Some of my coworkers work on tree ring data. We use a terrific piece of software called CooRecorder, which takes scanned images of tree cores and let's you create a position file that maps out where each ring is. This is opposed to the traditional method of measuring tree cores, where you put the core on a little rolling platform, look at it under a microscope and had a device that measured how much you moved the platform between marking rings. (Total nightmare, extremely difficult to realize where you'd made a mistake.) It's a great, user friendly piece of software that only costs $68. By comparison, the main competitor costs close to $10k.
When I was buying new licenses a couple years ago, I looked into the story of this software. Apparently this couple bought an old house in southern Sweden in the 1980s, and wanted to date the house using ring widths from its timber beams. Straightforward! But at the time, all the dendrochronology labs refused to share their methods for measuring tree ring widths or any data to cross-correlate their records. So they decided, you know what, we can build software--we'll just do it ourselves. And they created CooRecorder, as well as their own library of ring widths. That's why it's such a good price, it's meant to be accessible. Now tree ring width data is widely shared, and it's easy to create a reference.
Here's the turn for the hilarious and bizarre: there is a well known area of poor correspondence in European oaks from antiquity (Roman era, ~ 518 BC to 314 AD) and modern day (AD ~381 - today). It's believed the Romans cut down too many trees and the weather was bad, leading to many years with missing or hard to measure rings. People have been working on creating better references that span that 'Roman gap'; it's a known issue. However, our Swedish Ring Width Robin Hood couple has decided they have solved the problem once and for all: that misalignment is actually because EVERY SINGLE RECORD OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION IS WRONG BY OVER TWO HUNDRED WHOLE YEARS. Everybody--the Byzantine empire, the Roman Empire--just colluded and wholesale made up 232 years of history. I am actually writing this to you in the Year of Our Lord 1791. Their self-published papers get deep into aligning records of Roman comets, eclipses, etc, with other known astrological phenomena to get the 'correct' dates (they note that this is difficult and the astrologers who 'faked' the records in the Christian era did a very good job), and now they've moved on to re-dating everything in ancient Egypt. It gets very red-string-Pepe-Silva.jpg very quickly, which would be fun except that the papers are completely unreadable and clearly no historian has ever been consulted.
Overall, a great example of how you can make a terrific contribution to science in one area and have no idea what you are talking about in other areas. Stay safe out there folks.
The baffling thing about this one--besides all of it--is that they admit it would take enormous, painstaking effort to fabricate these records and hide the truth, and the nefarious motive offered up for all this is.....nothing. Bupkis. Apparently the early Roman Church thought "hey this'll really fuck up those dendrochronologists a couple millennia from now" and put all their crack scholars on the case
Using this piece of software again, decided to check up on my favorite dendrochronologists! They are continuing to reconcile their chronology with Egyptian records but they have a new hypothesis: the Coptic Christians wanted Christ to be conceived in the Alexandrian year 5500, and dated their calendar from that. Does that account for the difference they are proposing, not even close. Is there any biblical/cultural/numerological reason to falsify records for this, no. Did anyone else ever use that calendar, absolutely not. Still! It's a start!!
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![[Image ID: An illustrated comic. It pans down water rushing through a creek, into three separate panels depicting sockeye salmon transitioning from their ocean to freshwater phases. They go from a blueish silver into vibrant shades of red and green. At the bottom, a large, brown grizzly bear catches one of the fish in it's maw. Text across the comic reads: "Bless you. Love transforms us. No matter how long it's held in our trembling hands." End ID.]](https://64.media.tumblr.com/46c1cc97176f1c119ee958924356f68b/62d50749091c7cf8-e3/s1280x1920/e3a38555e0946e5ec6ddf8e40bf4a6fae135cd27.png)
