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I love when believed 'mythology' is shown to be fact. We write off our ancestors too often and they were great hackers in their own right. Now the Mythbusters

I love when believed 'mythology' is shown to be fact. We write off our ancestors too often and they were great hackers in their own right. Now the Mythbusters just need to get Archimedes mirror working one day!

martey 14y ago
I do not think that this paper proves anything about Viking navigation. While the researchers seem to have been able to prove that the found crystal is Iceland spar, it was recovered from a Elizabethan shipwreck in the English channel from 1592, centuries after the magnetic compass started being used in Europe. While other articles on the topic claim that they suggest that sunstones would have been destroyed in Viking burials, I think that the lack of similar crystals from known Viking ruins is troublesome.
- contingencies 14y ago
  Fair concerns. An interesting and not entirely unrelated tangent is that of the nearby Basques. In Salt: A World History, Mark Kurlansky presents a theory that the Basques preserved their ancient and linguistically disconnected culture by bartering salt-preserved fish gained from the vast stocks on the Atlantic coast as protein stocks to neighbouring peoples during the European winters. Evidence of such tools may lend some further support to this theory. (Edit: I just noticed he has also written The Basque History of the World: The Story of a Nation... that's definitely on my list now!)
  - rodelrod 14y ago
    Even if you concede that the basques did have an early start on exploiting the Newfoundland fisheries, that would have given them an edge for a few centuries after the year 1000 (more like 1400 if you wait for the necessary navigation technology). By the 3rd century AD, all of Iberia except for the Basque was speaking a romance language. So, this theory -- very poorly documented in itself -- fails to explain at the very least these mere 7 to 10 centuries of preservation of Basque identity. EDIT: by the way, I totally buy that Europeans were fishing for cod in Newfoundland before Columbus, and that at least some of those were basques. 15th century Portuguese maps calling those waters "Mare Baccalearum" are proof enough for me.
nnq 14y ago
you can get Archimedes mirror working, only that (if I remember the math) it just has to be very big - so you'd just have to wonder if the ancients would've really gone through the effort of building it without knowing if it would really be that useful in real ship warfare. I'm sure someone tested a prototype with toy papyrus boats or something, but I doubt the large scale equivalent would have been build if it ended up more expensive than an actual warship. We have all sorts of "wonder weapons" prototypes in the military labs, but 90% of them will never end up being used in real warfare. I guess the same was with Archimedes, but it had the added coolness of using Sun's power to buuuuurn you enemies ;)
smoyer 14y ago
Yep ... and eventually we'll probably show that most of these inventions can be traced back to one famous Scottish clan - The MacGyvers

martey 14y ago

I do not think that this paper proves anything about Viking navigation. While the researchers seem to have been able to prove that the found crystal is Iceland spar, it was recovered from a Elizabethan shipwreck in the English channel from 1592, centuries after the magnetic compass started being used in Europe. While other articles on the topic claim that they suggest that sunstones would have been destroyed in Viking burials, I think that the lack of similar crystals from known Viking ruins is troublesome.

contingencies 14y ago
Fair concerns. An interesting and not entirely unrelated tangent is that of the nearby Basques. In Salt: A World History, Mark Kurlansky presents a theory that the Basques preserved their ancient and linguistically disconnected culture by bartering salt-preserved fish gained from the vast stocks on the Atlantic coast as protein stocks to neighbouring peoples during the European winters. Evidence of such tools may lend some further support to this theory. (Edit: I just noticed he has also written The Basque History of the World: The Story of a Nation... that's definitely on my list now!)
- rodelrod 14y ago
  Even if you concede that the basques did have an early start on exploiting the Newfoundland fisheries, that would have given them an edge for a few centuries after the year 1000 (more like 1400 if you wait for the necessary navigation technology). By the 3rd century AD, all of Iberia except for the Basque was speaking a romance language. So, this theory -- very poorly documented in itself -- fails to explain at the very least these mere 7 to 10 centuries of preservation of Basque identity. EDIT: by the way, I totally buy that Europeans were fishing for cod in Newfoundland before Columbus, and that at least some of those were basques. 15th century Portuguese maps calling those waters "Mare Baccalearum" are proof enough for me.

nnq 14y ago

you can get Archimedes mirror working, only that (if I remember the math) it just has to be very big - so you'd just have to wonder if the ancients would've really gone through the effort of building it without knowing if it would really be that useful in real ship warfare. I'm sure someone tested a prototype with toy papyrus boats or something, but I doubt the large scale equivalent would have been build if it ended up more expensive than an actual warship. We have all sorts of "wonder weapons" prototypes in the military labs, but 90% of them will never end up being used in real warfare. I guess the same was with Archimedes, but it had the added coolness of using Sun's power to buuuuurn you enemies ;)

smoyer 14y ago

Yep ... and eventually we'll probably show that most of these inventions can be traced back to one famous Scottish clan - The MacGyvers