the.com/dendrochronology
Reading tree rings like a diary nobody meant to keep.
means A scientific method for dating wood and past events by analyzing the pattern of annual growth rings in trees.
from Built from Greek parts: dendron (tree), chronos (time), and -logia (study of) — so, literally, 'tree-time-study.' The field was formalized in the early 20th century by astronomer A.E. Douglass, who was actually hunting for sunspot cycles in tree rings and stumbled into a way to date ancient timber instead.
- what it dates
- wood, by matching ring patterns to known years
- records droughts
- thin rings mean bad years, not laziness
- caught fakes
- exposed forged violins by dating the spruce
- oldest anchor
- some chronologies stretch back over 10000 years