Two olive branches buried by the minoan period eruption of the volcano on the island of Thera (now Santorini) have enabled precise radiocarbon dating of the catastrophe to 1613 BC, with an error margin of plus or minus 10 years, in the estimation of two researchers who presented the conclusions of their research during addresses at the Danish Archaeological Institute of Athens at an event titled "The enigma of dating the minoan eruption - Data from Santorini and Egypt". The study, conducted by Dr. Walter Friedrich of the Danish university of Aarhus and Dr. Walter Kutschera of the Austrian university of Vienna, who said that the data left by the branch of an olive tree with 72 annular growth rings was used for dating by the radiocarbon method, while a second olive branch -- that was found just nine meters away from the first -- unearthed in July 2007 has not yet been analyzed. According to the two scientists, other radiocarbon testing from archaeological locations on Satnorini and the surrounding islands, as well as at Tel el-Dab'a in the Nile delta in Egypt, corroborate the dating based on the olive tree. The two researchers said that their find (olive tree) represents a serious contradition between the study results of the scientific (radiocarbon dating) and humanities sciences (history-archaeology) methods, with both sides having strong arguments to support their conclusions.
The radiocarbon dating places the cataclysmic volcano eruption, which ended the Minoan civilization, a century earlier than previous scientific (humanities science) finds.
Emneord: Santorini eruption