The Young Woman Found In An Idaho Gravel Quarry — And The 12,500-Year-Old Burial That Complicated The Clovis Story

The life was real.

And the questions it opens remain open.

The Calibration Problem — Going From Radiocarbon Years To Calendar Years

The jump from the raw radiocarbon measurement to the published “12,500-year-old” figure requires one more step of explanation, because this conversion carries its own set of uncertainties that are often glossed over in popular accounts.

The raw date from the Buhl burial was 10,675 ± 95 radiocarbon years before present.

The “±95” is the laboratory’s estimate of the measurement uncertainty — based on the precision of the carbon isotope measurement itself.