Wooden plinth

Radiocarbon dating showed the plinth to be 2,800 to 3,000 years old, much older than the site itself. The plinth was important enough to be handed down from generation to generation. It is now thought that it may have been used to support the statue of a god

Radiocarbon dating

Scientists can use radiocarbon dating to estimating the age of organic remains such as bone or wood. Carbon can exist in different forms called isotopes. One of these is radioactive and decays into a different element - nitrogen. It takes 5,730 years for half the original radiocarbon atoms in an sample to decay. By counting the number of radiocarbon atoms left in a sample, scientists can estimate its age.

The average adult human has about 400,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms of carbon in their body; 400,000,000,000,000 of these will be radiocarbon.