WHAT IS CARBON DATING?
Carbon dating or radiocarbon dating is a technique used in dating matter such as bone, cloth, wood and plant fibre – anything that was once alive. All living things contain an element called carbon. This carbon is present in different varieties, one of which is carbon-14. Out of the different forms, carbon-14 is special because it is radioactive. Being radioactive, in simple terms, means that the element disintegrates over time. The time in which it decays to half the original amount is called its half-life. The half-life of carbon-14 is 5730 years. All living things maintain a specific content of carbon-14 right up to the moment of death. When an organism dies, the amount of carbon-14 available within it begins to decay at a half-life rate i.e., it takes 5730 years for half of the carbon-14 available in the organism to decay. After 11,000 years, one quarter of the original carbon-14 atoms will be left and after another 5,500 years (i.e. 16,500 years later), one eighth of the original
