SCI NEW VIKING DISCOVERY IN CANADA 4-1-2016

[Doomer Doug]

Pictures taken from space "may" indicate a the Vikings went hundreds of miles further into the North American continent from their settlement in Newfoundland, Canada.
The link is here.
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35935725


A new discovery has revealed that the Vikings may have travelled hundreds of miles further into North America than previously thought. It's well known that they reached the tip of the continent more than 1,000 years ago, but the full extent of their exploration has remained a mystery, writes historian Dan Snow.

They scanned satellite pictures from across the east coast of America. Several sites appeared worth following up, but they had to decide on one for a dig. In the end they opted for a headland, almost the very western tip of Newfoundland, 400 miles further south and west than the only known Viking site in North America.

It overlooked two bays, offering protection for ships from any wind direction. Parcak saw oddities in the soil that stood out - patterns and discolourations that suggested artificial, man-made structures, possibly even Viking longhouses, once stood there.

 

[WalknTrot]

Well, if you believe that the Kensington Runestone is authentic, they arrived near Alexandria, Minnesota in 1362.

 

[sssarawolf]

So Monday at 8:30 pm, on BBC one . I love history. I wonder if we will ever get to even see the special on it?

I still wonder why they disregard all the evidence through the year that the Vikings were in places like MN?

I guess they wouldn't want to change the version of history everyone has tried to pass off for the several decades.

 

[Doomer Doug]

I am talking about verified, scientifically valid, physical evidence, which is a much higher standard to meet. The reason this particular story is important is it means we now have documented proof the Vikings went deeper into Canada than first thought. Personally, I think a whole lot of different groups got to the North and South American continents before 1492. I also think the most likely group to be SCIENTIFICALLY VERIFIED will be the Vikings in North American. It is a logical progression from the Faroe Islands off of Scotland, to Iceland, to Greenland, and then to Newfoundland. Once there, IN MY OPINION IT IS A LOGICAL PROGRESSION TO GO DOWN THE RIVER SYSTEMS INTO THE GREAT LAKES AND OHIO RIVER VALLEYS. WE know the Vikings used the Volga River to travel to the Black Sea. We know they went up the Seine River to attack Paris. We know they went up the Thames to attack London, and the Severn to attack central England. We know they went up the Irish rivers. Why do people think it is a big deal the Vikings could very well have gone to Minnesota, or down to the Gulf of Mexico?

The Vikings were thugs, rapists, psychos and crooks, but they were also first class explorers, master ship builders and handlers, as well as quite wiling to sail anywhere they could.

This finding is a precursor event to the admission Vikings went deep into the USA around 900 to 1300 AD.

 

[WalknTrot]

The Vikings were thugs, rapists, psychos and crooks, but they were also...

...family.

Really, the use of satellite photos should be a real game-changer for archaeologists. It's amazing what traces can remain on the terrain, even after 1000 years, especially in N. America, with so much of the land mass still relatively undisturbed. The northernmost maritime lands are often quite barren, and expose even more landscape artifacts.

 

[Intestinal Fortitude]

...family.

.

and farmers

 

[WalknTrot]

and Traders. They opened up many trade routes to the east through Russia. That's why the Vikings had a ton of influence in Russia. Basically built the Russian civilization.

 

[Intestinal Fortitude]

and Traders. They opened up many trade routes to the east through Russia. That's why the Vikings had a ton of influence in Russia. Basically built the Russian civilization.

Yes.
Vilnius, Lithuania - Baltic Area - The Rus peoples - Trading goods from as far as China and down to the Black Sea

 

[Melodi]

Yep, the majority of the Norse were not thugs and raiders; they were farmers (who ran out of land at home) traders, colonists, merchant seamen, mercenaries, weavers, famous weapon makers, artists, and a lot of other things.

Even at the time "going a Viking" when said by most people, was similar to saying that "so and so is a Privateer" in the 18th or 19th centuries; which is not to say there were not a lot of violent people involved in raiding and plundering; but the main ultimate reason was to gain land for farming and to set up trading centers.

I have the TV set to "RECORD" for the BBC program on this next Monday night when unfortunately I will be back in Waterford as Nightwolf goes back for yet another procedure; but because I saw the story yesterday, I am pretty sure it is legit and the program is certainly real.

Now, that said; if this site is confirmed it is actually THE THIRD confirmed site; as a trading post has been verified at Baffin Island that was used by Europeans from around 1,000 to 1400 AD; not only did they find a European drop spindle there (Norse took their women with them) but they found the DNA of European rats some of the fibers there.

This new site, is still within the same general area as the first confirmed site; and looks to me like a pattern similar to the settlement of Greenland (with its East and West colonial centers) and most of the Norse would have been from (or at least stopped over in) Greenland, before coming to Vineland.

The Sagas themselves hint at more than one colony, the repeated use of the main colony by different people even after the first group of settlers "gave up" and continued voyages to Vineland at least for trade in Wood of which Greenland has very little and the East Cost of North America has quite a lot.

Nightwolf believes for technical reasons that the "Rune Stone" is a very good fake; I'm sure he could give us all the details if he were feeling well enough but most of them have to do with tiny shifts in how runic patterns were written and constructed between the 13th century (when runes were falling out of fashion anyway) and those used by 18th and 19th century folklorists in the US and Europe. He wishes it were real, and he studied it a lot - still you can't date stone (at least not yet) so still a question mark.

The Norse COULD have gone just about anywhere, but the Sagas speak of great resistance from the locals; remember that the largest city known to have existed in North America (which probably had a standing army) was not THAT far inland (St. Luis Area) especially since the Norse liked to go inland over river routes (their boats came apart and could be carried or put on wheels, that is how they went down the Volga).

If we ever write the Vikings in Vinland book, we were going to have this as an issue - either by direct confrontation or by the colonists getting the word via traders that their are highly organized "States" not to far from the coast with a large population and good weapons.

Even with iron weapons, the Norse were just too few to take something like that on and even though fewer Europeans managed it 500 years later; they had diseases that helped them.

We simply don't know if the Norse brought some diseases or not, because there are no records about that and most Native American tribes prohibit the examination of remains; so even if a tenth century Plague pit" were found, it is unlikely that much would be learned from it (depending on the tribe and their decisions).

 

[northern watch]

Satellites find elusive second Norse settlement in Newfoundland

RALPH BLUMENTHAL
The New York Times News Service
Published Friday, April 01, 2016 7:06AM EDT
Last updated Friday, April 01, 2016 7:12AM EDT

A thousand years after the Vikings braved the icy seas from Greenland to the New World in search of timber and plunder, satellite technology has found intriguing evidence of a long-elusive prize in archaeology – a second Norse settlement in North America, farther south than ever known.

The new Canadian site, with telltale signs of iron-working, was discovered last summer after infrared images from 400 miles in space showed possible man-made shapes under discolored vegetation. The site is on the southwest coast of Newfoundland, about 300 miles south of L’Anse aux Meadows, the first and only confirmed Viking settlement in North America, discovered in 1960.

Last year, Sarah H. Parcak, a leading space archaeologist working with Canadian experts and the science series NOVA for a two-hour television documentary, “Vikings Unearthed,” that will be aired on PBS next week, turned her eyes in the sky on coastlines from Baffin Island to Massachusetts.

Magnetometer readings later taken at a remote site, called Point Rosee by researchers, a grassy headland above a rocky beach an hour’s trek from the nearest road, showed elevated iron readings. And trenches that were then dug exposed Viking-style turf walls along with ash residue, roasted ore called bog iron and a fire-cracked boulder – signs of metallurgy not associated with native people of the region.

In addition, radiocarbon tests dating the materials to the Norse era, and the absence of historical objects pointing to any other cultures, helped convince scientists involved in the project and outside experts of the site’s promise. The experts are to resume digging there this summer.

“It screams, ‘Please excavate me!’” said Parcak, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

The NOVA program will stream online at pbs.org/nova in the United States at 3:30 p.m. Eastern on Monday and will be broadcast on PBS at 9 p.m. Wednesday.

“Tremendous, if it’s really true,” said William Fitzhugh, director of the Arctic Studies Center and Curator in Anthropology at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington. “It wouldn’t be unexpected,” he said, but added that he wanted to see the data.


http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news...e-settlement-in-newfoundland/article29490975/

 

[Melodi]

I have no idea why "Trading Centers" changed color and type, I wasn't trying to do that; but as I said this almost certainly is true, there is some evidence of iron smelting and as far as we know, the Native Americans hadn't figure that one out (copper is hotly debated).

But like I said, the settlement pattern would fit Greenland and 300 miles is nothing to people who traveled the entire known world (and then some) in their sea going ships.

One really interesting thing is the Native Americans on Newfoundland, made canoes that were modified to have prows and rudders like the Norse Ships and could be used on the open Ocean; they are very different from the canoes their neighbors were using.

Unfortunately none of the Beothuck survived long enough to very the stories; like the one written up by the ambassador from Portugal to the court of King Henry the 8th in England. The Ambassador reported that he saw two "Englishmen" with light hair and skins, dressed in full court dress but when he went to chat with them while waiting for the royal audience it became obvious they didn't know a word of English; he then learned they were from I think John Cabot's expedition to Newfoundland or another really early English voyage.

Now a 16th century Portuguese ambassador would have seen people in his home trading ports from everywhere; Africans would have been common and he would also have been likely to have met Asians and possibly even folks from India and China (as well as the Middle East and Eastern Europe).

He doesn't mistake the Native Americans for Portuguese, Italians or even Asian Indians; he thinks on first glance they are English (and they are dressed up in English clothing to meet the King).

Finally the whole thing is just as "aside" in a letter to a friend back home along the lines of "interesting things that happened to me this week" making it a lot more likely to be true, in fact the whole exchange only survives because the letters do.

Obvious connection: it is highly, highly likely that some of the Beothuck were related to the Norse settlers either direction through marriage or indirectly via "encounters."

Can't be proved unless it shows up somewhere in the DNA (and the bones could be tested, which now is not likely); but it makes the most sense to me than other theories.

 

[Housecarl]

...family.

Really, the use of satellite photos should be a real game-changer for archaeologists. It's amazing what traces can remain on the terrain, even after 1000 years, especially in N. America, with so much of the land mass still relatively undisturbed. The northernmost maritime lands are often quite barren, and expose even more landscape artifacts.

It has been. They've been finding all sorts of stuff all over. So much so that they've got more than they know what to look at first. Also in the case of MENA sites, they're just to dangerous to check out right now.

 

[Doomer Doug]

bump