Table of Contents
History for GRANITE asks what radiocarbon can say about Egypt’s earliest pyramids. The Bent Pyramid and Meidum still hold original wood, and other mortar keeps charcoal and reed, so there is organic material to test. Atmospheric carbon varies, and royal timelines were often tighter than the tests. Alternative patrons, some linked to Edgar Cayce, paid for the first serious sampling. Mark Lehner is described as leaving that circle for mainstream Egyptology, while Zahi Hawass is said to have taken related support and denied a lasting part. A large 1995 effort still used mortar charcoal at Khufu, and almost no Bent Pyramid wood was tested, which the channel says makes the ages look falsely alike. An early museum chip has an unclear find-spot and might be a later repair. Dixon’s cedar, from a Great Pyramid shaft and recovered at Aberdeen in 2020, falls centuries older than the usual Khufu date. Even so, the film refuses a late ice-age metropolis and says Graham Hancock dropped that extreme age.
Key points
- Wood, charcoal, and reed mean the early pyramids can be radiocarbon dated.
- The method has real limits, and it was less precise than royal chronologies for a long time.
- Alternative patrons, not the archaeological establishment, pushed the first major tests.
- Sampling at Khufu and the Bent Pyramid is described as thin and biased toward mortar charcoal.
- The Dixon cedar is the main result that falls centuries older than the usual Khufu date.
- The channel rejects a 12,500-year lost civilization while asking for better samples.
Short quotes
Another irony about science at the pyramids, is that it was alternative archaeology which first funded and pushed for radiocarbon testing to take place there.
History for GRANITE, Carbon dating the oldest pyramids
The channel credits independent patrons, not the state establishment, with forcing the early tests. Watch at 4:38
Inexplicably, none of the wood in the Bent Pyramid was tested and only two samples of charcoal were used from its mortar.
History for GRANITE, Carbon dating the oldest pyramids
This is the sampling gap he says makes the Bent Pyramid’s age look artificially neat. Watch at 10:47
Just don’t expect this to be a debate about 12,500-year-old lost civilizations.
History for GRANITE, Carbon dating the oldest pyramids
His conclusion is that the carbon results do not reopen an ice-age pyramid date. Watch at 16:29
Video by History for GRANITE. Watch on YouTube.