29 ms·

How likely is this to be real? If real, was this work originally widely read in its time?

cperciva 5y ago
Quite aside from the difficulty of obtaining copies -- copying texts was an arduous process -- the vast majority of the population of Europe was illiterate so nothing was widely read at the time.
btilly 5y ago
This is certainly real. An unfinished and unpublished work in an era before the printing press is guaranteed to not have been widely read. But the voyages to Vinland went from Greenland. And Greenland had a bishop who wrote to the church. And priests sent letters to each other. It is hardly surprising that one seeking to write a book on distant history and lands would have encountered information from so far afield.
- jcranmer 5y ago
  > And Greenland had a bishop who wrote to the church. Most of the bishops of Greenland never actually lived in Greenland. Certainly, the bishops never found out that the Greenland settlements had been abandoned, and bishops were appointed until 1537 despite all contact with Greenland ceasing circa 1400.
  - btilly 5y ago
    Judging from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gar%C3%B0ar,_Greenland#Diocese_of_Gar%C3%B0ar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gar%C3%B0ar,_Greenland#Diocese..., most of the bishops up through the 1300s did spend time in Greenland.
ummonk 5y ago
According to the paper (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00822884.2021.1943792 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00822884.2021.1...), it wasn't widely known (or at least believed) in Italy at the time (since Genoese maps didn't reflect North American lands). There is no reason to suspect this isn't real - it's hard to fabricate a convincing forgery of a medieval Latin manuscript. And this manuscript itself is perfectly plausible - all it's really showing is that one Italian friar somehow (perhaps via Genoese sailors) learnt about what Viking sailors already knew about the New World.
tokai 5y ago
From the research article: «The Cronica universalis is thought to be one of his later works, perhaps the last one, and was left unfinished and unperfected» So I would guess only few read it. But the friar would have had the information from other sources available to him, and presumably others. The provenance of the manuscript sounds pretty solid to me. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00822884.2021.1943792 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00822884.2021.1...
jaclaz 5y ago
> Galvano, after describing Iceland and Greenland, writes: “Farther westwards there is another land, named Marckalada, where giants live; in this land, there are buildings with such huge slabs of stone that nobody could build them, except huge giants. There are also green trees, animals and a great quantity of birds.” The manuscript is real, it is the contents that (IMHO) are senselessly considered "real". Besides the huge giants, where are the buildings made with huge slabs of stone in Northern America, built before 1300? If they were so huge to be included in the characterization of this Marckalada, isn't it strange that no traces of them were found? It is more likely that what the monk did was only to transcribe the (invented) stories and (fantastical) myths learned by this or that sailor.
- qw 5y ago
  What if the North Americans told the Europeans stories about the stone buildings in South America? The buildings had already existed for a long time when the Vikings visited. It is unlikely that they would have seen them in person, but stories could have travelled for generations over long distances. The first pyramids in America were built 1500-2000 years before the Vikings. We are closer to the Viking age, than they were to the first stone buildings at the time. I don't think we should underestimate how far stories can travel given enough time.
  - jaclaz 5y ago
    >The first pyramids in America were built 1500-2000 years before the Vikings. We are closer to the Viking age, than they were to the first stone buildings at the time. I don't think we should underestimate how far stories can travel given enough time. Sure, but Occam's razor would probably come out with the fact that stories can be invented alright in almost no time. Fishermen (and sailors, and more generally travelers in the ancient times) have a long tradition of fabricating (tall) stories and/or exxagerating whatever they actually had seen or had been told, think of all the various bestiaries that were common in medieval times: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bestiary https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bestiary
  - jcranmer 5y ago
    The pyramids you're talking about are in Norte Chico, the Peruvian coast of South America. South American chronology firmly establishes a pretty continuous history from those early countries down through the Wari culture, which was the chief Andean empire at the time of the Viking visits to Vinland (most people are only familiar with their successor culture, the Inca). Shifting to Mesoamerica, we're in the very early Postclassic--Teotihuacan has been abandoned, and Maya dominance is shifting from the Guatemalan Highlands to the Yucatan Peninsula. These cultures also built large megalithic structures. In North America proper, 1000 correlates with the height of the Mississippian cultures, which are noted for their use of large earthen, not lithic structures. This is about when Cahokia is building Monk's Mound for example. Going further northeast across the Appalachians is difficult for me to come across firmer chronology, because the narrative is dominated by the setup of Native Americans at the time of English settlement (~1600 and later), which isn't the same as that at the time of Viking settlement (~1000-1100). Although it is worth pointing out that Viking settlement is roughly the time that the Dorset culture is being replaced by the Thule culture that makes up the modern Inuit. As for trade routes, there are pretty well-established trade routes linking many of these places. Mexico's Pacific Coast and the US Southwest cultures seems to have pretty strong trade routes with the Andean coastline regions, and metallurgy probably diffused along that route. It's also thought that there was extensive contact between the Andean highlands and the Amazon river basin, and there are some tentative suggestions that the lineage of pottery in Mississippian and antecedent Southeastern cultures comes from the Amazon via the Caribbean. But Mesoamerica and the US Southwest are somewhat insulated from Mississippian and Southeastern cultures by large desert and semidesert regions, and most notably, corn takes an awfully long time to make its way from Mesoamerica into the eastern US, first showing up only around 1000. I'd be more likely to point to Inuksuk [1] as a basis for large stone construction known to the Vikings than stone pyramids existing very, very remotely along the trading routes. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inuksuk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inuksuk

Quite aside from the difficulty of obtaining copies -- copying texts was an arduous process -- the vast majority of the population of Europe was illiterate so nothing was widely read at the time.

btilly 5y ago

This is certainly real. An unfinished and unpublished work in an era before the printing press is guaranteed to not have been widely read. But the voyages to Vinland went from Greenland. And Greenland had a bishop who wrote to the church. And priests sent letters to each other. It is hardly surprising that one seeking to write a book on distant history and lands would have encountered information from so far afield.

jcranmer 5y ago
> And Greenland had a bishop who wrote to the church. Most of the bishops of Greenland never actually lived in Greenland. Certainly, the bishops never found out that the Greenland settlements had been abandoned, and bishops were appointed until 1537 despite all contact with Greenland ceasing circa 1400.
- btilly 5y ago
  Judging from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gar%C3%B0ar,_Greenland#Diocese_of_Gar%C3%B0ar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gar%C3%B0ar,_Greenland#Diocese..., most of the bishops up through the 1300s did spend time in Greenland.

ummonk 5y ago

According to the paper (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00822884.2021.1943792 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00822884.2021.1...), it wasn't widely known (or at least believed) in Italy at the time (since Genoese maps didn't reflect North American lands). There is no reason to suspect this isn't real - it's hard to fabricate a convincing forgery of a medieval Latin manuscript. And this manuscript itself is perfectly plausible - all it's really showing is that one Italian friar somehow (perhaps via Genoese sailors) learnt about what Viking sailors already knew about the New World.

tokai 5y ago

From the research article: «The Cronica universalis is thought to be one of his later works, perhaps the last one, and was left unfinished and unperfected» So I would guess only few read it. But the friar would have had the information from other sources available to him, and presumably others. The provenance of the manuscript sounds pretty solid to me. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00822884.2021.1943792 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00822884.2021.1...

jaclaz 5y ago

> Galvano, after describing Iceland and Greenland, writes: “Farther westwards there is another land, named Marckalada, where giants live; in this land, there are buildings with such huge slabs of stone that nobody could build them, except huge giants. There are also green trees, animals and a great quantity of birds.” The manuscript is real, it is the contents that (IMHO) are senselessly considered "real". Besides the huge giants, where are the buildings made with huge slabs of stone in Northern America, built before 1300? If they were so huge to be included in the characterization of this Marckalada, isn't it strange that no traces of them were found? It is more likely that what the monk did was only to transcribe the (invented) stories and (fantastical) myths learned by this or that sailor.

qw 5y ago
What if the North Americans told the Europeans stories about the stone buildings in South America? The buildings had already existed for a long time when the Vikings visited. It is unlikely that they would have seen them in person, but stories could have travelled for generations over long distances. The first pyramids in America were built 1500-2000 years before the Vikings. We are closer to the Viking age, than they were to the first stone buildings at the time. I don't think we should underestimate how far stories can travel given enough time.
- jaclaz 5y ago
  >The first pyramids in America were built 1500-2000 years before the Vikings. We are closer to the Viking age, than they were to the first stone buildings at the time. I don't think we should underestimate how far stories can travel given enough time. Sure, but Occam's razor would probably come out with the fact that stories can be invented alright in almost no time. Fishermen (and sailors, and more generally travelers in the ancient times) have a long tradition of fabricating (tall) stories and/or exxagerating whatever they actually had seen or had been told, think of all the various bestiaries that were common in medieval times: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bestiary https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bestiary
- jcranmer 5y ago
  The pyramids you're talking about are in Norte Chico, the Peruvian coast of South America. South American chronology firmly establishes a pretty continuous history from those early countries down through the Wari culture, which was the chief Andean empire at the time of the Viking visits to Vinland (most people are only familiar with their successor culture, the Inca). Shifting to Mesoamerica, we're in the very early Postclassic--Teotihuacan has been abandoned, and Maya dominance is shifting from the Guatemalan Highlands to the Yucatan Peninsula. These cultures also built large megalithic structures. In North America proper, 1000 correlates with the height of the Mississippian cultures, which are noted for their use of large earthen, not lithic structures. This is about when Cahokia is building Monk's Mound for example. Going further northeast across the Appalachians is difficult for me to come across firmer chronology, because the narrative is dominated by the setup of Native Americans at the time of English settlement (~1600 and later), which isn't the same as that at the time of Viking settlement (~1000-1100). Although it is worth pointing out that Viking settlement is roughly the time that the Dorset culture is being replaced by the Thule culture that makes up the modern Inuit. As for trade routes, there are pretty well-established trade routes linking many of these places. Mexico's Pacific Coast and the US Southwest cultures seems to have pretty strong trade routes with the Andean coastline regions, and metallurgy probably diffused along that route. It's also thought that there was extensive contact between the Andean highlands and the Amazon river basin, and there are some tentative suggestions that the lineage of pottery in Mississippian and antecedent Southeastern cultures comes from the Amazon via the Caribbean. But Mesoamerica and the US Southwest are somewhat insulated from Mississippian and Southeastern cultures by large desert and semidesert regions, and most notably, corn takes an awfully long time to make its way from Mesoamerica into the eastern US, first showing up only around 1000. I'd be more likely to point to Inuksuk [1] as a basis for large stone construction known to the Vikings than stone pyramids existing very, very remotely along the trading routes. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inuksuk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inuksuk