Willard Libby and his team at the University of Chicago developed radiocarbon dating, a revolutionary method for determining the age of organic materials up to about 50,000 years old. This technique, based on the decay of the radioactive isotope carbon-14, provided the first reliable absolute dating method for archaeology and paleontology. It transformed the study of human prehistory and recent geological time, allowing scientists to build precise chronologies.

Radiocarbon dating gave humanity a new and precise way to measure deep time, transforming our understanding of our own history and prehistory. This provided poets with a more concrete and numerical framework for the past, enabling a more grounded poetic imagination of our distant ancestors and their environments. The idea of a measurable timeline of existence, from ancient hearths to modern times, offered a powerful and humbling perspective on the human story.