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Seems plausible to me that beads could’ve reached the Americas before Columbus, although the dates seem AWFULLY close to Columbus. Error bars on measurements li
by Robotbeat 1y ago
Seems plausible to me that beads could’ve reached the Americas before Columbus, although the dates seem AWFULLY close to Columbus. Error bars on measurements like this seem like they almost certainly overlap 1492. +/- 30 years (or more) seems pretty typical for that age of sample. https://radiocarbon.pl/en/uncertainty-of-radiocarbon-date/ https://radiocarbon.pl/en/uncertainty-of-radiocarbon-date/
- chilmers 1y agoSeems at least one scholar was extremely skeptical of these claims. Says these types of bead weren't even manufactured in Venice until circa 1560: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-antiquity/article/abs/reconsidering-the-precolumbian-presence-of-venetian-glass-beads-in-alaska/AA4A54ADE2EB416A447EBB6A12EC7831 https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-antiquity/a...
- mmooss 1y ago> the dates seem AWFULLY close to Columbus What would that matter? Columbus was nowhere near Alaska.
- esperent 1y agoSuppose that beads became a hot trade item. How fast could they have been traded from the Caribbean to Alaska? It seems like 30 years is a reasonable time for that.
- gus_massa 1y agoIn that case, I'd expect to find a few beads in the middle.
- Robotbeat 1y agoMaybe we will.
- mmooss 1y agoThat's the opposite of evidence; there's a very good reason it has no standing in science.
- Robotbeat 1y agoIt took a while to find this one. Absence of evidence is not exactly evidence of absence. That’s the point.
- mmooss 1y agoYou've misunderstood. It's hard to prove a negative, which is the point. But made-up things are lies - evidence is the only currency of the realm.
- HelloImSteven 1y agoI took their meaning to be that we should keep looking into the whole matter since, either way, there might be more evidence to find. I don’t think they were dismissing this theory or its implications for political/ideological reasons—since they mentioned it seems plausible—but I could be naive. In any case, clearly the prevailing understanding is wrong in one way or another, and that should be reflected in curriculums alongside this new evidence.
- Robotbeat 1y agoYeah, although again, the error bars are too large to say with certainty this was pre-Columbus. But it really wouldn’t surprise me. As others pointed out, the Inuit traveled across the Bering Strait into what is now Russia many times pre-Columbus, so the idea they may have brought beads back with them is plausible.