What's "pmC"?

I was asked on a FB group, after showing my Newer tables, whether pmC was about the atmosphere and the amount of carbon 14.

First, it's not just the atmosphere, it's the atmosphere and any other sample.

Second, it's not exactly an amount. You can't take 1 theoretical kg of pure carbon 14 and call that so and so many pmC, unless you state in how many trillions of kg of carbon 12 it's diluted in.

Now, once you have both the quantity of carbon 14 and the quantity of carbon 12, usually the latter counted in grammes, you can indeed calculate what the pmC is, but it's not simply the ratio.

No, it's how that ratio compares to another ratio. And that other ratio is termed "modern carbon 14" and more precisely "corrected for pre-industrial values" ...

So, once you know that value and have termed it "[100 percent of] modern carbon 14" any value the scientist finds can be compared to it. Suppose for argument's sake that "100 pmC" means "1 unit carbon 14 per 1 000 000 000 units carbon 12", that means in turn that if what you find in a sample is (on the same assumption) "1 unit carbon 14 per 2 000 000 000 units carbon 12" the measure is "50 pmC" / 50 % of modern carbon.

That's the measuring part of the issue. And I don't do that. I do however theorise what pmC values succeeded each other in the atmosphere. BACK THEN.

Before I tell you more, one more check on the theory I share with evolutionists. Any carbon 14 will decay to half in 5730 years. The carbon 14 present in the atmosphere in 3705 BC or 1494 after Creation or 748 before the Flood, only half of it remains. If the atmosphere back then had been 100 pmC, a sample from the actual year 3730 BC would no doubt be 50 pmC today. If the atmosphere back then was instead 1 pmC, a sample from that year would now have a carbon 14 level of 0.5 pmC. AND, those 50 or 0.5 pmC or whatever, they are all the carbon 14 that remains from back then. Any level exceeding that has been added later by new production of carbon 14 in the atmosphere.

In a sample, usually no more carbon 14 is added. A plant once harvested ceases to get carbon dioxide into its fibres and sugars by photosynthesis. That's why the only relevant factors for the pmC in the sample are:

• original pmC in the atmosphere, for instance around 100 pmC in all AD times and about a millennium back before that;
• times a decimal fraction equalling the pmC value with the decimal comma moved two places back. So, since 3705 BC, "* 0.5" or since 840 BC, "* 0.70710678"

Whatever new carbon 14 is created in the atmosphere is however totally irrelevant to the value in the sample, even if it is highly relevant to the value at present in the atmosphere and therefore how we measure "100 pmC" ...

And here is the deal. 100 pmC isn't a constant per se. It's a quasi constant, resulting from a constant decay rate, but also from a quasi-constant, in the present, rate of carbon 14 production.

So, since 840 BC, only 70.711 pmC remain, in a sample, or in the atmosphere. But if instead of 70.711 we have c. 100 pmC (not really any longer, but in 1850 it was), this means that 29.289 pmC have been net produced in the meantime. Doesn't mean 14.6445 pmC was produced in each half of 1432.5 years, no, since in the second of them, no 14.6445 pmC could remain of the first half. You see, in 1432.5 years, 100 pmC goes down to 84.09 pm, meaning the original new 14.6445 pmC would be down in 12.3145 pmC. So, in each half, more than 14.6445 pmC is produced, in fact 15.91 pmC are produced. But the point is, over 2865 years, a net, production and its own decay compounded, of 29.289 pmC is produced.

What would have happened if 840 BC the atmosphere held 100 pmC, but only 14.6445 pmC had been produced since then? We'd be down in 85.3555 pmC instead of 100 pmC.

A sample of 85.3555 pmC dates as 1300 years old.

What would have happened if 840 BC the atmosphere held 100 pmC, but 58.578 pmC had been produced? We'd be up in 129.289 pmC.

A sample of 129.289 pmC dates as "-2120" or 2120 years into the future. (Such samples do exist, if for instance a sample has been exposed to a nuclear explosion).

The thing is, while this isn't what has happened, at least of the halflife really is 5730 years, and we can know that, within some credible possibility of discrepancy; it certainly could have happened, or the idea that it couldn't depends on making stars and the sun so much more deterministic than observation at a distance allows us to be about them. One of the factors for the speed of carbon 14 production is precisely, how much cosmic rays hits the outer atmosphere.

My proposal is, something like that did happen, a slower pmC rise before the Flood, a quicker between the Flood and the Fall of Troy.

This is the theoretical background to Newer Tables: Preliminaries · Flood to Joseph in Egypt · Joseph in Egypt to Fall of Troy. It is equally the theoretical background to all its predecessors back to Avec un peu d'aide de Fibonacci ... j'ai une table, presque correcte (ten years ago, or it will be so last of this month) and its ultraclumsy precursor on the 5 of the same month. I had in fact figured that my tables could be read by people who knew how carbon dating worked, but apparently, this is not the case with everyone who took an interest.
/Hans Georg Lundahl

Portrait of Robert Broom, Not That Ugly, Compare the Palaeontological Designation

Here, John Woodmorappe mentions Robert Broom.

Entertaining storytelling about the presumed evolution of mammals
by John Woodmorappe | This article is from
Journal of Creation 38(2):37–40, August 2024
https://creation.com/review-the-rise-and-reign-of-the-mammals-brusatte

A review of: The Rise and Reign of the Mammals: A new history from the shadow of the dinosaurs to us by Steve Brusatte, Mariner Press, New York, 2022

Turns out, in my attempts to salvage the content of the site Palaeocritti, before it went down, I came across his name, both as discoverer, and as namegiver without personal involvement:

Palaeocritti Blog: Broomicephalus laticeps
https://palaeocritti.blogspot.com/2013/11/broomicephalus-laticeps.html

By the way, my link to the original site which went down is now re-directing to Crit-Ti Palaeo which is defined as "Paleontology meeting" ...

Point is, Broomicephalus means Broom's head. I wondered "was Broom that ugly?"

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Broomicephalus1DB.jpg

GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2

I then noted, no, "Broom's" is because Broom discovered it, and "head" is because he only found a ... skull.

But still, if you want to tell someone he's excruciatingly ugly, Broomicephalus or Biarmosuchian might be the word you are looking for. Not that you should, usually./HGL

Did Samuel Noah Kramer Prove the Ziggurat of Ur was the Tower of Babel?

Creation vs. Evolution: What a Few Lines from Gilgamesh Epic Tell us of the Errors in Babylonian Theology · Aberrations of Protestant Work Ethic · Work Ethic in the Neolithic and Genesis 11 · Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: Denying Adam's Individuality : Babylonian · back to Creation vs. Evolution: Did Samuel Noah Kramer Prove the Ziggurat of Ur was the Tower of Babel?

I don't think so, but here he is making, not in his own view, but to some, a fairly strong case:

"Before I Die, Please Listen" — Assyriologist Samuel Noah Kramer Admits the Truth About Sumerians
Secret World Files | 11 Oct. 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZZ1P4oOt-k

If Ur and that Ziggurat wasn't the Tower Project, it came close to being a continuation of it. Which I think it was. The phrase "plain of Mesopotamia" is mentioned, and no, it doesn't argue in favour. If Shinar is the land between the two rivers, at Ur, Shinar is in the plain. And you can't exactly find it, you don't have to look for it. It's visible from the last mountain East of Mesopotamia. The Harran plain, by contrast, is a plain that's inside Shinar, transitions into hill country, before reaching rivers East or West. If you looked from Mt. Judi, which is where I think the Ark landed, you might see just hill country and miss the plain. So, the Harran plain is a better fit for "they found a plain in the land of Shinar".

Now, if I said the Ziggurat of Ur was a continuation ... first, phrases like "binding heaven" seem to echo Nimrod's project of preventing another Flood. Second, how much time was there from the failure of the original Babel to the advent of this new, Sumerian one? Let's also take in the Ziggurat of Eridu.

III, Peleg is born, end of Babel

2557 BC

51.766 pmC, dated as 8000 BC

Eridu Z. Level XVIII 5300

2235 BC

68.129 pmC, dated as 5407 BC

2218 BC

Peleg died

2212 BC

69.274 pmC, dated as 5247 BC

Eridu Z. Level I 3200

1841 BC

Abraham died

1838 BC

84.77 pmC, dated as 3204 BC

Ur Z, building begins "2040 BC"

1615 BC

94.87443 pmC, dated 2050 BC*

Ur Z, building ends "2000 BC"

1609 BC

95.41471 pmC, dated 1997 BC**

So, from end of Babel to Eridu level XVIII (lowest), there are c. 339 years. Over the levels of Eridu Z, 380 years. From Eridu level I to beginning of the Ziggurat of Ur, c. 223 years. From failure of Nimrod's Babel to completion of Ur-Nammu's Ziggurat, 948 years.

The Ziggurat of Ur was started and completed during the soujourn of the Israelites in Egypt, unless I'm wrong. The Ziggurat of Eridu starts when Peleg dies and got as far as to when Abraham died.

By contrast, when Peleg was born, Nimrod's Babel was covered in sand, I'd say deliberately. And when St. John wrote the Apocalypse, or maybe the Gospel a bit later, Sumerian and Akkadian ceased to be spoken and written as learned languages.

Samuel Noah Kramer admired Sumerian scribes for manufacturing the collective subjective reality. By "subjective reality" one often, alas, speaks of an individual subjective reality. By "objective reality" even worse, one speaks indistictly of collective subjective or of extra-mental. However, the extra-mental is only made accessible by the subjective, and the subjective is only collective after being individual. By placing the collective over the individual, discoveries about the extra-mental are impeded or severely slowed down.

The ideology which Samuel Noah Kramer discovered was an identity between heaven and earth and social order. It's the same one where Creation results pretty immediately in bakeries, as per the beginning of the Gilgamesh Epic.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
XVIII Lord's Day after Pentecost
12.X.2025

The tables above are (with addition of salient points about ZZ) either quotes or medium values from Newer Tables: Preliminaries · Flood to Joseph in Egypt · Joseph in Egypt to Fall of Troy. The sources of medium values are given in the below footnotes./HGL

* From:

1634 BC

93.251 pmC, dated as 2212 BC

1612 BC

95.145 pmC, dated as 2023 BC

(1634 + 1612 + 1612 + 1612 + 1612 + 1612 + 1612)/7 = 1615.1428571428571429
(93.251 + 95.145 + 95.145 + 95.145 + 95.145 + 95.145 + 95.145)/7 = 94.87443 pmC

5730 * log(0.9487443) / log(0.5) + 1615.1428571428571429 = 2050 BC

** From:

1612 BC

95.145 pmC, dated as 2023 BC

1590 BC

97.033 pmC, dated as 1839 BC

(1612 + 1612 + 1612 + 1612 + 1612 + 1612 + 1590)/7 = 1608.8571428571428571
(95.145 + 95.145 + 95.145 + 95.145 + 95.145 + 95.145 + 97.033)/7 = 95.41471

5730 * log(0.9541471) / log(0.5) + 1608.8571428571428571 = 1996.8720719579191615934

What's the Chronology of Tiryns?

This is a fascinating video:

What Was REALLY Going On At Bronze Age Tiryns?
Pete Kelly | 10 Oct. 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_b5TN1QmN60

Although Pete Kelly doesn't say so, I find that the Tholos tomb in Tiryns having uniquely an altar for hero worship in the Bronze Age is an argument for a hero of Tiryns being actually worshipped. Economy proposes this hero would be identic to Herakles.

But based on its size and analysis of the potsherd, it appears the tomb was built for a cult hero in between 1300 and 1400 BC. It is believed the tomb was either never used as designed or was looted during Roman times.

Atlas Obscura: Tholos Tomb of Tiryns
gus kontopuls | October 16, 2019
https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/tholos-tomb-of-tiryns

But I am here mainly for dryer stuff, namely the chronology. First the one given (piece by piece) in the video:

Neolithic Greece

c. 7000 — 3200 BC

Early Helladic Greece

3000 — 2000 BC

Tiryns Culture

2200 — 2000 BC

Middle Helladic

2000 — 1550 BC

Mycenaean Greece

1600 — 1100 BC

Acropolis Fortification, Tiryns, First Stage

1500 BC

Then the recalibration of limit years:

2442 BC

57.683 pmC, dated as 6990 BC = 7000 BC

1838 BC

84.77 pmC, dated as 3204 BC = 3200 BC

1769 BC

86.161 pmC, dated as 3000 BC = 3000 BC

1634 BC

93.251 pmC, dated as 2212 BC = 2200 BC

1612 BC

95.145 pmC, dated as 2023 BC = 2000 BC

1511 BC

98.822 pmC, dated as 1609 BC = 1600 BC

1471 BC

99.049 pmC, dated as 1550 BC = 1550 BC

1430 BC

99.183 pmC, dated as 1498 BC = 1500 BC

Finally, the revision of the first chronology, after this:

Neolithic Greece

c. 2442 — 1838 BC

Early Helladic Greece

1769 — 1612 BC

Tiryns Culture

1634 — 1612 BC

Middle Helladic

1612 — 1471 BC

Mycenaean Greece

1511 — 1100 BC

Acropolis Fortification, Tiryns, First Stage

1430 BC

So, 7000 BC to 1500 BC recalibrates to 2442 to 1430 BC. 5500 years to 1012 years. But recall, this is not all of Tiryns' history and its surrounding's prequels. It ends in 1100 BC. No recalibration. 5900 years recalibrate as 1342 years./HGL

PS, recalibrations based on tables and principles in Newer Tables: Preliminaries · Flood to Joseph in Egypt · Joseph in Egypt to Fall of Troy./HGL

Can a Doctrine Rise in Essentiality?

Kevin Moritz wrote a very good piece on CMI.

Can Christians believe in evolution?
by Kevin Moritz | First published: 21 October 2010
https://creation.com/can-christians-believe-evolution

Refeatured today.

Do I agree with his conclusion? Or even with all of his principles? No. I'll come back to that.

But I agree with this:

There are a range of biblical doctrines; and, while it’s important to be as consistent and biblical as we can, not every one is as “essential” as every other (even when we consider only true doctrines, as opposed to various misinterpretations). The Bible itself contrasts the “milk”, or “basic principles of the oracles of God”, with “solid food” for the “mature” (Hebrews 5).

Now, I would say, it is an essential doctrine that Mary was sinless from the very moment of Her conception. It is an essential doctrine that anyone who in wilful ignorance rejects the proofs of the Catholic Church being Christ's one true Church up to when he dies is going to Hell. These are dogmas known as Immaculate Conception and Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus. Note, the latter also includes things like, if you are NOT guilty of rejecting Catholicism, you can still go to Hell by lacking (valid Baptism and) Confession for your actual mortal sins. Now, the justification from mortals (in the kind of act and personal circumstances surrounding it), committed after Baptism, can happen through an act of perfect contrition, through an act of faith, hope and love. This could indicate that there is some kind or degree of possibility someone who died without converting and being received into the Church is not in Hell (leaving Heaven or Purgatory). If Charlie Kirk's last known and openly observable prayer had been a rosary, I would have felt more confident for him, than when twenty minutes before he died he prayed with Evangelicals.

If Dimond brothers are right there is no hope at all we can licitly entertain, that's a doctrine which I've sometimes struggled to accept as "solid meat" in the sense of Hebrews 5. But equally, if there is some kind of hope, as suggested by Father Nix, by a few more, that's also a "solid meat" doctrine not required as essential to a 16th C. Spaniard. When a Luterano was tried by the Inquisition (and it didn't mean the confession we call Lutherans, in Spain it meant essentially Calvinist Presbyterian) people expected that if the heresy wasn't his fault, the Inquisitor would understand the messup and disentangle it. He would stand on an "auto da fé" literally pronouncing an auto da fé, an act of faith, i e adherence to the Catholic Church.

This suggests one situation in which a doctrine could become more essential than before, if we come to a point where we can observe kinds of people we couldn't observe before, this raises formerly unknown questions about their salvation. Pre-Columbians. Populations cut off from Catholicism by Protestant Governments. People accessing Catholic doctrine and good arguments for it through the internet. People prevented from using the internet sufficiently.

But let's get back to the question of essential doctrines. In Catholic parlance, an essential doctrine is called a dogma. There are certain ways for the Catholic Church to pronounce something which is dogma (Immaculate Conception 1854 by Pope Pius IX, Papal Infallibility 1870 by the Vatican Council — a k a Vatican I) or at least dogma equivalent (universal adherence in the Church Fathers, direct statement in the Bible, if in a correct version and correctly understood).

So, how come the Immaculate Conception could become dogma in 1854 and was sth which St. Augustine was free to reject? Or rather, could get away with rejecting? A doctrine can become more essential than it was before. I'm not going over here in detail why Sinlessness of Mary is a Biblical doctrine always held by the Church or why it finally (with John of Damascus, against Augustine) trumps Universality of the Fall (woman and her seed in Genesis 3:15 is if not proof, at least suggestion to treat Mary in the same category as Jesus rather than the same category as all of us, i e the rest of us). Rather, it's a question of how a doctrine once optional (though true) can become essential.

And this is where I say, no, Christians can't believe in Evolution and Deep Time any more. If you say "horses evolved from Eohippus and grass from algae, over millions of years, but God created Adam directly 4000—5600 years before Christ was born, with no bestial ancestry" that can be fine. But the only reason to accept horses evolving from Eohippus (now again Hyracotherium on wikipedia) or millions of years is coupling phylum hierarchies with "scientific" datings, and if the most reliable dating method is Carbon 14, if a very low percentage of modern Carbon (14) is only possible in a young atmosphere, if we find evidence that Homo Soloensis tool making required language, this will close that wiggle room. Pre-Adamite real men is already out, saying non-men with human anatomy could have had close enough to human language turns man as image of God into an unobservable theological extra, putting Adam 750 000 years ago as William Lane Craig proposes reassigns Genesis 3 and 4 from history to prophecy, though neither Bible nor Tradition, neither Josephus nor Augustine say Moses had a revelation about the events, making it prophecy means having to interpret how Genesis 5 and 11 are somehow rather accurate prophecy than an inaccuracy in history, and apart from that also poses the question where Genesis ceases to be prophecy about as unclear as the Apocalypse, if it even does so.

A collective fall is contrary to Trent Session V, on Original Sin, canons 1, 2 and 3. Adam as representative for other already existing men, already image of God (like Christ on Calvary) is as useless, since, why would unfallen man need a representative, and if it were about "becoming" the image of God, again this makes "image of God" an unobservable theological extra. If you solve for "image of God, but not yet called to immortality and a personal relationship" you are very literally repeating the alrady condemned error of Isaac Lapeyrère (who actually did publically reconcile with the Catholic Church and so is presumed to have repented of it).

I think this gives a pretty good model on how a discussion could turn two options into a dogma and a heresy. A thing becomes heresy when either all its proofs or all its explanations that are left are clearly false or even at odds with revelation. I would say, this is what Newman talked about in the term "development of dogma" and this is also how we arrived where three Marian dogmas which as late as a month before his death Charlie Kirk rejected become non-negotiables.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Therese of the Child Jesus
and of the Holy Face
3 Oct. 2025

30 Sept. Lexovii, in Gallia, item natalis sanctae Teresiae a Jesu Infante, ex Ordine Carmelitarum Excalceatorum; quam, vitae innocentia et simplicitate clarissimam, Pius Undecimus, Pontifex Maximus, sanctarum Virginum albo adscripsit, peculiarem omnium Missionum Patronam declaravit, ejusque festum quinto Nonas Octobris recolendum esse decrevit.
3 Oct. Sanctae Teresiae a Jesu Infante, ex Ordine Carmelitarum Excalceatorum, Virginis, peculiaris omnium Missionum Patronae; cujus dies natalis pridie Kalendas Octobris recensetur.