Non-radiometric dating based evidence for an old Earth

[Laurens]

Creationists seem to use their unfounded doubts about radiometric dating to completely dismiss the very notion of an old Earth, while being completely oblivious to the very fact that even without radiometric dating we'd still have evidence for an old Earth.

I was thinking that it would be a good method of dealing with their non-sense if you could demonstrate unequivocally that the Earth is older than 6,000 years without even resorting to radiometric dating.

Things like the size of ice sheets, and coral reefs, and the depth of dust on the moon...

Anyone know of any good evidence that the Earth is old that doesn't require radiometric dating? It would be good to have a list so that we could demonstrate that they are wrong even if we grant them that radiometric dating is false...

 

[Duvelthehobbit666]

You could make the argument that the Earth is older than 6000 years old using tree rings but that only goes back about 10,000 years. Another example you could use is chalk layers. If you look at the White Cliffs of Dover, their height must be attributed to a long buildup because the little creatures they are made out of take millions of years to build up a layer as think as the White Cliffs. There are some others which I can't think of now or are too easily debunked.

 

[Laurens]

This page has some good answers, as well as the kinds of terrible responses creationists give to them:

During each springtime, tiny, one-celled algae bloom in Lake Suigetsu, Japan. They die and sink to the bottom of the lake. Here, they create a thin, white layer. During the rest of the year, dark clay sediments settle to the bottom. The result are alternating dark and light annual layers -- much like the annual growth rings on a tree. Scientists have counted about 45,000 layers; they have been accumulating since about 43,000 BCE. This is far beyond the estimates of 6 to 10 millennia made by many creation scientists.

Ice core samples have been taken in Greenland that show 40,000 annual layers of ice.

Because of tides, the rotation of the earth is gradually slowing, by about 1 second every 50,000 years. About 380 million years ago, each day would have about 20 hours long! There would have been about 398 days in the year. Studies of rings on rugose coral fossils that were independently estimated to be 370 million years old revealed that when they were alive, there were about 400 days in the year. This relationship has been confirmed with other coral fossils. This is rather good evidence that the world was in existence a third of a billion years ago.

The thickness of the coral reef at Eniwetok atoll in the Pacific Ocean has been measured at up to 1,380 meters. Even the most optimistic coral growth rates would require that the atoll be over 130,000 years of age.

It takes thousands of years of below-freezing temperatures to build a 100 foot layer of permafrost. But large areas in the north are permanently frozen to depths of almost one mile! This took many tens of millennia to accomplish.

Reversals of the earth's magnetic pole are recorded in the Atlantic Ocean sea bottom for the past 80 million years.

If we assumed that all of the minerals which are carried by rivers into the oceans remains trapped in the oceans, then it would take 260 million years for the concentration of sodium to reach its present level. If plankton, fish or other plants adsorb sodium, then it would take much longer. We can conclude that the age of the earth is something greater than a quarter billion years, and is in all probability much longer.

Measurements by sensors attached to satellites shows that space dust accumulates on the moon at the rate of about 2 nanograms per square centimeter per year. (A nanogram is one thousandth of a million of a gram.) This rate would require 4.5 billion years to reach a depth of 1.5 inches, which is approximately the depth experienced by the astronauts who walked on the moon. This agrees rather well with radioactive dating of moon rocks.

Pretty good stuff I'll be using some of this next time someone raises the age of the Earth...

 

[Proteus]

Dendochronology​

The use of dendrochronolgy or tree ring dating can be used on what is perhaps the oldest clonal plant specimen Pando(Populus tremuloides) in the southwestern United States. Ring dating indicates that each individual tree is about one hundred and thirty years old but all individuals share the same root. Genetic studies demonstrate that all individuals are from the same specimen and the process of death and renewal from the root system indicate an age of at least eighty thousand years old.

And contrary to the claims of creationists radiometric and tree ring dating do give results consistent with each other. For example another old clonal plant, King Clone(Larrea tridentata), was determined to be over eleven thousand years old twice through carbon dating and ring counting.

"Leonel Sternberg, a botanist then working as a graduate student in Vasek's lab, was able to 'fingerprint' bushes. He used a test involving plant enzymes to show that plants in a ring had identical characteristics but always differed from other plant clusters. Vasek measured the growth rate two ways, getting similar results. One was by counting growth rings in existing bushes -- which like trees add one ring a year -- and measuring the distance of annual growth. The second was radiocarbon dating of wood chunks excavated from the center of the rings, and measuring their distance from living bushes.

Both methods showed the creosote grew about 0.7 millimeters (1/3 inch) per year."

-lucernevalley.net

General Inference from Archaeology and Population Growth​

Ancient Egypt has one of, if not the oldest true writing system being around four thousand years ago. Their kings lists when cross confirmed with discoveries made in archaeology indicate that the Pharaoh Menes lived over five thousand years ago which means the Egyptian predynastic age is much older.

If the universe is six thousand years old or so and the human race was spawned by only one mating pair by five thousand years BCE the world population would only be about twenty-seven people. Now granted that's assuming a pre-industrial growth rate of about 0.12 percent. But this is creationism so magical numbers suddenly become possible.

"A reasonable assumption of population growth rate (0.5 percent) fits with a population that began with two people about 4000 years ago, not with a human history of millions of years."

-Henry Morris (1985)

If that growth rate is assumed than the world population one thousand years after Adam and Eve would be less than three hundred. And this ignores the problem of infant mortality, carrying capacity, and inbreeding depression. Here's a population growth calculator to check for yourself.

Yet we know that, unless Menes was a king without a kingdom, for Egypt to be a united monarchy there must have been thousands of villagers, artisans, fishers, and merchants and hundreds of bureaucrats, priests and soldiers just in northeast Africa. Not to mention far, far more people spread out all over the globe in hunter-gatherer and early city-state communities at the same time. Additionally this population must have been around and at least stable for several centuries prior to dynastic Egypt to account for various mastabas and other remains built during the archaic period.

General Inference from Paleontology and the Law of Superposition​

Hominin fossil are at best no older than seven million years old. No hominids are older than twenty-five million years old and no derived placental mammals are older than one hundred and twenty million years old. Even if creationists want to ignore the radiometric dates assigned to strata layers they still run into the problem of the absence of human fossils occurring in any Miocene or any preceding strata. This general trend is seen through out geology.

There are primitive whales found in the middle of the Cenozoic but none found with mosasaurs or any other marine reptile in the Mesozoic. Further no whales or marine lepidosaurs are found with any trilobite and the trilobites themselves aren't found after the Permian. Even if we were to assume that humankind had been magically created only a few thousand years ago, despite the reasons that can't be as listed above, life as a whole is obviously much older than our species.

To put some specific numbers on how long certain fossil formations take are the rate at which coccolithophores grow leaving their skeletal corpses to build up overtime creating massive chalk deposits the Cretaceous period is named after. Current observations put the deposition of coccolithophores at about 1-6 centimeters per thousand year. As such there's no way the various chalk deposits like the White Cliffs at Dover being up to one hundred meters high and over sixteen kilometers long could'nt have formed in a few millenia.

Creationists counter that debris from dead organisms and increased CO2 is enough for coccolithophores to multiply and increase their rate ooze deposition:

"With catastrophic volcanic activity warming the oceans and releasing large amounts of CO2, and with the torrential rains and the churning and mixing of fresh and salt waters, the Flood of Noah's day produced the right conditions for a "blooming" production of microorganisms and the chalk's rapid accumulation. The three major sections of the White Cliffs of Dover give evidence of three major "blooms" in chalk formation, which would have taken place during the year-long Flood."

-AnswersinGenesis.com

But they ignore the fact that those increases only occur in short bursts while long term experiments demonstrate that CO2 can actually impede growth.

"Since the studies of Riebesell et al. (2000) and Langer et al. (2006, 2009) species- and 20 strain-specific performance of coccolithophores under elevated pCO2 levels is known from short-term experiments, typically involving 7-10 cell generations. Here, we discussed data from a multiple-generation experiment using two coccolithophore species which generally confirm the observed CO2 sensitivities obtained in short-term experiments. A gradual CO2 increase did not to alleviate the CO2/pH sensitivity under the 25 experimental conditions. In contrast to earlier studies we observed reduced growth rates in response to elevated pCO2."

-Mà¼ller et al (2009)

Emphasis added in bold

Other Chronometric Techniques​

Palaeomagnetic dating measures shifts in the earths pole. These shifts are recorded in magnetically charged sediments.

Thermoluminescence dating measures the accumulation of radiation since the specimen was last exposed to sunlight or some other form of heat. This technique can be used on artifacts one to five hundred thousand years old.

Electron spin resonance dating is typically used in fossil forms and measures the accumulation of trapped electrons. Specimens dated using this technique are usually between half to a few million years old.

I'll add some ninja edits later for sourcing.

 

[he_who_is_nobody]

Further no whales or marine lepidosaurs are found with any trilobite which the trilobites themselves are only found in the Permian.

I think you meant Paleozoic and not Permian. Trilobites are first found in the Cambrian and survived through out the Paleozoic. They died out at the end of the Permian.

Overall, great post though.

 

[Proteus]

Further no whales or marine lepidosaurs are found with any trilobite which the trilobites themselves are only found in the Permian.

I think you meant Paleozoic and not Permian. Trilobites are first found in the Cambrian and survived through out the Paleozoic. They died out at the end of the Permian.

Overall, great post though.

Whoops thanks. I'll change it now.

 

[Pulsar]

Helioseismic dating can be used to determine the age of the Sun.

 

[malicious_bloke]

Ancient Egypt has one of, if not the oldest true writing system being around four thousand years ago. Their kings lists when cross confirmed with discoveries made in archaeology indicate that the Pharaoh Menes lived over five thousand years ago which means the Egyptian predynastic age is much older.

If the universe is six thousand years old or so and the human race was spawned by only one mating pair by five thousand years BCE the world population would only be about twenty-seven people. Now granted that's assuming a pre-industrial growth rate of about 0.12 percent. But this is creationism so magical numbers suddenly become possible.

Can I just be all pedantic and point out that if the universe is 6000 years old, 5000BCE is 1000 years before the universe existed

However, if you start ~4000BCE (conveniently forget any historical evidence of peoples or cultures before that, it just gets in the way) and instead of assuming a growth rate of 0.12% go with the ever-so-scientific population doubling every 150 years approach from AiG the results are slightly more sensible...

By the time of the first dynasty in Egypt (~3100BCE) there would be a global population of 64
By the time of the beginning of the early dynastic period in Sumer (~2900BCE) the global population would have been around 128

so far, so good right?

Then things get a bit muddier. The Pyramid of Khufu was finished around 2540BCE, 1460 years after Adam and Eve. Let's be generous and assume 10 iterations of population doubling here, the global population at the time would have been 2048 people. Now it's a bit of a stretch but *possibly* within the realms of possibility to think that a team of 2048 people working round the clock using ancient tools could have built the Great Pyramid, but 2048 is the GLOBAL population, the number of able bodies workers in Egypt at that time would be a ludicrously small number at that time.

And besides, if there was a global flood 4400 years ago (2400BCE, more than a century AFTER the Pyramid was finished), why isnt the Great Pyramid gone and/or showing extensive damage from being submerged underwater?

Again, let's give the creationists the benefit of the doubt and say that Egyptologists have the dates of both the reign of Khufu and hence the construction of his pyramid a bit off. Say the pyramid was actually built 300 years later. Problem solved innit.

Except that you'd be starting with a new population of 8 people in 2400BCE according to the bible. Even if it wasn't built until 2250BCE you'd still only have a global population of 16 to build the thing.

Sorry, I seem to have gone off on one...

 

[MrOBM]

http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/am/v1/n2/billions-of-people

Interesting read :geek:

 

[Dragan Glas]

Greetings,

Notwithstanding malicious_bloke's comment about...

However, if you start ~4000BCE (conveniently forget any historical evidence of peoples or cultures before that, it just gets in the way)...

...here's a interesting piece of additional evidence:

Europe's oldest prehistoric town unearthed in Bulgaria

Kindest regards,

James