How do ancient civilization get discovered? What do people use to guess how old is the site?

Question

How do ancient civilization get discovered? What do people use to guess how old is the site?

Answer 1

walkin around gettin lucky is one way, asking people around for old stories about old cities. Carbondating is one method of figureing out how old something is.

Answer 2

Archaeologist use a verity of Tolls one of which is a carbon test I think?

Answer 3

They use a method called carbon dating.  Don't ask me to explain it, I can't.

Answer 4

There are 2 basic ways:

-Dumb Luck: someone passes by notices something odd in the ground, and prompts an archaeological dig

-Records found in another dig that refers to the location of a previously unknown site

dates can be made by Carbon 14 (an isotope of Carbon that after something dies slowly decays to Carbon 12), older sites can be dated by another radioactive isotope, various monuments that have dates of kings, rulers, etc; and we can cross-reference with other records from other places that we have established a chronology.

Massive geologic events (volcanos, earthquakes, climate shifts) can be used to date things also.

Carbon 14 is the easiest to use for a NEW site; but might be wrong from contamination.

INitially, they build a RELATIVE chronology, which simply establishes which happened first, after that, next, etc.

Answer 5

archaeologist use fossils and rocks to determine how old they are. They were discovered by the things they left behind.

Answer 6

To some degree most civilizations are discovered by literary refrence from other civilizations. Additionaly, escavations reveal the physical evidence of that civilization.

Carbon-14 tests date materials like bones or plant materials. Additionaly geological information on estimated ages of sediment can be used to narrow the ages down. For example if you find a 10,000 year old skull, and its in a certain layer of soil, generally speaking anything in that layer should be the same age plus or minus.

Answer 7

Carbon-14 dating

Answer 8

Ancient civilizations get discovered by lots of research, surveying the area, digging test pits, or just luck.

There are two ways you can date a site: relative dating and chronometric dating.

With relative dating, you estimate how old something is, either “older than,” “younger than,” or “contemporary with.” You wouldn’t get an estimation in years. For example, you might say that the statue of the Kritios youth is younger than the New York Kouros.

With chronometric dating, the artifact is tested and you get an actual date, or the number of years in the past it was created or built. They can be widely accurate though, ranging from being 3 months off to 200,000 years off.

Within chronometric dating is: (in descending order of accuracy)

Historic Dating

Dendrochronology (tree ring dating)

Radio-Carbon Dating

Atomic Accelerator Mass Spectrometry

Potassium-Argon Dating

Fission Track Dating

Thermoluminescence Dating

Archaeomagnetism Dating

Obsidian Hydration (if what you want to date is obsidian)

Cross Dating (aka Typological Dating)

There is also the use of Stratigraphy (natural, cultural, chemical, horizontal, and overturning)