5 ms·

Did Vikings navigate by polarized light?

40 points by binarymax 16y ago

huxley 16y ago
Or alternatively, the Viking picked up a stone, said it was magical, that it told him the sun was "that a-way" and if he was wrong, they died, never to be heard of again. If he was right, they lived and he got a pretty sweet saga out of the deal.
- thomas11 16y ago
  The Vikings navigated very well, for the time, consistently over a long period.
- sophacles 16y ago
  Ah yes, because people in the past were just plain stupid, we as a species didn't gain the ability to intentionally take advantage of our surroundings or question those having dubious advice until 325 years ago, when Newton presented the Royal Society with his Pricipia Mathematica volume 1, thus bestowing critical thought on humanity. All evidence to the contrary is simply coincidental. For instance, the cathedrals and churches contemporary to the vikings: They were not planned even a little. They are simply the result of some guy saying "lets build a cathedral" and piling stones until one of the piles resulted in a cathedral that didn't fall over. Every last one is like this. And swords and armor? Those guys just put funny rocks in the fire sometimes, and hit them for the heck of it, and occasionally when things cooled off, there would be a sword there!
  - dkarl 16y ago
    In the past? Launching ventures on intuition is common to this day. (Otherwise nobody would start a business: no amount of effort will turn it into an exact science.) In the past, people were just more apt to ascribe intuition to magic or divine guidance. It wasn't that long ago in the United States that a farmer could hire a diviner to tell him where to dig a well, using a divining rod to find underground water. People who succeed through luck are more often than not credited with insight. They believe in their own skill and have no problem finding people who admire them, trust them, and follow them. If you can believe what you read, it happens on Wall Street all the time.
    - sophacles 16y ago
      So, because some people are stupid and follow slightly less stupid people for idiotic plans, the entire history of Norse navigation via Sunstones must be this! Due to the fact that some people had claimed the Sunstone magic worked, and they had the evidence of being alive, all Vikings everywhere completely ignored the large number of ships out navigating with sunstones that dissapeared. That must be it, as large numbers of Wall street investors are still hawking derivatives even tho they are shown to be a bad deal now. It is highly likely that you are guilty of the exact same sort of confirmation bias you are deriding with your diviner example. See you are going back and cherry picking a few (not at all commonplace after better alternatives existed) choice ideas, calling them good evidence, and ignoring the whole confirmation bias issue. Edit: also intuition is also very frequently the result of lots of observation and experience on the intuiter's part. This may not be formally laid out, yet is still pretty valid. Do intuition launched ventures have a track record that is at all different (in a statistically meaningful way) than other ventures? If not, it is a valid methodology for venture creation.
      - dkarl 16y ago
        So, because some people are stupid and follow slightly less stupid people for idiotic plans, the entire history of Norse navigation via Sunstones must be this! Your comment seemed to say that it was implausible that success in a risky enterprise might have been entirely due to luck yet attributed by many observers to skill. All I pointed out was that it isn't just plausible, it happens all the time.
        sophacles 16y ago
        In the short term yes, this happens. In the long term? You all seem to not realize that several centuries of navigation successes attributed to luck stretches the credibility a bit. It's not like this was one case of luck, it was a long running thing. All the luck cases in your examples rarely last longer than years, let alone centuries. Doubly so considering the whole society built itself on the spoils of the raiders who went out on trips. Such things are not possible on just luck, there has to be an amount of repeatability there. Strongly suggested by the fact that viking raiders were so successful at returning that the ideas, treasures and people (slaves and whatnot) that they brought back fundamentally changed their society.
  - huxley 16y ago
    Nice. I didn't say our predecessors were stupid or incapable of remarkable things. I said that it was likely that the saga was just a story and that the researchers were jumping to conclusions. The article is extrapolating that the Vikings used polarizing crystals to navigate without providing archaeological evidence that the Vikings used such crystals. Is it possible? Maybe. Is it interesting speculation? Yeah. Does the fact that there were other contemporaneously advanced technologies like cathedrals and metal forging mean that Vikings independently discovered light polarization? No, no matter how much you would like it. Maybe you need to chill a bit.
    - sophacles 16y ago
      Hahaha -- The actual article is about how researchers were investigating if the navigation technique was possible. They concluded that it is a reasonable possiblility, based on experimental evidence. Their conclusion was: if they had these crystals they could utilize them. Further they mention that there were lots of other techniques that could be used equally well. That is not jumping to unnecessary conclusions. Instead of me chilling out, you should consider repeating the third grade and working on your basic reading comprehension skills.
jackfoxy 16y ago
tl;dr If I recall correctly Will Durant writing in The Story of Civilization stated this as a fact many decades ago. Since his work was based on a lot of research, he must have read it somewhere.
- kjhugthujk 16y ago
  It was suggested in the 60s and shown to be possible then - not sure what this group have added.
  - Someone 16y ago
    1. They did an experiment to see how well modern subjects can estimate the position of the sun (answer: very badly) 2. They measured the polarization patterns under similar conditions to check whether there could be sufficient information there to do this better. They think there is. 3. they didn't yet ask subjects to estimate the position of the sun from the 'sky through a polarization filter'. Guessing at the results of #3: I think that humans will do slightly better looking through sunglasses, and expert users could use that in navigation. In the end, I expect that the Vikings used as many cues as they could find to navigate, just like carrier pigeons do (for carrier pigeons, the tricks mentioned in the literature include detecting the magnetic North, using polarization cues to detect the location of the clouded sun, and olfactory cues. They also have a good map of their surroundings that helps them home in on the last 30 miles or so. Because of that, a flight from say 100 miles away need not be dead-accurate in direction to hit that 30-mile radius circle where they know how to get home.
    - pbhjpbhj 16y ago
      >I think that humans will do slightly better looking through sunglasses, and expert users could use that in navigation I actually do this, not the sunglasses bit (must try!), the other bit. I'm not very good at navigating in the car. I look at a map of a city before I set out but can't remember road numbers and things. I'll see some landmarks and know from a semi-pictorial memorisation the relative location; I'll look for the sun and use that to navigate. It [mostly] works but only just - I grew up in the country where this sort of thing works better (crossing large fields, navigating woodlands, etc.). I do estimate the location of the sun based on apparent sky brightness when it is overcast. Obviously this doesn't always work (thick cloud, heavy rain, snow on the ground). Also I've never actually done this by the stars though I reckon I could in a pinch. DAE (does anyone else) use sun location to establish compass direction and navigate across cities by dead reckoning??
earle 16y ago
The jet stream was by far a bigger factor in the successful crossing of the Atlantic during those times.
- kjhugthujk 16y ago
  For the flying long ships ?
  - eru 16y ago
    They do have sails.
- metageek 16y ago
  ...do you perhaps mean the Gulf Stream?
- eru 16y ago
  Could you please elaborate.
pdx 16y ago
Thankfully, we'll never have to wonder how river boats navigated the Mississippi without depth finders and radar. http://www.classicreader.com/book/2886/7/ http://www.classicreader.com/book/2886/7/ The Vikings may very well been similarly observant of their world, without resorting to sunstones.
- eru 16y ago
  They would have probably resorted to all tricks they could find.

40 points by binarymax 16y ago

Or alternatively, the Viking picked up a stone, said it was magical, that it told him the sun was "that a-way" and if he was wrong, they died, never to be heard of again. If he was right, they lived and he got a pretty sweet saga out of the deal.

thomas11 16y ago
The Vikings navigated very well, for the time, consistently over a long period.
sophacles 16y ago
Ah yes, because people in the past were just plain stupid, we as a species didn't gain the ability to intentionally take advantage of our surroundings or question those having dubious advice until 325 years ago, when Newton presented the Royal Society with his Pricipia Mathematica volume 1, thus bestowing critical thought on humanity. All evidence to the contrary is simply coincidental. For instance, the cathedrals and churches contemporary to the vikings: They were not planned even a little. They are simply the result of some guy saying "lets build a cathedral" and piling stones until one of the piles resulted in a cathedral that didn't fall over. Every last one is like this. And swords and armor? Those guys just put funny rocks in the fire sometimes, and hit them for the heck of it, and occasionally when things cooled off, there would be a sword there!
- dkarl 16y ago
  In the past? Launching ventures on intuition is common to this day. (Otherwise nobody would start a business: no amount of effort will turn it into an exact science.) In the past, people were just more apt to ascribe intuition to magic or divine guidance. It wasn't that long ago in the United States that a farmer could hire a diviner to tell him where to dig a well, using a divining rod to find underground water. People who succeed through luck are more often than not credited with insight. They believe in their own skill and have no problem finding people who admire them, trust them, and follow them. If you can believe what you read, it happens on Wall Street all the time.
  - sophacles 16y ago
    So, because some people are stupid and follow slightly less stupid people for idiotic plans, the entire history of Norse navigation via Sunstones must be this! Due to the fact that some people had claimed the Sunstone magic worked, and they had the evidence of being alive, all Vikings everywhere completely ignored the large number of ships out navigating with sunstones that dissapeared. That must be it, as large numbers of Wall street investors are still hawking derivatives even tho they are shown to be a bad deal now. It is highly likely that you are guilty of the exact same sort of confirmation bias you are deriding with your diviner example. See you are going back and cherry picking a few (not at all commonplace after better alternatives existed) choice ideas, calling them good evidence, and ignoring the whole confirmation bias issue. Edit: also intuition is also very frequently the result of lots of observation and experience on the intuiter's part. This may not be formally laid out, yet is still pretty valid. Do intuition launched ventures have a track record that is at all different (in a statistically meaningful way) than other ventures? If not, it is a valid methodology for venture creation.
    - dkarl 16y ago
      So, because some people are stupid and follow slightly less stupid people for idiotic plans, the entire history of Norse navigation via Sunstones must be this! Your comment seemed to say that it was implausible that success in a risky enterprise might have been entirely due to luck yet attributed by many observers to skill. All I pointed out was that it isn't just plausible, it happens all the time.
      - sophacles 16y ago
        In the short term yes, this happens. In the long term? You all seem to not realize that several centuries of navigation successes attributed to luck stretches the credibility a bit. It's not like this was one case of luck, it was a long running thing. All the luck cases in your examples rarely last longer than years, let alone centuries. Doubly so considering the whole society built itself on the spoils of the raiders who went out on trips. Such things are not possible on just luck, there has to be an amount of repeatability there. Strongly suggested by the fact that viking raiders were so successful at returning that the ideas, treasures and people (slaves and whatnot) that they brought back fundamentally changed their society.
- huxley 16y ago
  Nice. I didn't say our predecessors were stupid or incapable of remarkable things. I said that it was likely that the saga was just a story and that the researchers were jumping to conclusions. The article is extrapolating that the Vikings used polarizing crystals to navigate without providing archaeological evidence that the Vikings used such crystals. Is it possible? Maybe. Is it interesting speculation? Yeah. Does the fact that there were other contemporaneously advanced technologies like cathedrals and metal forging mean that Vikings independently discovered light polarization? No, no matter how much you would like it. Maybe you need to chill a bit.
  - sophacles 16y ago
    Hahaha -- The actual article is about how researchers were investigating if the navigation technique was possible. They concluded that it is a reasonable possiblility, based on experimental evidence. Their conclusion was: if they had these crystals they could utilize them. Further they mention that there were lots of other techniques that could be used equally well. That is not jumping to unnecessary conclusions. Instead of me chilling out, you should consider repeating the third grade and working on your basic reading comprehension skills.

jackfoxy 16y ago

tl;dr If I recall correctly Will Durant writing in The Story of Civilization stated this as a fact many decades ago. Since his work was based on a lot of research, he must have read it somewhere.

kjhugthujk 16y ago
It was suggested in the 60s and shown to be possible then - not sure what this group have added.
- Someone 16y ago
  1. They did an experiment to see how well modern subjects can estimate the position of the sun (answer: very badly) 2. They measured the polarization patterns under similar conditions to check whether there could be sufficient information there to do this better. They think there is. 3. they didn't yet ask subjects to estimate the position of the sun from the 'sky through a polarization filter'. Guessing at the results of #3: I think that humans will do slightly better looking through sunglasses, and expert users could use that in navigation. In the end, I expect that the Vikings used as many cues as they could find to navigate, just like carrier pigeons do (for carrier pigeons, the tricks mentioned in the literature include detecting the magnetic North, using polarization cues to detect the location of the clouded sun, and olfactory cues. They also have a good map of their surroundings that helps them home in on the last 30 miles or so. Because of that, a flight from say 100 miles away need not be dead-accurate in direction to hit that 30-mile radius circle where they know how to get home.
  - pbhjpbhj 16y ago
    >I think that humans will do slightly better looking through sunglasses, and expert users could use that in navigation I actually do this, not the sunglasses bit (must try!), the other bit. I'm not very good at navigating in the car. I look at a map of a city before I set out but can't remember road numbers and things. I'll see some landmarks and know from a semi-pictorial memorisation the relative location; I'll look for the sun and use that to navigate. It [mostly] works but only just - I grew up in the country where this sort of thing works better (crossing large fields, navigating woodlands, etc.). I do estimate the location of the sun based on apparent sky brightness when it is overcast. Obviously this doesn't always work (thick cloud, heavy rain, snow on the ground). Also I've never actually done this by the stars though I reckon I could in a pinch. DAE (does anyone else) use sun location to establish compass direction and navigate across cities by dead reckoning??

earle 16y ago

The jet stream was by far a bigger factor in the successful crossing of the Atlantic during those times.

kjhugthujk 16y ago
For the flying long ships ?
- eru 16y ago
  They do have sails.
metageek 16y ago
...do you perhaps mean the Gulf Stream?
eru 16y ago
Could you please elaborate.

pdx 16y ago

Thankfully, we'll never have to wonder how river boats navigated the Mississippi without depth finders and radar. http://www.classicreader.com/book/2886/7/ http://www.classicreader.com/book/2886/7/ The Vikings may very well been similarly observant of their world, without resorting to sunstones.

eru 16y ago
They would have probably resorted to all tricks they could find.