So I get how carbon dating works. What confuses me is if a tool is found that is made out of rock, how do scientists differentiate between the age of the rock itself and the age of the tool (when it was shaped)?
In: Chemistry
There’s no way to directly measure when a rock was shaped into a tool, but we can indirectly measure it a few ways. One would be to date the sedimentary layers the tool is found in. Another way would be to directly date the remains of organic materials found in the same layer of rock as the tool, or near the tool. For example, if we found a stone arrowhead next to the bones of an animal in the same layer of rock, we can date the bones directly and that will tell us the age of the tool.
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