The Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Creationism (2018)

at a very different interval (483-423 BC), at r=0.48 and t=4.2. Mosaic crossmatching could subsume any instances where two sets of perturbations (Figure 2) each happened to “mark” the opposing ends of the same individual tree. In addition, whenever the two sets of perturbations overlapped, the resulting multiply-“overprinted” segments often became those commonly-seen intervals of non- matching (wrstblk test failure) that occur within otherwise-cross- datable trees. Taking this reasoning further, the earlier-discussed 10-45% dendrochronologically-“illegible” trees probably include those that are oddly (multiply) disturbed not over part but over practically all of their lengths. 2. AMuch-Needed Perspective: Long Tree-Ring Chronologies Arise Only Under Atypical Conditions For every continuous multi-millennial tree-ring chronology “rooted” to the present, there are several “stillborn” ones that consist only of one or more floating chronologies*. This is conventionally understood in terms of the vagaries of climate and preservation, but can also be explained, at least as well, in the light of the two hypotheses. That is, when migrating disturbances take place (Figure 1), they usually only generate floating chronologies, as they fail to operate over sufficient time-distance intervals to create several thousand continuous years of staggered-crossmatching trees ultimately connected to the ~2000 BC climate-governed trees. The clustered disturbances (Figure 2) also need only exceptionally create long chronologies. Usually, the disturbance-created clusters (designated [2], [3], [4]) remain too far apart, in terms of reconnaissance C-14 dates, for anyone to attempt to connect them, with suitable “bridging” series, to each other, and/or to the climatically-determined cluster that starts around 2000-3000 BC [1]. We are thus usually left with one anchored chronology, beginning 3000 BC or later [1], along with 1-3 floating chronologies ([2] connected or not to [3] connected or not to [4]). Whenever one or more of the “clusters” entirely fails to develop, this alone prevents the construction of single multimillennial chronology linked to the present. For instance, with reference to Figure 2, if disturbance set [2] failed to materialize, then all of the constituent trees would remain climatically governed and indistinguishable from those in set [1]. Nothing would exist to connect ([3]-[4]) with [1] into a single long chronology. A single long chronology also fails to materialize whenever no acceptable “bridges” can be found to adequately connect otherwise- suitably-deployed clusters (“cores”). This means that at least some “weaker elements” are real, and not simply artefacts of insufficient or misguided sampling procedures. As an example, parts of the Belfast long chronology have still not been directly- and locally- bridged despite 25 years of quasi-random sampling (Brown and Baillie 2012), and must continue to rely on circuitous long-distance crossmatching with other chronologies. Worse yet, in quite a few other cases, no suitable “bridge” series—whether local/direct or distant/circuitous--are found at all, and all that exists are several floating chronologies instead of a single long chronology. It can be particularly frustrating when C-14 dates suggest a temporal overlap between “clusters”, but no suitable “bridge” trees can be found. It is then suggested that the trees did grow at the same time but under different climatic regimes (e. g, Edvardsson et al. 2012), or that the expected “bridge” series are too uncommon to be found because of a then-unfavorable episode of tree growth (e. g., Krapiec and Szychowska-Krapiec 2016). CONCLUSION Dendrochronological methods, including those applied to long chronologies, appear to be generally sound. However, climatically- caused crossmatches are not the only possible ones, though usually treated as such. Tree ring series are very sensitive to perturbations that can convincingly “over-write” the climatic signal (in terms of both the externals and internals of the crossmatch), and cause them to coalesce into robust submaster chronologies. These, in turn, can be connected into fictitiously-long multi-millennial chronologies by “bridges”, that is, suitable ensembles of correctly and incorrectly- matched series. The Disturbance-Clustering hypothesis, unlike other ones, has virtually no limits in terms of the compression of apparent time, and could “fold” a tree-ring chronology that is multiples of 10,000 years long. All that is needed is an adequate number and diversity of C-14 dated “clusters”, and enough suitable “bridge” series to interconnect them. Clearly, the field is wide open, in dendrochronology, to creationist research. It is my hope that there soon emerges a cadre of dendrochonologically-practicing creationist scientists that could systematically examine the matters raised in this paper. AVENUES FOR FUTURE RESEARCH Hopefully, numerous tree-ring-width measurements of actually- disturbed trees will become generally available for study, thereby allowing a direct testing of my hypotheses. For now, and as elaborated below, theoretical experiments on perturbed tree rings should be greatly expanded. Dendrochronological information should also systematically be related to other evidences in a creationist context. 1. Automated Production of Vast Numbers of Randomly- Disturbed Tree-Ring Series The most limiting—and sometimes frustrating—aspect of this investigation has been its extreme labor-intensiveness, as elaborated in the next paragraphs. A major step forward would involve the development of a computer program that could systematically perturb thousands of tree-ring series in accordance with various experimentally-prescribed perturbations, and—better yet--automatically crossmatch them according to both external and internal “fit”. The emergence of suitable “bridge” series is, to a considerable extent, a numbers game, moreover further driven by the fact that the number of candidate crossmatches increases exponentially (second-power function) with the number of candidate series. For instance, if there are 50 oddly-disturbed series, then there are 1,225 potentially-suitable paired-series combinations for crossmatching. With 100 such series, this explodes to 4,950. And these are only the candidate crossmatches amongst the oddly-disturbed series themselves, which ignores those that occur between them and the many different candidate locations in the long master chronology. It would therefore be desirable to determine how oddly-disturbed Woodmorappe ◀ Tree-ring chronology shortening via disturbances ▶ 2018 ICC 668