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oshfdk · 28-08-2026, 11:28 AM

eggyk wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Yes they do? The individual folios had ranges of +/-35 years. The final combined range has a range of +/-15 years. That's a huge difference.

We will not be on the same page when you are talking about years. Neither, I think, you will be on the same page with the author of the radiocarbon dating report. The test doesn't measure years, it only measures a proportion of carbon isotopes in the sample. These proportions for all the folios are quite close and the range where measurements overlap is wide and well defined, there is no conflict in the source metric and absolutely no reason to believe that the source folios come from two different batches, unless there is some strong evidence for this other than these measurements.

Let me try an analogy. Suppose you have a handful of marbles and you stand right on the edge of water, close your eyes and drop marbles one by one. Some of them end up in the water and make a splash sound, some drop on the ground and don't make the splash sound. As long as they feel the same, how likely it is that there are actually two distinct types of marbles - splash-making ones and silent ones?

It's the same with the MS - the folios look similar, cut to the same size, written with the same kinds of ink and in the same style and their radiocarbon measurement is the same with the variation tighter than the range of uncertainty. How likely is it that there are two distinct set of folios made 50 years apart? Absent some evidence pointing toward this (not the radiocarbon dating, which doesn't point toward this at all), I'd say this is very unlikely.