Joe Rogan on archaeology: what the evidence says · JRE #2321
SUBJECT: ARCHAEOLOGY
Not a true/false call. Every claim is logged with its sources; read the exhibits below.
Right, but I thought it was used in Egypt like to measure wood that was in mortar to date the Great Pyramid to 2500 BC. No, that was an experiment to leave the pyramid I think was about 2009
What the evidence says 01 / RECORD
Radiocarbon dating of the Great Pyramid did rely on organic material (ash and charcoal from fires used to prepare the gypsum mortar) that was extracted from mortar between the blocks, as the on-air claim describes. Egyptologists place Khufu's reign and the pyramid's construction in Dynasty 4 around 2528 BC (Harvard's Digital Giza, citing the study titled The Great Pyramid of Giza in the Year 2528 B.C.), consistent with the roughly 2500 BC figure cited. The mortar radiocarbon program run by Bonani, Lehner, Hawass and colleagues (1984 and 1994 to 1995) produced a wide scatter, with many calibrated dates running one to three centuries older than the historical age; the offset is attributed mainly to the old wood effect, and the youngest samples still align with the conventional Khufu date. So the substance of Rogan's statement (organic material in the mortar was carbon dated, placing the pyramid near 2500 BC) holds up: roughly accurate.