The Use of Carbon Dating to Understand the Origin of Man

Carbon dating is one of the most, if not the most, important techniques employed by anthropologists. Other techniques include comparisons to the pre-existing fossil record, like Darwin employed, and applying forensics to determine possible causes of death. Carbon dating works by measuring the decay a radioactive isotope of carbon – carbon-14f Because carbon-14 is produced by the Earth’s atmosphere via the decay of nitrogen at a relatively constant rate, it is absorbed by all living things as long as they are alive.

When an organism dies, it ceases to absorb atmospheric carbon—14‘ this is the foundation of radiocarbon dating, which has proven to be invaluable in anthropology as it gives a relatively exact estimate of the time of death, provided it happened within the last fifty thousand years or so – afterwards, the carbon-14 is usually too decayed to be measured, and scientists must employ other methods of dating based on radioactive decay of other elements, including potassium, uranium-238, and chlorine in order to obtain a viable record.

To understand the origin of man anthropologists and archeologists often use all types of radiometric dating to ascertain the time of death for a given organism, which, coupled with forensic techniques, can give us an idea of what kind of environment the subject lived in, how they may have lived, what nutrition was available, and even possible interactions with others. Radiocarbon dating has offered new insights into early civilization, disproved creationism, and even solve historic murders, notably of Egyptian mummies, that had previously gone unsolved for centuries.

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All of these offer possible arguments and evidence for the AP Test.