook, E.J. (2001) Timing of millennial-scale climate change in Antarctica and Greenland during the last glacial period. Science, 291, 109–12. Many thanks to Mike Baillie for permission to reproduce the illustration in Figure 6.1 entitled ‘Oak ring patterns for trees 14039_85995_01_prels 2/3/06 14:22 Page ix [...]... Tintagel and sleep with Ygerna The result: Arthur Depending on what you read, Arthur later pulls the sword from the stone or receives it from the Lady of Lake, and becomes king A sort of Utopia then develops, with Arthur defeating the Saxons and creating a prosperous kingdom He 14 B ONES, ROCKS AND STARS forms the knights of the Round Table which includes Sir Lancelot, Gawain and Galahad Peace and prosperity... felt so and started using this system as far back as 3500 years ago Each day began at evening, with the month starting on the first sighting of the crescent of a new Moon This is a dependably regular 29.5 days and extremely tempting to use as the basis of a calendar The first Babylonians did just that Their calendar 5 6 B ONES, ROCKS AND STARS was made up of 12-lunar months of 29 and 30 days, and started... against the Picts; and they did so; and obtained the victory wheresoever they came They then sent to the Angles, and desired them to send more assistance They described the worthlessness of the Britons, and the richness of the land They then sent them greater support Then came the men from three powers of Germany; the Old Saxons, the Angles, and the Jutes AD 455 This year Hengest and Horsa fought with... in his honour Predictably, old habits die hard and after Caesar’s assassination, there was a misunderstanding: the pontifices added the 8 B ONES, ROCKS AND STARS leap year once every three years Only during Augustus Caesar’s reign was this mistake corrected, by stopping the addition of leap years until the calendar was back on track after AD 8 For this and other political honours, the sixth month of... self-correcting and the whole palaver never had to be repeated, the leap years were continued as before except at the end of each century: only one in four have an extra day added As a result, 1600 was a leap year, but 1700, 1800 and 1900 lost the February 29 they would 10 B ONES, ROCKS AND STARS have had under the Julian calendar The revised scheme only gains half a minute over a year and takes 2880... teaching, we’re not giving ourselves a chance to learn from past calamities and face future challenges with any sort of confidence Time gives us the framework to meet these challenges face to face, to manage them, to mollify and perhaps even prevent them happening 4 B ONES, ROCKS AND STARS These are exciting times in archaeology and geology New techniques open ever-more windows into the past Over the... in 1998 by the University of Glasgow and English Heritage made a big media splash when a piece of slate was discovered with an inscription on it that included the name ‘Artogonov’ – dubbed ‘Arthur’s stone’ 16 B ONES, ROCKS AND STARS If Monmouth was right that Arthur was fighting the Saxons, we should look at what was happening about this time in Britain and mainland Europe For around three centuries,... seemed to have been pretty peaceful and prosperous If there was a ‘Made in Britain’ stamp at this time, it would have been seen all over the Empire The economy boomed The beginning of the end seems to have taken place around AD 380 when the barbarians started getting serious: Scots (from Ireland), Picts (from Scotland) and Saxons, Angles and Jutes (from northern Germany and Denmark) all started to attack... Church of Rome to calculate the date of Easter Using calculations from Alexandria and a date for the vernal equinox of March 21, he published a table of Easter dates that agreed with the Eastern Church and then extended them, bringing at least a small measure of unity But what was the best way to report the year? 18 B ONES, ROCKS AND STARS Before Dennis, you could date a year almost any way you wanted The... of it and asked the Brittones for aid Their King Riotimus [Riothamus] came with twelve thousand men into the state of the Bituriges by the way of Ocean, and was received as he disembarked from his ships Euric, king of the Visigoths, came against them with an innumerable army, and after 20 B ONES, ROCKS AND STARS a long fight he routed Riotimus, king of the Brittones, before the Romans could join him . BONES, ROCKS AND STARS The Science of When Things Happened CHRIS TURNEY macmillanscience e-book BONES, ROCKS AND STARS 14039_85995_01_prels 2/3/06 14:22. some of the most exciting mysteries of what has gone before: for us, our species and our planet. 4 BONES, ROCKS AND STARS 14039_85995_02_int01 2/3/06 13:29 Page 4 5 Chapter 1 THE EVER-CHANGING CALENDAR O. for her guidance and patience in seeing this book through to the end. Finally I would like to thank all my family, including my children Cara and Robert, and my parents Ian and Cathy. I am beholden