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Comment by jernfrost | Hacker News Reader

I am more interested in whether there is any way of find a connection between Columbus and the Vikings. I've read stories before about how Columbus went to Norway and got info there about the Viking exploration. But what I've read just seemed like wild speculation then. Something more solid would have been nice.

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.

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Thor Heyerdahl had this theory, Columbus did not go to Norway but his family is of the Norwegian Nobel Bonde family. They lost a power struggle, and had to go abroad, to Genova . This as I recall is based on a book written by a family member of Columbus, think the brother(if he had one). Stating that the name of the family is not from Italy, but it a Latinifaction of the original language from where the family is from. Bonde means farmer (In Norwegian), Columbus apparently means something of the same. He should then know about Vinland (name of America given by Norse explorer) from his family roots in Norway. I also think part of the theory also was him being a period (some years)aboard a Danish or Norwegian ship, this would have given him hint of a land on the other side of the ocean. Also there are Danish tax records stating that the fishing banks outside New Foundland was taxed by the Danish crown, from before Columbus. There are also tails of Norse-Indian settlements encountered by early settlers.. And I think some one found a Indian skeleton in Denmark or Norway some years back.

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...

Of course a famous Norwegian thinks Columbus is Scandinavian! I'm reminded of the phrase Samuel Eliot Morrison used in his books on the European Discovery of America-"Scandinavery". Its about as realistic as the "runes" discovered in the midwest in the late 19th century. There's a bit of a cottage industry in the US of various ethnic groups either claiming Columbus was really one of their own, or claiming that some other ethnic group (theirs, coincidentally!) actually discovered America.

I don't think Scandinavians have any desire to claim Columbus. Now the Portuguese conspiracy to claim Eiriksson on the other hand...

I think the Polynesians have the best claim on discovering the Americas, at this point.

Everybody knows that Columbus was German!

In 1492 Columbus was a Jew.

There are also records of Bristol fishermen using the then highly productive fishing grounds off the coast of Newfoundland and obviously keeping their location quiet!

Heyerdahl was a man of extraordinary capability, but he had a tendency to go off on wild tangents once in a while. It's interesting how those wild tangents were, in a sense, what fueled some of his more spectacular projects.

Where did you hear that story, in Norway?

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.

Also, it's worth remembering that Columbus wasn't trying to discover America, he was just trying to find another route to India. Whatever might one have learned about Vikings' achievements in Columbus time it definitely sounded like something very different from the highly sought India!

I think the more probable connection for Columbus would be the Basque cod fishermen that were fishing off the Grand Banks of Newfoundland years before he sailed the ocean blue.

They were notoriously highly secretive about their far-flung fishing grounds as it gave them pretty significant monetary advantages.

That is interesting. How do we know about that though, and just to speculate they could have been influenced by Viking discoveries of the same fishing areas.

Tax records.

Captains of the era were known for keeping meticulous navigational and meteorological records. Did this hold true even for those indulging in secret activities?

This my speculation, but it's more than likely that they did. The sea will kill you if you aren't careful, and even when you are. Sharing records with other captains may save your life someday.

Recordkeeping at sea has a long tradition.

Some more speculation - the crew wants to get paid, so the captain has to keep good records of the catch else the crew will get angry, making it harder to find good crew for future trips.

Actually an African connection is much more likely, and even documented.

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.

> 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.

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.

At the height of its extent in 1350, the Mali Empire was second only to the Mongol Empire in size, power, and population.

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.

Thor Heyerdahl made various sea voyages using pre-modern sailing technology in order to demonstrate that this sort of journey would have been feasible in ancient times. Morocco to Barbados was one such journey: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thor_Heyerdahl#Boats_Ra_and_Ra...

Of course it's realistic. The Malagasy people are descendants of Polynesians who crossed the Indian Ocean to Madagascar, in canoes. With calm seas, there's no reason you couldn't make such a trip. Canoes can have sails too, and you can row your way out of the doldrums.

There's a big difference between coastwise travel in the Indian ocean and crossing the middle of the south atlantic. Even the big portuguese ships couldn't round the cape of good hope til what - the mid 1500's?. Also it's ~5200 miles from Madagascar to South America.

The Polynesians managed to sail and colonize Hawaii at least as early as 1000, as well as colonizing places like Rapa Nui or New Zealand from a starting point of Fiji (and themselves descended from the Melanesians who started from Indonesia). They also probably managed to make it to South America and back, given their use of the South American sweet potato as a major staple.

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.

Mali is on the west coast of Africa, so such an ocean crossing would not require rounding the Cape. They're also well-situated to take advantage of trade winds, and are at the point of the narrowest middle Atlantic crossing. So it's not so far-fetched that they could have made these trips.

But the route from Polynesia to Madagascar can be traveled along the shoreline of Asia and Africa, so can be completed without navigational aides. The crossing from Africa to South America is 3000 km of nothing but ocean.

Amyr Klink crossed the Atlantic in a rowing boat from Namibia to the north coast of Brazil in 1984, it took him around 100 days [1]. He seems to remain the only one to have accomplished such a feat. Very little information in english seems to be avaiable though. The boat can be seems in the background of this video [2] (in portuguese).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amyr_Klink

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rz5zWCpIKT0

According to their oral history, they went clear across the ocean. My source is "A History of Madagascar" by Mervyn Brown (2001) and it could be incorrect, I didn't seek out the primary sources.

There is documentation that the pacific islanders crossed thousands of miles of ocean successfully on a fairly routine basis.

A bit strange though. I don't know what the Mali technology level was at the time but I would assume Vikings had far more advance ship and navigation technology as they are well known for that and it is well documented their extensive travels elsewhere in the world.

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.

I would not bet that West African technology in the Middle Ages was leagues ahead of West African technology: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mali_Empire

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."

*better than European

Espacially since Mali has no see access, at least in it's current borders.

The current borders are irrelevant.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mali_Empire#/media/File:WestAf...

Interesting. Can you recommend a book about this?

I recently finished 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created. http://www.amazon.com/1493-Uncovering-World-Columbus-Created...

Highly recommended!

But please do start with 1492, also very excellent.

Thanks. Does that book cover the pre-Colombian African-South American interactions?

Yes - very much so!

> 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.

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.

I don't know what your metric for significance is, but for me it is related to the extent of change of history it causes. A Viking discovery which did not influence Columbus in any way is IMO of tiny significance, because whether it happened or not would have made no impact on history.

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.

First contact may have infected that continent with virulent European pathogens.

Recent discoveries suggest the Americas were vastly more populated but wiped out by viruses.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2002/03/1491/302...

There's evidence as others have pointed out of African expeditions and I've read about evidence of Chinese and Polynesian contact with South America so I'm not sure it was quite as drastic a gulf as you propose.

No significant gene flow, so quite a drastic gulf.

The fact that populations in the Americas were decimated by disease after contact should be enough to show how significant it was.

I did mention the possibility of Polynesian contact in my comment. But neither this nor the Chinese contact has been comprehensively proved, especially not with archaeological evidence.

Not to mention numerous migrations over the Bering, one of the most resent, the Inuit migration, happened around the same time as the Norse explorations.

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