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spliced thread

The carbon 14 samples contain cotton fibers and spliced threads where apparently newer thread was dyed to match age-yellowed older thread. The dye is alizarin; a dye that is extracted from Madder root. Some of the dye was complexed with a common mordant, alum (hydrous aluminum oxide). The dyestuffs, the cotton fibers and spliced threads are not found elsewhere on the Shroud. As chemist Raymond Rogers wrote in the peer-reviewed, scientific journal Thermochimica Acta, “The combined evidence from chemical kinetics, analytical chemistry, cotton content, and pyrolysis/ms proves that the material from the radiocarbon area of the shroud is significantly different from that of the main cloth. The radiocarbon sample was thus not part of the original cloth and is invalid for determining the age of the shroud.”

Thus the sample used suffered from what carbon 14 scientists call material intrusion.

Material intrusion is well known in the application of C14 dating. A classic example is to be found in the dating of peat bogs. Very old bogs often contain miniscule roots from newer plants that grew in the peat. The roots of these plants, sometimes having decomposed, are nearly indistinguishable from the older peat. What ends up being tested is a mixture of old and new material which produces an average, meaningless C14 age. No one seemed to consider, in 1988, that material intrusion might be a serious problem with the Shroud of Turin C14 dating even though clues were there.

In the case of the Shroud of Turin, it was threads that were dyed to look older and to match other threads. But it wasn’t the threads of the Shroud itself that were dyed. It was a small area in one corner of the Shroud where some mending threads had been dyed to look like the rest of the age-yellowed Shroud. Chemical analysis proves this. There is absolutely no doubt about that. The Shroud had been mended. It was from the mended area that carbon 14 samples had been cut.

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Shroud of Turin Story

© 2005 Daniel R. Porter, Bronxville, New York