Discovery of 1,000-year-old Viking site in Canada could rewrite history
independent.co.uk
independent.co.uk
The reason why that is relevant is that the Viking discovery of America is of no significance if it didn't help European discovery in any way. If the knowledge was completely lost then it had not influence on history. A failed settlement in Canada which nobody ever learned about makes no difference whether it happened or not.
From what we know thus far it caused no technology transfer to the native americans and there is no proof it advanced european discovery in any way.
I am Norwegian, so I kind of have a vested interest in seeing something that gives the Viking discovery some sort of purpose.
Had he had information about the Vikings, he would had used the Viking route going around the coast that is way easier than strait on the Ocean. Don't you believe?.
In Columbus times, there were real stories of manmade and natural objects on the beach(Portugal and Spanish beaches) after strong storms, that were not native from Spain and Portugal.
Those stories are documented on Spanish documentation. The Indias archive contains an incredible amount of documentation.
Columbus probably had some hints that there was something at America's distance, because he used that distance in order to calculate the earth radius if it(America) this were Japan. But he was totally wrong on what it was(thankfully).
In X century there were accurate records of earth radius but Colombus uses a new value considering America's distance as the extreme of the world, because Colombus believed that was the Indias(India, Japan...).
Why he used this value? We don't know.
Only article I found.. (In Norwegian)
http://tux1.aftenposten.no/kul_und/kultur/d105453.htm
Some more sources here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norse_colonization_of_the_Amer...
Recordkeeping at sea has a long tradition.
In my opinion, this is an incredibly narrow-minded view.
Native Americans and pretty much the rest of humans were two branches of the human race that had almost been cut off from each other, and re-united after more than 10000 years. Showing the time and extent of this first contact is more or at least as significant as whether or not it helped "European discovery". For example, it could have been Polynesians being in extensive contact with South America – which would have zilch to do with Europe, but would still be very significant.
The fact that populations in the Americas were decimated by disease after contact should be enough to show how significant it was.
Colombus discovery of America in contrast caused a dramatic change to development of world history. It could be claimed it was one of the major factors in European world dominance which has affected pretty much every society on the planet the last hundred years.
I am saying this as a Norwegian. As much as I'd loved the Viking discovery of America to mean a lot it is completely overshadowed by the dramatic impact of Columbus discovery on later world events.
Of course there are alternative ways in which Viking discovery could have been important without influencing Columbus. E.g. if they caused significant changes to native American culture, technology etc. But they seem to have had zero influence on native american culture. They were simply too few people to make any sort of influence.
Recent discoveries suggest the Americas were vastly more populated but wiped out by viruses.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2002/03/1491/302...
I've only read Wikipedia on this matter and I didn't really check the sources carefully but it is said that on his 3rd journey Columbus received orders from the spanish court to travel south because they believed a continent to be there.
The continent was south america and it was on this journey that it was "discovered". How the spanish court knew this was apparently because of stories from Mali that claimed to not only have travelled across the atlantic by canoe, but also to have traded and waged war with people on the other side of the atlantic.
Just so I'm clear, an african kingdom traded and waged war with people in south america before Columbus sailed there. This is at least the claim.
Highly recommended!
Sorry but with what boat technology would the folks from this African Kingdom cross the Atlantic ? I seriously doubt a canoe is realistic - because it if were, America would have been discovered by numerous countries thousands of years earlier.
Hawaii, it should be noted, is a clear contender for "most remote place on the planet", given the lack of even small islands outside of the Hawaiian island channels for thousands of miles.
Their possession of North Arab ship-building techniques, understanding of Greek geometry and mathematics, and knowledge of navigation makes it at least plausible they reached the Americas.
Given that the islands throughout the Pacific were colonized by repeated expeditions via sea canoe, it seems downright possible.
Unfortunately, that's where the evidence falls flat. Given that only four of the thousands of written Maya codices survived, there's no written record.
Given the environment, the ecosystem has reclaimed much of the land where the cities in question stood, ruling out most access to sites that may hold physical evidence.
The Mali Empire is also so poorly studied that even if we found a full Mali site in South America, it would be very difficult to recognize from above, even with state-of-the-art LIDAR to see through the vegetation.
Of course pretty much everybody claims to have been in America from Moroccans, Chinese to Irish. But still we only got solid evidence that the Vikings were actually there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mali_Empire#/media/File:WestAf...
Viking ships weren't that advanced. What they could do was navigate at sea better than their contemporaries, incredibly fierce armies that understood the phalanx, and by far most importantly, ships that were both seaworthy (for short spells), and had a shallow draft, which allowed them to sale up rivers.
The Mali Empire left written records, clearly had more seaworthy ships, and some strange ambition with regard to the Atlantic. These are the basic undisputed facts.
Then there are the Mali expeditions into the Atlantic. Consider,
"The last Kolonkan ruler, Bata Manding Bory Keita, was crowned Mansa Abubakari Keita II in 1310. He continued the non-militant style of rule that characterized Gao and Mohammed ibn Gao Keita, but was interested in the empire's western sea.
According to an account given by Mansa Musa Keita I, who during the reign of Abubakari Keita II served as the mansa's kankoro-sigui, Mali sent two expeditions into the Atlantic.
Mansa Abubakari Keita II left Musa Keita as regent of the empire, demonstrating the stability of this period in Mali, and departed with the second expedition commanding some 4,000 pirogues equipped with both oars and sails in 1311.
Neither the emperor nor any of the ships returned to Mali. Modern historians and scientists are skeptical about the success of either voyage, but the account of these happenings is preserved in both written North African records and the oral records of Mali's djelis."
There's also very odd sculptures from around that time that suggest cross-pollination of native culture with African and Arab cultural practices, including ear-shaping and gauge earrings, which made widespread appearances in the Mali Empire and South America in the same time period. (1200-1300)
The Mali Empire also had far larger ocean-going vessels, more knowledge of celestial navigation (although not the semi-mythical "sun stone" technology), and wrote down epics that seem every bit as credible as the Viking sagas.
Someday I suspect we'll identify little dots of attempted colonies by various cultures in North America. I remember when the Viking visits were considered "racist myths."
New lands 'beyond Thules', or Iceland, could be nothing but Greenland and North America."
That's inspiring. So, before the Vikings, the New World wasn't an impossibility. It was in fact as old as any other point on Earth.
There's also the curious case of the apparent Roman-era shipwreck that was discovered off the coast of Brazil[2]. It's a little tinfoil-hatty, and possibly a hoax, but it is interesting.
One of these is not like the other...
Nobody had crossed the Ocean Sea before. So if they were reasonable enough, they'd understand that the general distribution of land vs ocean they were seeing relied on them standing on the land part (vs in the middle of a potentially empty Ocean).
I think it is more likely he drew that conclusion because he knew you could go quite a bit north in Europe, south in Africa and east in Asia. Those are all things you probably could learn from talks to merchants.
> That's inspiring. So, before the Vikings, the New World wasn't an impossibility. It was in fact as old as any other point on Earth.
Very well said. If nothing else this also shows the deep origins of the development of the scientific method: propose a theory based on (in this case) extrapolation, then prove it later on with evidence. In many ways, human civilization, and especially human knowledge can be thought of as a manifestation of this simple formula.
The existence of a kind of extrapolation-based forethought prior to the actual process of exploration undertaken by humankind evidenced here would fall neatly into this progression.
But any coastal population must have known the curvature of the earth by basic empirical analysis of maritime traffic. In other words, watching the fishing boats disappear over the horizon.
I'll be back. Particularly interested in the stuff about South American history because, well, I don't know much about it beyond the genocides and events connected to them.
Newfoundland is an island! I understand that there may be an implicit assumption that they most likely had to touch the continent before getting there but this isn't neither a fact (only a speculation) nor "much further into the continent".
> From the perspective of geology or physical geography, continent may be extended beyond the confines of continuous dry land to include the shallow, submerged adjacent area (the continental shelf)[6] and the islands on the shelf (continental islands), as they are structurally part of the continent
and:
> As a cultural construct, the concept of a continent may go beyond the continental shelf to include oceanic islands and continental fragments. In this way, Iceland is considered part of Europe and Madagascar part of Africa.
Well then, Vikings definitely discovered America because they continuously inhabited Iceland, which sits on both North American and Eurasian continental tectonic plates.
EDIT: Followed the suggestion.
(Of course, you are using a different definition of discover; more like how I discovered a great hamburger restaurant in town, even though many others knew of it. I am highlighting how one must be aware of multiple shades of meaning, and not assume there is only one.)
In any case, I gave two additional definitions, to show that yours was not the only, nor even the most common, definition. Your response now concerns only the geological one. However, that is not the definition in use here. The third, cultural definition places Iceland as part of Europe. This article appears to concern that modern, cultural definition, not a geographical or geological one.
For similar cultural reasons we say that people from Hawaii are Americans despite Hawaii not being on a continental plate, or that Los Angeles and Catalina Island are part of North America. We also say that Columbus came to America in 1492 even though he didn't get to a continental mainland until his third voyage in 1498, when he reached what is now Venezuela.
As you are someone who cares about correct names, may I suggest you use the terms "North American Plate" and "Eurasian Plate" for the two plates which meet at Iceland, not "American" and "European"?
Likewise from a European perspective or from the perspective of everybody else not living in north and south America Columbus made a real discovery. To take an extreme example, if a single person goes to an unknown island and stays there, that isn't a discovery, since nobody else gets to learn about it. To be a discovery you have to come back and spread the knowledge.
We all carry DNA inside us but but somebody had to discover it, in the sense of documenting and explaining it to everybody else.
I frankly find this frequent criticism of euro centric world view a bit pedantic. Modern history is naturally euro centric because the present day all across the planet has been strongly shaped by events that happened in Europe. One of those watershed events was Columbus discovery of America. The effects of that had major implication all the way to China, India and Africa.
Should China come to dominate the world in the future, Chinese history would naturally become more significant in world history than today. Understanding the processes that lead to modern day China would be important if modern day China strongly affected all countries around the globe.
To some extent that is already the case, which is why Chinese history is more important than say Olmec or Inca history.
I said there are often multiple meanings, and correct understanding requires knowing that there are multiple valid meanings, and knowing the context enough to select the intended one. Remember, restalis started by complaining that "continent" should not include islands. I pointed out that there are multiple definitions for continent, including widely used ones which include islands.
restalis then argued that the Norse discovered America by reaching western Iceland, which is on the North American plate. Now, I happen to believe that many people discovered America, for different definitions of "discover" and "America". Some definitions are more useful and appropriate than others.
My response was meant to highlight that it's unwise to insist on one of several correct definitions of "continent" then turn around and use a non-standard definition of "discovered America" which is more like "first European to set foot on land on the North American plate." Nor do I think it's a useful definition.
You want to use the more standard definition, which is Euro centric for the reasons you described. I'm also fine with that definition. My point has always been that there are multiple definitions with different cultural contexts. I don't think it makes sense to complain about one usage by pulling it out of a valid context and insisting it must fit into another context.
You seem to have interpreted my counter-example as an insistence that it is the only possible counter-example. I mentioned it because restalis' definition used "North American Plate". I needed something which pre-dated the Norse settlement of Iceland. I realize now that I could have pointed to the the pre-Norse Celtic monks on Iceland, though that just shows that there are multiple objections to restalis' new definition, not that mine is fundamentally wrong.
I think you will have no problems in saying that Leif Erikson and his extended family discovered Newfoundland? Vinland and Markland did affect Norse society on Greenland, and the Norse spread knowledge of it, which we still know about through the sagas and in the Descriptio insularum Aquilonis. By your own definition, the Norse discovered America, yes?
If the Norse did not discover America, when do you think Columbus did? 1492, when he and his crew found some islands and returned to Europe to report? Or the third voyage, when Columbus was at the mouth of the Orinoco and surmised there was a large land mass to be discovered? Or when Amerigo Vespucci demonstrated that it was a new continent, and not part of Asia? I think all three can be applicable moments of discovery.
Even in the scientific literature, discoveries are made multiple times. The Cooley–Tukey algorithm for FFT, for example, was described by Gauss, though his posthumous publication was not influential. In my own field, we use the "Tanimoto similarity" based indirectly on work Tanimoto did in the 1950s, even though "Jaccard index" is the more widely used term and Jaccard published in the 1910s.
History is complicated.
Then look to the Icelanders that made repeated trips over hundreds of years to the east coast of Canada (Labrador coast) for timber & trade with the locals. Newfoundland is interesting because it was a permanent settlement, however brief.
But by that logic I suppose we should stop considering British history to be part of the European tradition.
Put your statement next to "much further into the continent than previously thought" when we're really talking about an island settlement!
Should have a dedicated "archaeological news" version.
The sagas describe the discovered land as Vinland because they found wild grapes growing everywhere.
Which does not describe Newfoundland, especially not the northern tip of it where the L'anse aux Meadows sits. (I've been there. It's cold and desolate. We watched icebergs float around 100 feet from the shore).
But up the gulf of St Lawrence a bit you'll find wild populations of vitis riparia growing like crazy.
Given this new site shows them as having traversed the western shore of Newfoundland and mined iron, presumably for the purpose of producing nails to build ships, I can't see why they would not have gone further up the gulf of St Lawrence, maybe as far as modern day Quebec City or Montreal.
It would be interesting to know what historical levels of the river was at that time. Maybe archaeological evidence is underwater.
For the sea level, this is areas that was covered by ice during the last ice age, and these areas have been rising since then. Some areas, like around the Botnian Sea, is still rising even today, so archaeological sites that was on the seashore will be there or slightly inland.
>In 2010, a team of European researchers announced the discovery of a previously unknown mitochondrial DNA sequence in Iceland, which they further suggest may have New World origins. If the latter is true, one possible explanation for its appearance in modern Iceland would be from the capture and removal of a Native American woman, possibly a Beothuk