I don't think that this is correct, for two separate reasons. The first is
that such a date could only be from radiocarbon dating (and should
therefore have been quoted with its appropriate standard error).
Radiocarbon dates of 40,000 bp and above are uncomfortably close to the
practical limit of radiocarbon. The quantity of radiocarbon remaining in
wood and other living matter diminishes by half with the passage of each
5730 (more or less) years after the death of the organism - thus after
40,000 years only one part in 128 of the original radiocarbon remains.
Given that at the death of the organism only about one carbon atom in a
million million (ten to the twelth power) is of radiocarbon, a vanishingly
small number of radiocarbon atoms remain after 40,000 years - making any
radiocarbon date of this magnitude very vulnerable to error through
contamination by modern radiocarbon, which is ubiquitous. It is therefore
very difficult to establish whether such a date is accurate or inaccurate.
The Belgian mines could therefore be older than the quoted date by some
unknown interval. The second objection to this claim is that excavations in
haematite mines in Southern Africa have yielded some infinite radiocarbon
dates, which might or might not be older than the Belgian case cited by
Roger. (See Peter Beaumont, "The ancient pigment mines of South Africa",
South African Journal of Science 69:140-146, 1973). The use of haematite as
pigment goes back a long way in this region - if interested, look in the
current issue of Science for a report on excavations at Blombos Cave, near
Cape Town, where a lot of haematite, some powdered, one piece decorated,
has been recovered from levels thought to date to ca. 70,000 years ago.
David Killick
Associate Professor
Department of Anthropology
University of Arizona
Tucson, AZ 85721-0030
phone: (520) 621-8685
fax: (520) 621-2088
-----Original Message-----
From: roger gosling [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Thursday, January 17, 2002 1:38 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Oldest mine in the world??
In the Guinness book of answers 10th edition (1995) it says that the oldest
mine in the world is an ochre (clay and hydrated ferric oxide) mine in
Belgium dating from 41,250 BC.
Can anyone verify this? Whereabouts in Belgium would this be (or have
been)?
Roger
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