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How far into the Americas did the Vikings travel?
- lobster45 6y agoInteresting!
- sebmellen 6y agoVikings in Chichén Itzá. Wow. That would be pretty stunning. > Could the Vikings who left a settlement at L’Anse aux Meadows have made it to the Yucatán Peninsula – some 3,700 miles (c6,000 km) south of where the Viking penny surfaced at the Goddard site? One of the murals at the Temple of Warriors, painted around 1000 CE, depicted a naval battle scene showing blond-haired men being thrown into the water.
- markdown 6y ago> blond-haired men Do 1000yr old murals retain their color enough to be able to tell that the subjects originally had blonde hair?
- liability 6y agoIf the original were still intact, perhaps chemical analysis of the pigments used could provide information about this. Unfortunately it seems that can't be done since the mural was destroyed decades ago. But maybe fragments of it remain in the area waiting to be found?
- gpm 6y agoI don't know anything about how these murals were made. 1000yr old books do for the most part. Silver pigment will have turned grey, but other high quality pigments were often based on minerals that are still vibrant to this day. (Cheap pignents on the other hand were often organic, which would often not have lasted).
- mumblemumble 6y agoGoogle for pictures of it. It's quite vibrant. There are even older Egyptian murals that are still colorful, too. Pigments can last a long time if you keep them out of the light. That said, once you have looked at a picture of the mural, I strongly doubt you'll come away thinking that it's a picture of Vikings.
- throwaway0a5e 6y agoWhile the particular mural may be in good shape I think it's worth pointing out that those Egyptian murals exist in the second best climate on earth for preservation (the first being the Antarctic desert). Nature is trying much harder to destroy anything of archeological significance in the jungles of central and South America and the Atlantic coast of the Northeast US and Canada. We're just never gonna have great information about these societies because a much larger fraction of the stuff they left behind will be gone.
- liability 6y ago> While the particular mural may be in good shape It isn't, it's gone. The image in the article is a watercolor reproduction made in the 1920s-30s. And even when they found it, it was as deteriorating fragments on the floor, which were subsequently lost to a hurricane.
- qubex 6y agoIt’s stunning how much discussion is being made by people who haven’t read TFA.
- throwaway0a5e 6y agoGod forbid I not fact check everything in the comment I am replying to.
- 8bitsrule 6y agoIn the tradition, the article shares a lot of tantalizing speculation. For example, did the Mayans really trade with Chaco for turquoise (the mineral)? Found one reference that said the Mayans did make the color. Conceivably the Norse 'penny' reached Maine as a trade object. Etc. fun stuff to think about.
- AlotOfReading 6y agoThe author is simply out-of-date. Turquoise found in Central and Southern Mexican sites was for a long time thought to be Southwestern. Eventually isotopic analysis determined that to be pretty unlikely. It probably comes from unknown sources somewhere in the Mexican highlands that may not exist anymore. Same story with cacao, which may have come from West Mexico instead. Likewise, the macaws referenced were bred in Paquime [1] in the Southwest itself (and perhaps elsewhere). We have the breeding rooms and baby skeletons to support it. The unforgivably outdated info is the part about mesoamerican nobles living in Chaco. That's a super old and kind of racist narrative you typically see from people writing in like the 30s-50s. You'd have to ignore half a century of exploration into the emergence of political complexity in the SW to believe it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casas_Grandes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casas_Grandes
- liability 6y ago> The unforgivably outdated info is the part about mesoamerican nobles living in Chaco. That's a super old and kind of racist narrative you typically see from people writing in like the 30s-50s. You'd have to ignore half a century of exploration into the emergence of political complexity in the SW to believe it. Wait what? You lost me here. The article clearly attributes the settlement of Chaco Canyon to the Ancestral Puebloans, which seems to be the current mainstream belief at least as Wikipedia presents it. It notes one skeleton with notched teeth, but doesn't seem to say anything about it being indicative nobility. With respect to that practice in Mayan culture, Wikipedia says "Overall, little evidence for the relationship between socioeconomic status and types of dental modification exists."
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- nickt 6y agoThat would be a great movie.
- x87678r 6y agoIt wouldn't surprise me if Scandinavians wanted to spend the Winter in the Caribbean.
- liability 6y agoThe article mentions arsenical bronze being unlike bronze made in the rest of the world, but that's not true. Arsenical bronze has been made around the world for thousands of years. This is likely due to arsenic often being found in close proximity to copper while sources of tin are harder to find. However it's my understanding that some cultures in the Andes did have access to tin and produced tin bronze as well as arsenical bronze.
- TheGallopedHigh 6y agoTwo major sources of Tim in ancient times were Britain (often called Tin island by the romans before they went on to conquer it) and Afghanistan.
- rickdangerous1 6y agoHow many Tims do you think Britain had back then?
- liability 6y agoIt was originally a Greek name, so probably not many before the Romans showed up. Maybe a few though.
- ncmncm 6y agoNow we know that tin was traded from England almost 4000 years ago.
- Mediterraneo10 6y agoThis is a pop-sci article that is nearly as out there as the (well-debunked) fantasies of Gavin Menzies, suggesting that the Vikings made it down to Central America. Beware when pop-sci articles on history ask a constant series of questions "Could the X people have done Y?". Sometimes they act like they are being cautious about the answer, but they are never straight with the reader that among experts, even raising that question in a non-specialist venue seems inappropriate. To be honest and forthright that there isn’t even room for speculation with our current state of knowledge, does not sell copies and create ad impressions.
- HuShifang 6y agoJust to add here, the article's author is an expert on middle period (Tang-Song) China (her first book was on local deities, her second on contracts). She then shifted her focus a bit westward to the Silk Road. She has apparently shifted her focus yet again. I'm not an expert on pre-Columbian archaeology. But neither is she.
- jcranmer 6y agoThe author literally starts by citing Menzies' Chinese discovery thesis, albeit weakly dismissing it by the end of the paragraph. (Interestingly, Menzies' theory is listed, but not the generally-accepted theory of Polynesian transoceanic contact). That said, the article tends to actually instead spend more of its time talking about the well-accepted vast American trading networks. Sprinkling in the speculation of Viking voyages that aren't supported by anything more than a rosy interpretation of some data that requires some contexts that are slightly sketchy really does a disservice to the rest of the article. (If you're going to claim that a painting postdates the structure by a hundred years, I'm really doubtful of that unless you show that it's painting over something else, or otherwise demonstrate some reason why the wall covering would have needed to be changed).
- rickdangerous1 6y agoI find the “experts“ closed minded and dogmatic. The text book history of the world is seriously wrong...
- mxcrossb 6y ago> Even after their departure, the Norse continued to return to the Americas, most likely to pick up lumber since no trees grew on Greenland and Iceland. This actually never occurred to me, and it’s interesting that these famous seafarers would have resource constraints for building boats.
- bobthepanda 6y agoIIRC, the Middle East used to be heavily forested, but then you had thousands of yers of deforestation and now the cradle of civilization has little forest left. For similar reasons North American timber and fish were very much in high demand during the colonial period.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Grustaf 6y agoIceland also used to have trees.
- juniper_strong 6y agoIt still does. Several of them.
- japanuspus 6y agoThere was a lot of snarky comments in Danish news a couple of years ago when the Forestry Department sent the government a message stating that some oak-trees commissioned 200 years ago for the royal navy were now ready for harvest. To me, the most surprising thing I have learned about Viking ships and resources is that the _sail_ not the boat was the real constraint: A sail would take an entire village several years to make, while a ship crew could complete a ship in less than a month. I have heard stories of ship crews deliberately wrecking the ship in a place where they could recover the sail, rather than risk loosing the sail in an uncontrolled wreck. Don't know if there is any truth to this.
- doodlebugging 6y agoI had never heard of murals showing blonde men being sacrificed and the significance of boats made from planks in Maya murals would not have been apparent to me. Fascinating stuff. The more you learn, the more you wish you could know. Also, for a while there was another potential Viking site in the Americas at Heavener, Oklahoma. Formerly a state park, now a city park, there is a runestone and others have been found within a few tens of miles of Heavener. Once thought to be possible evidence of Viking excursions into Oklahoma, the Heavener Runestone may in fact be a marker laid out by one of the members of the Rene Robert Cavelier De La Salle expedition's attempt to reach French settlements northeast of Texas in 1687. This website has a horrible, no good, very bad layout and is difficult to read but it weaves a very interesting historical tale that explains the Heavener Runestone and others found nearby in Oklahoma. [Heavener Runestone - Heavener Oklahoma](http://heavener-runestone.com/ http://heavener-runestone.com/) If you have a while and enjoy some archaeological and historical intrigue this is the place to get your fix today. I visited the site using Firefox with Https Everywhere and microblock Origin and other than the lack of https the site is largely free of objectionable things. It could use a serious rebuild though as the story woven is compelling when the evidence is presented and so thoroughly researched. Makes more sense than Vikings.
- mumblemumble 6y agoMy understanding is that these isolated runestones deep in North America, thousands of kilometers away from any other evidence of Norse presence, have about zero value as archaeological evidence. It's hard to come up with a story for how a genuine ancient Norse artifact could get there like that that is even remotely plausible. Modern hiking ethics are a pretty modern invention. Usually, when people go on expeditions like that, they leave a trail of trash behind them. And nobody's going to make a clean hike thousands of kilometers into an unknown land without leaving any traces, then stick around somewhere long enough to carve "gnome valley" in huge letters on a rock - which must have been roughly the plan all along, too, because otherwise, why did you pack stone chisels for the trip, and if you didn't pack them, then where's the on-site smithy? - and then just fade into the mist, again leaving no trace. Carved rocks are somewhat too convenient of fodder for mysteries like this, because they're just so difficult to date. I think that the most plausible hypothesis for the Heavener inscription, though, is that it really is of Scandinavian origin. But that it dates to the 19th century, not the 11th. This is based on three things: The only thing about it that looks remotely medieval is the simple fact that it's using a runic alphabet (the vikings liked to decorate their runestones), and it is reportedly somewhat nonsensical in Old Norse but reasonably straightforward to read in a modern dialect, and we know from the historical record that there were Swedes (IIRC) living there around then.
- Causality1 6y agoI'm surprised the opening paragraph, while cataloging asserted pre-Columbian transatlantic voyages, didn't mention the Roman ships and amphora found in Brazil. Last I heard the Brazilian government was stopping anyone from investigating those remains.
- codezero 6y agoThey don't seem to mention at all that light skinned, light haired people could be suffering from albinism - a taboo condition that would absolutely be the kind of thing ancient peoples would sacrifice folks over...
- puranjay 6y agoThat's a very reasonable explanation. Do we know what stature albinos had in Maya culture? Were they venerated or seen as outcasts?
- vmh1928 6y ago"This is called the Sacred Cenote because the Maya performed rituals in which they burned and hacked apart offerings before tossing them into the pool." "offerings"? "According to post-Conquest sources (Maya and Spanish), pre-Columbian Maya sacrificed objects and human beings into the cenote as a form of worship to the Maya rain god Chaac. Edward Herbert Thompson dredged the Cenote Sagrado from 1904 to 1910, and recovered artifacts of gold, jade, pottery, and incense, as well as human remains.[2] A study of human remains taken from the Cenote Sagrado found that they had wounds consistent with human sacrifice." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred_Cenote https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred_Cenote
- c54 6y agoFound myself disappointed by the lack of images in this piece. Does anyone have or know of maps or images of the art referenced?
- bandris 6y agoThis is from the book: The Year 1000 by Valerie Hansen
- pcrh 6y agoThis site appears to contain the images of the relevant (copies of) the murals in question: https://www.ancient-origins.net/history/pre-columbian-murals-and-norse-sagas-suggest-vikings-met-aztecs-and-outcome-was-not-pretty-021084?nopaging=1 https://www.ancient-origins.net/history/pre-columbian-murals...
- whiddershins 6y agoWasn’t that whole Kon Tiki book/movie about this discussion. That Vikings somehow made it all the way to the Pacific Islands via the Americas?
- interfixus 6y agoNo. That South American people somehow made it. The expedition just happened to be conceived and lead by a Norwegian.
- cmrdporcupine 6y agoThey called it "Vinland" after the wild grape vines they apparently found... but the most northernmost species of wild grape (vitis riparia) in North America stops in the northeast at around latitude 46. That makes me think they made it up the St Lawrence to at least where Quebec City is now, or south of the gulf of St Lawrence down the coast Nova Scotia or further to Maine, etc. FWIW Vinland is a great name for the eastern half of North America. We have dozens of wild grape species and it is the centre of diversity for the genus and so probably its place of evolutionary origin. Take that Bordeaux wine snobs!
- cryptonector 6y agoThe Vikings were good at advertising. Greenland wasn't green. Vinland probably had no vines. Also, the northernmost extent of vines depends on the climate of the time, which may well have been quite a bit warmer than today's, in Nova Scotia.
- bregma 6y agoIceland was obviously their first marketing faux pas.
- throwaway0a5e 6y agoIt's my understanding that the climate at the time was at the peak of a warm cycle (basically the opposite of the little ice age) which had the effect of increasing the range of more southerly plant species. We know that the one place they did have a small settlement in Newfoundland would have been forested at the time even though it is not today. This warm period ending coincides with the abandonment of Greenland.
- fogihujy 6y agoAlso, the Norse had a somewhat different idea of what wine is; if the Norse did indeed talk about berries they could make wine from, then they probably meant currant or something similar.
- fallingfrog 6y agoOne interesting thing I’ve learned about the Viking settlers is that they didn’t come to Iceland and Greenland as conquerors, like Columbus did- in fact when they arrived in both places, they were the first inhabitants. Iceland is one of the few places anywhere in the world that never went through waves of immigration or displacement or ethnic cleansing or what have you. The Greenland settlement was abandoned, but that was for economic reasons- the market for ivory was flooded by cheap elephant ivory, so the trade in walrus ivory became worthless. But there was no starvation or donner party scenario- they just packed everything onto ships, locked the doors and moved back to Denmark. Pretty peaceful overall for people who have a reputation for being barbarians.
- Mediterraneo10 6y agoIceland was probably not uninhabited when the Vikings got there.[0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papar
- fallingfrog 6y agoThat’s splitting hairs, a few monks living in seclusion (not having children) doesn’t really count as habitation per se.
- Mediterraneo10 6y agoOne tradition says that they felt compelled to leave. That still means that Norse settlement was not as peaceful and rosy as you made it out to be.
- fallingfrog 6y agoI'm just pointing out that most of the inhabited places in the world have extremely bloody histories; England went through waves of conquest by Gauls, Brits, Romans, Norse, Normans, etc, etc. Other places are similar. Any given city in Asia or Europe has probably been sacked and its inhabitants slaughtered at some point or another. Whereas Iceland has not gone through the same thing, and today, it is remarkable peaceful- the violent crime rate is super low. I just wonder if there is a connection there- perhaps having a region be conquered and subjugated leaves generational scars that never heal.
- voldacar 6y agoGiven sane priors, shouldn't one always assume that they penetrated farther into the continent by some amount than the recovered artifacts indicate? 1) for any single artifact X, the chance that X is found at the innermost point that vikings reached is low, given the large number of artifacts they would have generated 2) the exact number of discoverable artifacts is unknown, and the majority of this number must be undiscovered so far Archeologists' failure to think this way has always baffled me. Bayesian archeology should be a thing
- acjohnson55 6y agoI'm pretty sure they do think this way. That's basically what this article is about. I've learned you have to distinguish between what is known to be true with near certainty, what is considered plausible, and what is at the edge of possible. The history books focus on the first, but that doesn't mean archeologists aren't thinking about the 2nd and 3rd. Speculation on what is possible is what helps them decide what projects to attempt.
- jcranmer 6y agoExcept there's another factor: 3) Artifacts can be (and often were!) traded between different places, so presence of an artifact associated with a culture may be indicative of trade and not physical presence of the artifact.
- voldacar 6y agoYeah that is definitely true. In fact that makes a lot of these questions essentially impossible to answer
- maxerickson 6y agoGiven the incredibly small number of artifacts that are going to exist, I don't really see why it would matter. The story about the sailboat trip to find the camp on the beach shows that they are plenty willing to investigate assumptions based on evidence they do have. With ~0 evidence to go on and a continent to search, what more would they do?
- 6y ago
- davidw 6y ago> Vinland enjoyed more hours of daylight than Greenland: ‘In the depth of winter, the sun was aloft by mid-morning and still visible at mid-afternoon,’ information that places Vinland somewhere between New Jersey and the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. > In 1960, the Norwegian explorer Helge Ingstad and his wife, the archaeologist Anne Stine Ingstad, set out to find these places I'm imagining a kind of mashup where these Norwegian explorers end up in some kind of urban New Jersey setting along the lines of the Daniel Pinkwater books.
- el_nahual 6y agoThe settlement in L’Anse aux Meadows dates from the year 1000 and was excavated in 1968--basically a thousand years later. From the article: > ...they asked the locals about possible Viking remains. One man showed them some grassy mounds on a beach [...] The structures turned out to be the collapsed remains of eight sod buildings originally held up by wooden frames. What are the odds of grassy mounds surviving for one thousand years on a beach?! This conflicts with my mental model of how mutable the world is. I would have imagined that the site would have been turned over many hundreds of times by storms, winds, or surges. I understand ancient sites that last for thousands of years in the desert, or a cave...In ancient sites in the jungle, a thousand years worth of trees will grow over pyramids, breaking them down but leaving the stone materials more-or-less in place (though terribly weathered) and that seems like a much less hostile environment than a beach.
- Retric 6y agoGeology is really slow. If a hill lost 1 foot per 1000 years it would need to have started at 9.5 miles high to last just 50 million years. Loose sand can be moved around quite a bit, but this is a rocky area with plenty of plant life to keep soil stable.
- BurningFrog 6y agoThere is obviously some selection bias here. You see the one structure that survived, but not the N similar ones that did disappear. There is also the "News Fallacy" to be aware of: The news only report on unusual things. It's easy to start thinking they're very common, since they dominate reporting.
- bregma 6y agoThe L'Anse aux Meadows site is not on the beach. It's inland a ways enough to be protected from the tides. It's in a place where trees don't grow so there aren't any roots to destroy the site and sedges don't do a lot of damage. I've been to a number of iron age sites that are more intact than L'anse aux Meadows was when it was first excavated. I don't see why it shouldn't have been in the state it was in.
- cmrdporcupine 6y ago
- fiftyacorn 6y agoDid anyone see the Dan snow documentary trying to identify anther Viking settlement? Sadly it wasn't a ceremony but we an interesting program