How Old Was He

The question of how old Kwäday Dän Ts’ìnchi was — not in terms of his age at death, but in terms of how long ago he lived — is more complex than it might appear, and getting it right matters for understanding everything else about him.

Different materials associated with the remains have been dated by different methods, and the results have not always been entirely consistent.

Radiocarbon dating of organic materials — a technique that measures the ratio of radioactive carbon-14 to stable carbon-12, which changes at a known rate after an organism dies — has been applied to several samples.