Any ore that is mined contains a unique mix of rare element impurities, including radioisotopes. The particular relative abundances of these elements is like a fingerprint that can reveal from which system the ore comes, and sometimes even from which mine it comes.
On top of that, the radioisotopes will decay over time, resulting in a chain of decay products many of which are long-lived rare isotopes too. The ratios of the decay products in turn allows you to date the time when the ore was mined. The more unknowns there are, the more ratios need to be measured to provide a closed set of equations. It is an art on its own, at the crossroads between astrogeology, nuclear physics and history, to identify isotopes with useful decay chains for dating.
I was hoping to use the data from my ocular filter to do such dating and tracing on the shard, but the error bars I got on my estimates were still massive.
Yet, it turns out that no subterfuge was needed to get such data. Master Drellken was happy to talk about the dating efforts on the relic. The Achur investigate their relics with great scientific rigor, and what he shared agrees with my own scarce and imperfect amateur measurement.
They date their shard at 15000 years old, give or take a milennium. The rare element composition cannot be matched to any known system (excluding wormhole space and Jovian systems). The relic is nano-engineered with a precision not matched even by the Jove.
Master Drellken explained that this is not unexceptional for relics found on Achura, especially the relics attributed in folklore to the "old Gods". The Elder Visionaries speculate on their origins, with a popular theory being that these relics are remnants of an advanced civilization that spanned the entire cluster before the dark age, before even the Talocan or the Jove. This would be the "Cradle of Mankind" civilization - the common ancestor of Amarr, Caldari, Gallente and Minmatar. Some, like the Goners, claim these ancestors come from beyond the gate.
While the relics may corroborate such theories, they are of course no proof!
According to the Achur themselves, Achura would have been an important planet for that ancient civilization, maybe even their homeworld. Some Achur patriots see themselves as the heirs to that mythical civilization...
I confess that I am curious whether our own Amarrian older relics have a similar composition - with my scan of the shard and the additional data I was given, I could figure out in principle. But I have to contain this unhealthy curiosity - it might invite the demon of pure thought to attack my soul. After all, the Code of Demeanor teaches us that the sin of pure thought is science that forgets the spiritual context of our relics.
