24-05-2024, 04:25 AM
Just to catch up on this:
A first comment is that the ink analysis did not really provide any confirmation of the dating. This has been reported variously, but is one of these errors that get propagated from one source to another.
It is included in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
Indeed, the carbon dating has been 'disputed' in the past, but all cases of this that I have seen, without exception, have come from people without any background in the matter, who felt that this dating challenged their ideas. I would be interested to know of any more serious comment.
I am not sure what is meant with "the nature of the science". Radiocarbon dating is a technique that is based on biology, chemistry and physics, which has evolved over the last 6 decades or so. It has at least one dedicated journal.
The samples taken were not small. Of the strips cut out of the MS, only parts had to be used. It was performed by a representative of one of the world's leading centres doing radio-carbon dating, and we must assume that he knew how much was needed. Furthermore, four samples were taken, which is a luxurious situation compared to more standard cases with only one sample.
That the samples could have been spoiled by more recent organic material (dirt) is of course something that the people doing this know perfectly well, and they do everything to make sure that they only get the carbon from the parchment substrate. Any such foreign material would make the date appear more recent than reality, so in the hypothetical case that a significant amount of modern organic dirt got into the sample, the obtained result would be an upper limit.
Nick Pelling once pointed out that the part of f68 that was cut out seemed to be inappropriate as it would have been handled frequently throughout the MS lifetime. (It is the lower right corner, and one can see it by comparing the 2004 and 2014 scans). Again, us newcomers are unlikely to catch something that 7 decades of experts would have overlooked. Also, if this happened, it would make the MS older, not newer, which is what his Averlino theory is proposing.
Interestingly, there is also a way that could introduce an error in the other direction. Sometimes, parchment is prepared with chalk, which includes mineral carbon. This mineral carbon is likely to contain no radio-active component at all, so if this were to get into the sample, we'd be overestimating the age. Such mineral carbon is entirely unlikely to survive the pre-treatment of the samples.
Of course, the entire resulting interval of dates represents the time that the parchment was created, not the time that the writing started.
For a good estimate of that, we rely on the humanities, not an exact science, but still one based on a lot of information ofwhich amateurs in the matter are usually not aware. I trust the experts' estimate that this was 'not long after parchment preparation'. While this is qualitative rather than quantitative, it is undoutedlby much shorter than the uncertainty of the carbon dating, which spans three decades.
(22-05-2024, 01:39 PM)merrimacga wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.This of course assuming we accept the radiocarbon dating as the timing for when the VM was written, which, although the ink analysis corroborated that to some degree, is disputed as it is insufficient proof due to the nature of the science, the small sampling used, the centuries of newer substances with which the VM has come into contact that could throw off test results, and the fact that this really only gives a starting point for the dating and not an end point. Some would say those tests were perhaps convincing but they certainly weren't irrefutable.
A first comment is that the ink analysis did not really provide any confirmation of the dating. This has been reported variously, but is one of these errors that get propagated from one source to another.
It is included in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
Indeed, the carbon dating has been 'disputed' in the past, but all cases of this that I have seen, without exception, have come from people without any background in the matter, who felt that this dating challenged their ideas. I would be interested to know of any more serious comment.
I am not sure what is meant with "the nature of the science". Radiocarbon dating is a technique that is based on biology, chemistry and physics, which has evolved over the last 6 decades or so. It has at least one dedicated journal.
The samples taken were not small. Of the strips cut out of the MS, only parts had to be used. It was performed by a representative of one of the world's leading centres doing radio-carbon dating, and we must assume that he knew how much was needed. Furthermore, four samples were taken, which is a luxurious situation compared to more standard cases with only one sample.
That the samples could have been spoiled by more recent organic material (dirt) is of course something that the people doing this know perfectly well, and they do everything to make sure that they only get the carbon from the parchment substrate. Any such foreign material would make the date appear more recent than reality, so in the hypothetical case that a significant amount of modern organic dirt got into the sample, the obtained result would be an upper limit.
Nick Pelling once pointed out that the part of f68 that was cut out seemed to be inappropriate as it would have been handled frequently throughout the MS lifetime. (It is the lower right corner, and one can see it by comparing the 2004 and 2014 scans). Again, us newcomers are unlikely to catch something that 7 decades of experts would have overlooked. Also, if this happened, it would make the MS older, not newer, which is what his Averlino theory is proposing.
Interestingly, there is also a way that could introduce an error in the other direction. Sometimes, parchment is prepared with chalk, which includes mineral carbon. This mineral carbon is likely to contain no radio-active component at all, so if this were to get into the sample, we'd be overestimating the age. Such mineral carbon is entirely unlikely to survive the pre-treatment of the samples.
Of course, the entire resulting interval of dates represents the time that the parchment was created, not the time that the writing started.
For a good estimate of that, we rely on the humanities, not an exact science, but still one based on a lot of information ofwhich amateurs in the matter are usually not aware. I trust the experts' estimate that this was 'not long after parchment preparation'. While this is qualitative rather than quantitative, it is undoutedlby much shorter than the uncertainty of the carbon dating, which spans three decades.