Chicken Bones Suggest Polynesians Found Americas Before Columbus
 

Draw your own conclusions:

http://www.livescience.com/history/0...n_chicken.html

Don't let SU see this. He will go ballistic.

??? Is "he" anti-science, ergo anti-reason, logic, truth and evolution?

He will suspect that you are using the article to prove Mormonism true. and then he will have a stroke.

I don't put a lot of stock into carbon dating. How do they even know that carbon was decomposing at the same rate back then as it does now?

Why wouldn't it?

Furthermore, it has been calibrated many, many times.

What is the issue with carbon dating?

I know it is reasonably reliable, although some years ago I remember reading something about some issues of reliability. As I understand it, for about 10,000 years on it, it is reasonably reliable, but outside of that, it may not be as reliable.

Well why would it? The atmosphere was different, the whole make up of the Earth was supposedly different back in the day, yet everything still decomposed at the same rate. Seems like a bit of a stretch imo...and how would they possibly be able to determine such a thing?

Well, you could take organic samples from ancient items where the age can be determined via other means (wood from a ship or building from a particular period, old paper with dates, human remains from a dated burial mound, etc.) and run a carbon dating analysis to verify the accuracy. That is what I mean by calibration. From what I understand, it shows some scatter but it is reasonably accurate. Certainly gives you a good ballpark estimate of the age.

Yes but if the accuracy is only "reasonable" for time periods for which you can actually find dated materials, how can you assume that it's accurate for items even older. You personally are free to trust carbon dating, for myself I remain very skeptical. Anything beyond a couple of hundred years old and I think you're pretty much just making educated guesses.