Hammer found in Cretaceous rock (75 to 100 million years old)

All right, let's forget about carbon dating for a second.

Why not give a sample of the wooden handle to an
expert botanist/forester, who would determine the
species of the tree from which it was manufactured?
I'm fairly sure woods are easily identifiable. By the
way, my late granddad was a pro carpenter and
furniture maker, and I bet he could ID the wood in
a millisecond, just by studying the grain etc.

If it's oak and it's 100+ million years old hehehe --
impossible.


[edit on 14-10-2004 by Aelita]

Hickory is the prefered wood for sledge/ spike hammers, unless it was originally from china, then it would be bamboo.

Oh, and it was also common to apply rosin to the handle where it was driven into the hole in the head.

A few comments

* The hammer wasn't found in Cretaceous rock. It was allegedly found on the ground in an area where there's Cretaceous rock. Cretaceous rock is all over Texas. I can walk outside and drop my cell phone in Duck Creek Park, but that doesn't mean that T Rex was making calls on it back in the Cretaceous era. If I drop it in Cave Without A Name, in 50 years it will be covered with a crust of limestone and embedded in an Edwardsian limestone formation (Cretaceous again)... but that still won't mean that T-Rex was messaging all his friends on it.

* The hammer appears to be a miner's hammer from the late 1800's. It's been examined by folks (but not held-and-examined.... just looked at.)

* Objects in caves (like this miner's hammer) get encased in stone fairly quickly. This is easily demonstrated... just visit any "show cave" (cave open to the public) in convenient distance and ask. They will have things (like the railings) that are covered with "flowstone" or other limestone materials.

* This particular "museum" doesn't let its materials be examined because they know that they would be debunked (that "cowboy foot in the boot" is actually the leg bone of a cow. If you look at any human skeleton, you'll see that the bones couldn't possibly be human.) This museum is also the source of the hoaxed Paluxy Man Track (the carver of it later confessed.)

* Yes, we do find things that are very old. Some of the fossils we have date to a billion years old.

* C-14 is not used to date rocks and not used to date anything beyond about 50,000 years. There's a LOT of different methods used by archaeologists, and they're really fascinating. You should read up on them.

* Yes, we CAN identify sites by various hominid species (including Australopithecines) up to about 5 million years ago (give or take. I'm going by memory) I'm working on the material from a site here in Texas that's only a few thousand years old, and you'd be astonished how much information is really available at a site. Before I got into this, rock just looked like... well... rock. Now I can tell if a rock has been used as part of a hearth or if someone was chipping arrowheads from it... and so on and so forth. I'd recommend archaeology field trips to anybody!

* Real scientists aren't afraid to present their controversial material to other researchers for dating and testing. If their evidence is solid, then the concept will (slowly) be accepted (archaeologists are a conservative bunch.) In fact, this is what happened with the Pre-Clovis site in Monte Verde: The researchers there claimed the material was 20,000 years old, others laughed, they invited some of the scoffers down to work the site and review the material, the scofferes were convinced, and THEY started promoting the evidence for humans being in the Americas some 20,000 or more years ago.

It's the frauds who won't let their materials be reviewed by just anyone.


I really need to make some sort of web page on this.



[edit on 14-10-2004 by Byrd]

I have a question. I need to ask this question because, as I'm more than willing to admit, I am far less than well educated when it comes to earth sciences.

My question is, just out of curiosity, can anyone offer a definitive length of time for the complete degradation of plastic? I've seen several different numbers, both here and via the search engines. I've seen everything from "more than a year," to "over 100 years," "450 years," and "a million years." Which is it?

Does it vary by composition, production methods, etc. ?

One last time. The hammer is only approx 6000-10,000 years old. The "Rock" it was found in, is what is mis-dated. Rock dating is based on a layering effect and assumptions as to how long it took to be layered. The rock "make-up" itself may be the age assumed, but the layer dating is what is flawed. If I make a "quartz" radio and bury it for 1000 years, how old is the radio? The age of the quartz, the age of the dirt it was buried in, or when I made the radio? Sorry guys, Archeology is very poor science, it is a house of cards..................One assumption holding up another.

Originally posted by DrHoracid
It is based on asumption and not science.

Completely incorrect.

The pine tree inproperly dated had been through several fires and its growth retarded, which changed its C-14 absorption.

www.talkorigins.org...

Contrary to the complaints of creationists, conventional scientists are well aware of this problem. They test for it and take it into account when interpreting radiocarbon data. In cases where corrections for presence of "dead carbon" cannot be made, such dates are readily recognized as erroneous and can be safely disregarded. This is not the fatal flaw to radiometric dating that some creationists claim it to be. It just shows that dates from molluscs from streams and lakes need to be carefully evaluated as to their reliability. Other materials, such as wood, charcoal, bone, and hide, would remain unaffected by this type of reservoir effect

Also, what is the source for this 1000 year old pine claim?

All data for C-14 dating is based on a recent "living" database (50 years?) and (is) flawed

This is actually incorrect.
www.talkorigins.org...

The variability of the C14/C12 ratio, and the need for calibration, has been recognized since 1969 [Dickin 1995, 364-366]. Calibration is possible by analyzing the C14 content of items dated by independent methods. Dendrochronology (age dating by counting tree rings) has been used to calibrate C14/C12 ratios back more than 11,000 years before the present [Becker et al. 1991; Becker and Kromer 1993]. C14 dating has been calibrated back more than 30,000 years using uranium-thorium (isochron) dating of corals [Bard et al. 1990; Edwards et al. 1993], and to 45,000 b.p. using U-Th dates of glacial lake varve sediments

DrHoracid
The rate of *natural* C-14 production can be increased either by an increase in cosmic radiation (leading to increased neutron production), such as happens with a solar flare and the cycle from sunspot-minimum to sunspot maximum; or by an increase in atmospheric nitrogen.

www.talkorigins.org...

One of Dr Richards' research interests is the calibration of radiobarbon dating[...]The large peak they found is a new and interesting result, though it has no effect except for dates extending back over 33 thousand years.

In summary, this work confirms the principles of radiocarbon dating, confirms and refines existing calibration of radiocarbon dates from 11,000 to something like 24,000 years, extends calibration back to 45,000 years, leading to some significant corrections for dates greater than 30,000 years. These corrections mean that some published dates may be too young.

and also the variation between c14 and c12 has been addressed above.

Also, why didn't you include a citation for your post, its entirely from:
home.tiac.net...

This shows that the variation in c14 levels is controlled by known sources and can be calibrated for, it certainly doesn't invalidate c14 dating. Are you trying to say that radiometric dating is useless or has to be used correctly in order to be effective?

I am a scientist and have peer reviewed many papers

What sort of research do you do, what is your field?

The hammer is only approx 6000-10,000 years old

Based on what? Absolutely nothing that has been done to the hammer has indicated this.

The "Rock" it was found in, is what is mis-dated

Uhmmm, the rock hasn't been dated. The hammer had some hard stuff stuck to it, some of it had some minerals that were from a long time ago. Thats not any sort of 'dating' technique.

The owner of the hammer WILL NOT allow it to be examined. Why? Because it's a fraud. We can argue in circles about carbon dating and all that. But, until this object is opened up for careful examination, it's all heresay. I'm confident that this will turn out to be a hoax.

[edit on 15-10-2004 by Der Kapitan]

Originally posted by DrHoracid
One last time. The hammer is only approx 6000-10,000 years old.

And you can prove this... how?

The hammer style is common to the 1800's (if you saw the recent "history of tools" program on the Discovery channel, they had a nice one on hammers and the changes throughout history.) They weren't using that style of hammer 6,000 years ago. Or 10,000 years ago. We have some of those.

In fact, we have hammers from the Americas that date to that time period and they don't look like this miner's hammer from the 1800's.

The "Rock" it was found in, is what is mis-dated.

We agree on this.

Rock dating is based on a layering effect and assumptions as to how long it took to be layered.

Erm... yes, and no. In this case, it wasn't found deep inside layers of rock. It was sitting on the outside, near places where lots of caves form.

Sorry guys, Archeology is very poor science, it is a house of cards..................One assumption holding up another.

So far, you've made a lot of assumptions but haven't been able to back them up. Care to provide some REAL data to show how things should be properly dated?

For instance, since Archaeology is (according to you) so full of bunk, I'd appreciate knowing how you'd "properly" date sites such as the "holocene midden" at the Gault Site: www.utexas.edu...

After all, these poor beknighted scholars are doing the dig and dating by pollen and dirt layer analysis and artifactual analysis and carbon dating on some of the organic material. I'd appreciate knowing how we can go about setting these scholars right so that they can date the material as it should be.

References showing that their methods are wrong and the correct methods would be greatly appreciated.

Originally posted by AceWombat04
My question is, just out of curiosity, can anyone offer a definitive length of time for the complete degradation of plastic? I've seen several different numbers, both here and via the search engines. I've seen everything from "more than a year," to "over 100 years," "450 years," and "a million years." Which is it?

Does it vary by composition, production methods, etc. ?

Excellent question, and I think the answer is "no, we can't." It does depend on composition, production methods, and what happens to the plastic (landfilled or left on the surface)? We can make estimates, but we really can't say how long that six pack ring is going to last.

Anybody that says a particlar science is bunk is at the least, uninformed. If you knew about the subject than you know that any credible scientist admits that they don't have a complete picture. I do think that with paleotology and archaeology are on the right track. I suggest that a few of you actually read about thses subjects from credible, established sources before deconstructing years and years of hard work.

Originally posted by DrHoracid
Mans current "tech" is not yet up to Pre-flood times.

If this hammer is an example of pre-flood tech, I dissagree...

[edit on 15-10-2004 by merka]

I was wrong, it is not a spike hammer. I was fooled by the lack of an indication of the relative size of the object into thinking it was much bigger than it actually is.

Here is a nice little debunking of the hammer with the following picture.





Note that it is actually very small as far as hammers go. I doubt it is a miner�s hammer also as it doesn�t have the characteristic cross peen/ chisel of a rock hammer.

I suspect that it is probably a blacksmith tool like a horseshoeing hammer

Ooops! Yes, you're right.. the contextless picture led me to think it was the larger hammer.

Appreciated the link, particularly this part:

However, for years Baugh refused to allow the hammer to be C14 dated. In an exchange of letters between creationist Walter Brown and Jim Lippard in Creation/Evolution, Brown (1989) suggested that the hammer handle has not been dated because Baugh had three "understandable" conditions for dating it: that it be done with mass spectrometry, that Baugh be present during the dating, and that someone else pay for it. However, Lippard countered that no one has objected to the first two conditions, and that Baugh had no right to expect the third, since he's the one making the claims, and thus the one obligated to back them up. Even so, even after others offered to pay for the dating, Baugh declined to have it done. As Day (1991) wrote in a follow up letter: "Far from being 'understandable,' Baugh's stipulations seem to be little short of evasive tactics...If four years have gone by and nothing has happened, I think it is safe to conclude that Baugh has no interest whatsoever in determining the truth about his marvelous hammer."

Finally, in the late 1990's Baugh supporter David Lines reported on a web site (Lines, 1997, 1999) that carbon 14 dating had "recently" been done on a specimen from the inside of the handle, and that the results indicated an age between the Present and 700 years. This reporting format seemed a little curious, since most C14 labs report a date with a plus-or-minus margin of error, rather than just a flat range. Furthermore, no information was given about when or where this was done, or by what C14 method, nor was any formal report referenced. Therefore, such results seem somewhat suspect until more documentation is available, especially considering Baugh's history of dubious and unfounded claims.

They were kind to Baugh... he has a history of outright lies.

Very interesting. Well for thoughs of u who have heard about the reptilian theory, there is also a theory that a humanoid reptilian race evolved on this planet as well as planet x and other planets in the draco, and orion costilations. If there was a humaniod reptilian race that had advanced technology that would explain where this hammer would have come from. Whats to say other species did'nt evolve on this planet, and are now living in holo earth, or built space ships to leave the planet. We all know the planet was alot different millions of years ago, and is always changing. Maybe the things in the atmosphere that a techno. advanced race needed to live back 10's or even 100's of millions of years ago, r'nt there anymore. Or maybe the temperature has gotten to cold for them to live here so they left. Or maybe they just simply died off for what ever reason. The hammer dos'nt have to be made by humans. Whos says it has to be made by any species that is native to this planet, it could be a hammer that belong to pp l of a race from another planet. Theres an infinite number of different theories you could come up with, and non of them should be over looked.

Originally posted by LordRothschild
Very interesting. Well for thoughs of u who have heard about the reptilian theory, there is also a theory that a humanoid reptilian race evolved on this planet as well as planet x and other planets in the draco, and orion costilations. If there was a humaniod reptilian race that had advanced technology that would explain where this hammer would have come from.

Or the warehouse that the hammer came from would explain it.

Whats to say other species did'nt evolve on this planet, and are now living in holo earth

Geology

or built space ships to leave the planet.

Physics and Archaeology

Maybe the things in the atmosphere that a techno. advanced race needed to live back 10's or even 100's of millions of years ago, r'nt there anymore.

The ancient atmosphere has been studied and appears to be broadly similar to what it is now. Or maybe the temperature has gotten to cold for them to live here so they left.

Or maybe they just simply died off for what ever reason.

Where are the cities, graveyards, bodies, buildings, mines, lumberyards, etc?

The hammer dos'nt have to be made by humans. Whos says it has to be made by any species that is native to this planet, it could be a hammer that belong to pp l of a race from another planet.

Sure, it could be. Nothing about it indicates this tho.

Theres an infinite number of different theories you could come up with, and non of them should be over looked.

Those aren't theories, they're just explanations made up outside of the evidence. Theories are based on observations and evidence. Theories shouldn't be overlooked or discounted out of hand, but these sort of 'maybe this maybe that' kind of stuff, well, a person isn't being dishonest if they don't go out looking for evidence to support it. The people promoting the ideas should by doing that.

scientist i am not,but if there is reticence on the owners part to have the hammer examined that is the indication that it is a fraud.
The mans reputation another indication....
I would however like to see the peculiar combo of the iron tried to be reproduced if in fact it does not rust and remains shiny to this day from its origonal test.(where the notch was chipped out.)
Is there anyone on this thread with enough savvey to extrapolate the manufacturing process?i was sure coal impurities are the common theme in modern steels.....
if it is really a new type of stainless steel (which seems correct to me lacking in moly ,nickel,manganese,etc,then perhaps we can alter our modern production methods to match.)
Chlorine is to my knowledge very unusual in steel production,anyone actually know about this?

Originally posted by browha
btw i am a physicist..
if i showed you two uranium atoms and asked you to tell me which would decay, and when, do you think you could do it correctly?
admittedly, c-14 dating is one ofour best dating methods because it uses the law of averages, instead of a calculated figure, so we have an average value for the half-life of c-14
but if it's a calculated value then you're open to extrapolation/interpolation errors.

Although I understand completely what you are saying here, I think that if you are truly a physicist, then you are aware that you are being disingenuous when you remark about predicting the decay of individual atoms versus the radioactive decay of samples as in the half-life argument that is being made here.

Also, I would think that any hard science afficionado would be aware that there is no such law as "the Law of Averages."

Harte

From the anonymous section:

www.abovetopsecret.com...
You can find all kinds of hammers and other tools in Michael Cremo's book, "Forbidden Archeology". He also has a website www.mcremo.com... but the book has the entire bibliography and everything else you could ever want to try to prove the fact that scientists find what they're paid to find and that's it.

The thing is, the objects in Cremo's book are the same, they aren't actual out of place artifacts, they are more often than not obecjts that people merely claim were found in weird circumstances, but in reality, there's no proof, just stories.

theres no way it can be a hammer.

Hello! Facinating!! My contracters always leave tools behind. Who is to say there wasn't a visitor fixing their transportation? A smoking gun so to speak.... A real clue to the past. Funny how a hammer is still popular
and necessary today.