May 2, 2006 New Evidence Spurs Fresh Thinking on Ancient Civilizations By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD Imagine if the chronology of early American history were off by 100 years, and it was really 1392 when Columbus sailed the ocean blue. Scholars have long argued over the possibility of a time discrepancy of similar magnitude for a crucial period in the Late Bronze Age of Greece and the Aegean world.
Scientists now report new radiocarbon evidence to support the contention that the Late Bronze Age in the Aegean began in the 17th century B.C., at least a century before the date previously assumed by many scholars. The radiocarbon samples showed that the age extended from about 1700 B.C. to 1400 B.C.
If correct, the earlier date would require a critical re-examination of cultural and trade relationships at the time between Minoan Crete, Mycenaean Greece and Cyprus, on the one hand, and the civilizations of Egypt and the rest of the Middle East.
It would mean that the Crete of the elaborate palaces that tourists flock to see and of the legends of King Minos reached an apex a century earlier than once thought.
Specifically, two independent radiocarbon studies set an earlier date for the volcanic eruption on the island of Thera, now known as Santorini, which set off tsunamis and spread ash and pumice throughout the Aegean and Mediterranean region.
The catastrophe is thought to have hastened the decline of the Minoan civilization on Crete, 70 miles away, and perhaps set the stage for the emergence of Mycenaean Greece as a wealthy power in the Aegean.
One group of researchers, led by Sturt Manning, a Cornell archaeologist, reported in the current issue of the journal Science that the eruption occurred between 1660 B.C. and 1613 B.C.
The age was determined by an analysis of 127 radiocarbon samples, many of them from Santorini and Crete.
Another team, reporting in the same journal issue, gave a more narrow time range for the eruption — 1627 B.C. to 1600 B.C. The analysis was based in part on radiocarbon data from the branch and leaves of an olive tree that was buried by the volcano.
Walter L. Friedrich, a geologist at the University of Aarhus in Denmark, and colleagues said this was the first detailed examination of an object buried alive in the eruption. It adds, they wrote, "to the already strong evidence of an eruption date in the late 17th century B.C."
In an e-mail message from England, Dr. Manning said, "The two independent papers thus greatly reinforce the strength of the overall new chronology."
Another article in the journal quoted Colin Renfrew, an archaeologist at the University of Cambridge, as saying that the findings "convincingly solve the problem of the dating of the Thera eruption."
Until recent years, archaeologists had generally dated the eruption at around 1500 B.C. This was estimated mainly by comparing the pottery, art and other artifacts of the Aegean region with cultural goods in Egypt and Mesopotamia, which had more firmly dated chronologies.
The revised radiocarbon chronology, if it stands, would mean that the Minoans at their height were not contemporaries of Egypt's expansive New Kingdom of the 16th century B.C.
Instead, the Minoans apparently achieved greatness earlier and at a time when Egypt was being ruled by a foreign Canaanite dynasty, the Hyksos.
Dr. Manning said there was no artifact evidence linking the Aegean and Egypt directly and clearly in the period leading up to the volcanic eruption.
"So the dates offered in the textbooks for these periods have always been interpretations and estimates with little evidence," he said.
Early indications suggest that proponents of the later chronology are not backing down. Their main line of defense is the Egyptian historical chronology, derived from its written records as well as pottery and iconography. They insist that a chronology tied to the Egyptian record could not be off by as much as 100 years.
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Early indications suggest that proponents of the later chronology are not backing down. Their main line of defense is the Egyptian historical chronology, derived from its written records as well as pottery and iconography. They insist that a chronology tied to the Egyptian record could not be off by as much as 100 years.
As I made a note of earlier, the Nile Valley calendar system has been instrumental in "dating" other cultures to its east:
...the Egyptian Solar, lunar and Sothic calendar,...contrasts with the Mesopotamian calendar and lunar cycles. (Sothic calendars and dating comprises works of Egyptologists like Alan Gardiner, Theodore Oppolzer, Edward Meyer, Edward Wente and Charles Van Siclen, W.G. Waddell, and others)...
Egyptian dating system has been used (as reference points) in assisting scholars to determine chronologies in other cultures within the "Mediterranean" regions and so-called "near East"...
Ancient Egyptians had an innovative calendar system, the 365-day solar calendar, which was different from its contemporaries (Mesopotamia used a lunar calendar of 354 days, and 360-day calendar) and setting the example that modern calendars follow. The Egyptians had a lunar calendar too, which made use of a 25 year cycle.
As noted earlier here, Egyptologists have used the various kings lists, but they've also taken into account some discrepancies between them, in terms of the chronologies provided. So the additional tool of approximating the chronologies, comes from the Egyptian sothic year, using Sothic cycles as reference points.
The shortcoming of the Egyptian 365-day civil calendar was that, it didn't have the extra-quarter day, that is exemplified by the quadrennial leap year of the modern solar calendar. As a result, the Egyptian civilian calendar fell short of another quarter day of the true solar year, which meant that it couldn't tell farmers when seasons began and when the annual inundation of Nile flood would begin. But of course, the Egyptians had a way around this: they figured out the correlation between the heliacal rising of Sothis and the beginning of the Nile flood. To make sure that the New year on the civilian calendar, which fell short of one quarter of day ever year, coincides with the rise of Sothis, the Egyptians came to the realization that it should take 1,460 solar years for the civil calendar to lose 365 days. Thus, with 1,460 solar years equaling 1,461 Egyptian civil years, the Nile flood and the solar cycle were harmonized. As such, the 1,460 year Sothic cycle, known as the Sothic year, had a full day every four years and a full month every 120 years, imitated the civil calendar. This Sothic year proved instrumental in guiding Egyptologists in reconstructing the chronology with respect to the true solar year, as is used today. Indeed, the Egyptian calendar system has also been useful in constructing chronology of other contemporaneous cultures, like those of Mesopotamia.
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