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The 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 th

The 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 ago
Geology 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 ago
There 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 ago
The 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
As another commenter pointed out, it's not really on the beach per se, but set back and up some. I haven't been there since I was 8 but I have a fairly strong visual memory of the site. It was really neat. There was a spot on the ground where wild strawberries grew (vs the area next to it) in a nice rectangle because there'd been (I believe) a stable there and fertility in the ground was still higher than adjacent to it, 1000 years later. And it being an almost sub-arctic location growth, decay etc. would be a lot slower. It's cold and maritime. Also not a terribly pleasant place. Exposed and cold; I remember watching an iceberg float off the coast a few hundred feet from the site. It was August.
rozab 6y ago
Most neolithic sites are basically grassy mounds. They're everywhere, both in Europe and North America.

Retric 6y ago

Geology 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 ago

There 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 ago

The 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

As another commenter pointed out, it's not really on the beach per se, but set back and up some. I haven't been there since I was 8 but I have a fairly strong visual memory of the site. It was really neat. There was a spot on the ground where wild strawberries grew (vs the area next to it) in a nice rectangle because there'd been (I believe) a stable there and fertility in the ground was still higher than adjacent to it, 1000 years later. And it being an almost sub-arctic location growth, decay etc. would be a lot slower. It's cold and maritime. Also not a terribly pleasant place. Exposed and cold; I remember watching an iceberg float off the coast a few hundred feet from the site. It was August.

rozab 6y ago

Most neolithic sites are basically grassy mounds. They're everywhere, both in Europe and North America.