7,600-Year-Old Soybeans

Rewriting the history of agriculture

An interesting but totally harmless side-effect of low-radiocarbon technology is that is completely confuses the radiocarbon dating method.

We had two soybeans from our 2008 crop grown tested by an independent lab using the accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) method used for carbon dating. These beans were 63% to 66% lower in carbon-14 than ordinary soybeans, giving them an apparent radiocarbon age between 7600 - 8500 years old. Imagine the conclusion of an archaeologist finding a few of these beans left behind at our growing site - that modern soybeans were first grown just outside of Cleveland more than 7,000 years ago!

Note that animals or persons raised on a low-radiocarbon diet will also have extremely large apparent ages as determined by radiocarbon dating. For example, a perfectly healthy living child, whose radiocarbon levels were reduced by 75%, would have an apparent “radiocarbon age” of more than 10,000 years!