Younger Dryas wrote:Precession is a NEW and recent phenomenon
No. Have you read Hamlet's Mill? One thing that is clear, is that ancient peoples seem to have been fascinated by precession . It's hard to reconcile that with the idea that "precession is a NEW and recent phenomenon".
As it turns out, with the failure of other dating techniques, it is going to be precession that will in fact be the more reliable tool in dating events from ancient times. For example, radioactive decay rates have been found to vary as the Earth nears or recedes from the sun . The rate of precession does not.
Others may find this as interesting as I did: radioactive decay rates were found to vary with Earth-Sun distance, yet precession (which is supposed to be caused by gravitational tugs from the sun and moon), does NOT seem to vary directly with Earth-Sun distance. Why?
As a matter of fact, the moon appears to be gradually receding from the Earth, year after year. Yet we have been measuring an increase in the rate of precession for the last hundred or more years. Why should a decrease in gravitational tugs from the moon, lead to an increase in the rate of precession?
The mainstream idea of precession is wrong. Once you accept that precession is caused by the magnetic field outside the solar system, you see that precession is the best "clock" we have. Much better than length of days, or years, or months, which are all based on rotation or revolution of bodies in our current solar system configuration. Or even radiocarbon dating, which again, appears to be related to Earth-sun distance, therefore also is dependent on the current solar system configuration.