system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
How were archeological and paleontological artifacts dated before the "radio-carbon revolution"?

What methods did scientists use to estimate the age of artifacts before the advent of radio-carbon dating methods? I've read that radio-carbon dating led to a "revolution" in archeology, paleontology, and anthropology (probably geology as well, right?), but I'm totally ignorant about what methods were used before carbon dating, and if any of those methods are still in use today. Thank you!
gpt
A lot of dating came from and still comes from stratification methods.

Essentially, the deeper something is, the older it is. As you dig down you can usually see layers of dirt. Each layer corresponds to a different time frame, thicker layers usually mean longer periods of time. Edit: Though this isn't always true. A landslide could deposit a lot of dirt in a short time. 

For example, when the asteroid that hit earth leading to the deaths of dinosaurs occurred it sent up a lot of dust/dirt into the atmosphere. Over the course of a few decades, that dust fell back down, coating the entire earth with a thin layer of black dust (laced with asteroid elements!). 

With archaeology it's about the same thing. Maybe in the top layer the scientist finds a roman coin that has a date on it. So they know that particular layer of dirt is at least X years old. The next layer they find a pot that references an emperor a that was born 700 years before the coin's date. Now they know the pot is older than the coin (because it was deeper), but younger than the emperor that was referenced. 

The next layer they may find a bronze tool. They know that the bronze tool is older than the pot because it's deeper. If the coin is 500 years old, the pot is at least 500 years old, but no more than 700 years old, the tool then is probably older than 700 years. 

Done enough times over a wide enough area the researchers can get a pretty good idea of relative ages of things. Eventually, with enough data points, they would be able to say, "The coin is exactly 500 years old because it has a date, the pots were made until the death of the emperor they depict, so it's between 700 and 670 years old, and the bronze tools have been found at settlements that date back to 800 years ago, so the tool is between 700 to 800 years old."

They still do this often for geology and archaeology too.