Dating techniques are procedures used by scientists to determine the age of rocks, fossils, or artifacts. Relative dating methods tell only if one sample is older or younger than another; absolute dating methods provide an approximate date in years. The latter have generally been available only since Many absolute dating techniques take advantage of radioactive decay , whereby a radioactive form of an element decays into a non-radioactive product at a regular rate. Others, such as amino acid racimization and cation-ratio dating, are based on chemical changes in the organic or inorganic composition of a sample.

Ever since The Enlightenment, and possibly even before that, researchers have attempted to understand the chronology of the world around us, to figure out precisely when each stage in our geological, biological and cultural evolution took place. Even when the only science we had to go on was religious literature and the western world believed the world was created in BC 1 , scholars tried to figure out when each biblical event took place, to define a chronology from savagery to civilization, from creation to the first animal, then to the emergence of the first people. The pre-enlightenment understanding of our geological and cultural history may now be proven wrong and subject to ridicule, but the principles of defining our place in time in the cosmos underpin many sciences. As technology advances, so do our methods, accuracy and tools for discovering what we want to learn about the past. All dating methods today can be grouped into one of two categories: absolute dating , and relative dating. The former gives a numeric age for example, this artefact is years old ; the latter provides a date based on relationships to other elements for example, this geological layer formed before this other one. Both methods are vital to piecing together events of the past from the recent back to a time before humans and even before complex life and sometimes, researchers will combine both methods to come up with a date.

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