We are assured by these newspaper and magazine columns that man really has been on this earth for a long, long time. But has it? Who hasn't read such newspaper headlines as - "Evidence of 35,000-year-old human remains found," "Archaeologists uncover ancient 20,000-year-old artifact," "Mammoth hunts in Siberia 39,000 years ago"?
This new method was hailed as the tool to unscramble history. A human bone, a mammoth carcass, a fossilized stratum How old are they? This question has puzzled laymen and scientists for decades.