Chronology

Chronology in broad sense referred to the use of a timeline. It is in fact  the process of arranging things in the order of its occurrence with time. It can also be considered as the fortitude of the string of the past happenings. In simple words, it can be said as the method of arranging the historical events in time. Basically chronology refers to time sequence. If something is carried out in an orderly fashion adhering to time, it can be said to be in chronological order.

The process of measuring the age of the formerly living thing is called Radiocarbon dating. In this process the age of a living thing is measured by the proportion of the carbon-14 isotope in their carbon content. Even the age of trees is measured by a method named dendrochronology in which the growth rings in the wood and its correlation are measured in year-by-year sequence which in turn helps in knowing the climatic variation of the country year by year.  

There are two basic concepts of chronology which are used in the calendar and era. The term calendar and era refers to the coherent system of numbered calendar years.  The Christian era owned the calendar during the eighth century. Bede during the eighth century has used the Julius Calendar. Later in 1582 the Gregorian calendar came to existence. 

The founding of the city Rome has marked the Ab Urbe condita era in 753 BC. This has been the tool to identify the Roman year. Roman historian used it to identify the Roman years but now the modern historians are using it more than the Romans. The earlier editors have added this era before the initiation of the modern critical edition of Roman works.

The calendar year AD is found in the Anno Domini ear which was embraced by Bede in order to complete the Christian ear.  The French astronomers who emerged after Bede created the Julian Dating system which was proposed by Joseph Scaliger. This system has got a leap year zero unlike the previous era. Here the year 1BC is not coinciding with 1AD instead the year 1 AD precedes the year 1 BC.

The archaeologists of the nineteenth century based the pottery techniques as the bottom line to develop the relative chronologies. They have toiled in finding the Kings lists and also the chronicles of that age in the absence of a written history. There are serious skepticisms developed on the chronologies formed before 1960.

Questions:

• What is Chronology?
• What is Radiocarbon dating?