Thank you to both of you for posting these. There was an article on the New
York Times web site yesterday but it seems to have moved into their member's
only area. One thing that article did give was more reasonable confidence
intervals on the radio carbon dates. The other articles mostly quote a 25
interval which is equivalent to 987.5BC plus or minus 12.5 years. The NYT
article cited a plus or minus 100 year range giving the range to be between
1100 and 900BC. This seems a much more reasonable range given the
limitations of the method.
A number of those links are long on rhetoric and speculation and short on
evidence. I know journalists and bloggers have to generate copy to stay in
business, but it seems to me we just have to wait for the serious work of
the investigators gets done and published.
Bill Rea Ph.D., ICT Services, University of Canterbury \_
E-Mail bill.rea AT canterbury.ac.nz </ New
Phone 64-3-364-2331, Fax 64-3-364-2332 /) Zealand
Unix Systems Administrator (/'