Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03972-8

by bcaulfield • 5 years ago

655 391 5 years ago

stuff4ben• 5 years ago

It begs the question then of what happened to them? Did they integrate with existing Native Americans? Or did they just die out? Are there stories from Native Americans in the area that report Norsemen in the area?

belval• 5 years ago

I wonder if they could check the DNA of the natives that were originally from that area for any "old" Europeans markers or if there was too much mixing from the colonization for such a thing to work.

mig393• 5 years ago

Unfortunately, the aboriginal population of Newfoundland didn't survive contact with subsequent European settlers:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beothuk

larrik• 5 years ago

They probably just went home.

amackera• 5 years ago

They sailed home to Greenland, presumably, and wrote about their adventures in sagas.

Unfortunately the indigenous peoples of Newfoundland (the Beothuk) were forced into starvation by the encroachment of European fishermen, so we don't have a lot of knowledge of their folklore or oral traditions.

fullstop• 5 years ago

Did they integrate with existing Native Americans?

According to the article, no:

"The Icelandic sagas suggest that the Norse engaged in cultural exchanges with the Indigenous groups of North America. If these encounters indeed occurred, they may have had inadvertent outcomes, such as pathogen transmission, the introduction of foreign flora and fauna species, or even the exchange of human genetic information. Recent data from the Norse Greenlandic population, however, show no evidence of the last of these. It is a matter for future research how the year AD 1021 relates to overall transatlantic activity by the Norse. Nonetheless, our findings provide a chronological anchor for further investigations into the consequences of their westernmost expansion."

edit: re-reading this, they may have if they never returned to Greenland

roywiggins4• 5 years ago

They probably went home and/or died out, like in Greenland.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norse_colonization_of_North_...

aww_dang• 5 years ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmbY-GrM8pI

There are different theories. I enjoyed this exploration of the topic.

One of the most unlikely tales of a society’s fall is the incredible saga of the Vikings of Greenland. Find out how these European settlers built a society on the farthest edge of their world, and survived for centuries among some of the harshest conditions ever faced by man. Discover how this civilization was able to overcome the odds for so long, and examine the evidence about what happened to cause its final and mysterious collapse. Including Viking poetry, Inuit folktales and thousands upon thousands of walrus.

uncertainrhymes• 5 years ago

Neither the Dorset nor Beothuk people overlapped in that particular place at that time. Newfoundland is an (enormous) island, and while there were various migrations over time there is no record of other peoples c1000 in that (rather inhospitable) site.

bcaulfield2• 5 years ago

Strange to think this discovery was made at the apex of the Byzantime Empire under Basil II. The Roman Empire was still somewhat of a thing.

davidw2• 5 years ago

It's interesting to contemplate some of these overlaps that don't normally come to mind. The Republic of Venice, for instance, was still a going concern, albeit on its last legs, when the United States was founded.

sb0572• 5 years ago

Even more interesting to consider is the imperial Varangian Guard, comprised of Norse recruits. It's entirely possible that one of these Viking explorers in North America (or their descendants) later resided at court in Constantinople.

datameta2• 5 years ago

And it is also possible that a Varangian that visited North America ended up as a chief or advisor of a slavic tribe.

ilamont• 5 years ago

The Icelandic sagas suggest that the Norse engaged in cultural exchanges with the Indigenous groups of North America34. If these encounters indeed occurred, they may have had inadvertent outcomes, such as pathogen transmission7, the introduction of foreign flora and fauna species, or even the exchange of human genetic information. Recent data from the Norse Greenlandic population, however, show no evidence of the last of these.

Is it possible the Vikings were not in that location long enough for populations to mix? Or they were so remote (physically, culturally, and linguistically) that limited opportunities arose? Or something else?

hprotagonist• 5 years ago

I think the consensus has been for some time that they showed up, caught some fish, logged a few trees, decided it sucked, and left, all in probably less than a decade.

simonklitj• 5 years ago

I love that idea. "Man, this is just like back home, let's go boys."

philwelch2• 5 years ago

According to some sources, one factor is that Newfoundland was so heavily populated with indigenous people that there wasn’t enough room for a Norse colony to grow. By the time the English made it back to Newfoundland, smallpox and other epidemics had devastated the indigenous population.

irrational4• 5 years ago

This is the part I don't get. These guys were awesome sailors. It didn't occur to them to sail down the coast until they got to the Florida Keys and set up a little surf shop?

ravenstine• 5 years ago

"On second thought, let's not stay in America. It is a silly place."

mig393• 5 years ago

Sounds like my summer vacation in Newfoundland in July 2021.

Not much has changed! Kidding.

Unless they were fishing for cod (usually offshore), they weren't doing so well on the Northern Peninsula of Newfoundland. And the trees in that area of Newfoundland are skinny, short, and useless for most construction.

I think they just landed on the part of Newfoundland that has the least to offer. It's still that way 1000 years later.

Had they landed in one of the bays on the East Coast of Newfoundland, they might have enjoyed better weather, better shelter, better fishing, and more contact with the local aboriginal population.

9999000009992• 5 years ago

I can imagine an indigenous woman having a fling with a viking and just rasing the kid in her village. No one the wiser.

It would be impossible to know if this happened. Even if you found someone with both indigenous and Viking genetics, you don't know if it's because his great grandfather came from Norway in the 1920s.

The history of early American immigration is absolutely fascinating, there was a story of a Chinese man who just told everyone he was an indigenous American in order to avoid discrimination. I've actually met people from Eastern Europe who ended up working at Telemundo, no one can tell that they're not ethnically Hispanic. In fact, who to say what Hispanic is. There are plenty of Asians in Latin America, if some decide to migrate to America are they not still Hispanic ?

hobs• 5 years ago

I can imagine an indigenous woman having a fling with a viking and just rasing the kid in her village. No one the wiser.

Except everyone who saw the kid?

wolverine8762• 5 years ago

Even if you found someone with both indigenous and Viking genetics, you don't know if it's because his great grandfather came from Norway in the 1920s.

Are you sure? My impression is that genetics are used to determine when humans spread across the world and how populations mixed.

selimthegrim2• 5 years ago

My (Punjabi) great grandfther told the Census takers this in the twenties in Detroit. Worked like a charm apparently.

anthk7• 5 years ago

Hispanic can be any race. Blacks in Cuba/Haiti, white in Argentina/Spain, mostly mixed across the pond, native South American, some Japanese descendants in Peru...

sb0572• 5 years ago

Genetic research suggests American Indian descendants in modern day Iceland.

https://phys.org/news/2010-11-vikings-brought-amerindian-ice...

zw1234563• 5 years ago

you guys are too fast :) sorry for my dupe post.

INTPenis• 5 years ago

Yeah but it can only be traced back to the 17th century iirc. Around that time many native americans were stolen or just shipped out of north america for various reasons.

zw1234563• 5 years ago

oops just saw you post, you are way ahead of me. https://phys.org/news/2010-11-vikings-brought-amerindian-ice...

LudwigNagasena3• 5 years ago

the exchange of human genetic information

This sounds like a parody of scientific jargon. Why do people write like this?..

arrosenberg• 5 years ago

Reminds me of the all time great line from the Simpson's House of Horrors episode where Kang and Kodos impersonate Bill Clinton and Bob Dole - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgBFiCmYedc

hn_throwaway_99• 5 years ago

Because of context. They're not just talking about "sex", the entire research is concerned with evidence of the exchange of "stuff" between societies": objects, pathogens, culture, and, yes, "human genetic information".

bjornsing• 5 years ago

“Inadvertent exchange of human genetic information”… :)

privatdozent• 5 years ago

Scandinavians are pretty proud of this fact. Look up Leif Erikson, supposedly the first European to set foot in America, 500 years before Columbus.

broof3• 5 years ago

I still would say that Columbus was the first to "discover" America, in the sense that Leif Erikson showed up, left, and didn't really make a big deal out of it. which to be fair, makes sense if you look on google earth and zoom in and follow from Iceland up to northern Canada. It just all feels more or less the same, so eventually they turned around and left.

capableweb• 5 years ago

Is "making noise about it" what we consider discovery now? I'd say the first person finding and visiting the place is indeed the discoverer of that place. Maybe Columbus popularised it rather.

avgcorrection4• 5 years ago

That dude who was first to the South Pole wasn’t “really” first, either; he just showed up and, you know, left before some arbitrary time limit that I made up.

zardo• 5 years ago

By the standards of his culture, Leif Erickson's discovery of Vinland had as much publicity as any distant event.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saga_of_the_Greenlanders

burkaman2• 5 years ago

Why do you think he didn't make a big deal out of it? I feel like any event we know about from thousand-year-old sagas must have been a big deal, otherwise it wouldn't have been preserved and recorded.

jfengel2• 5 years ago

Seems like a weird thing to be proud of. "We found this whole new continent, sparsely populated and rich with all kinds of resources, but only explored a tiny piece of it and then basically ignored it/forgot about it."

I suppose it's better than "We found a whole new continent, killed vast numbers of inhabitants, and then brought over millions of others to subject to horrific abuse".

PeterisP3• 5 years ago

Didn't Columbus die without ever claiming or even knowing that he found a whole new continent? As far as he was concerned, he succeeded in finding another trade route to Asia.

tim3332• 5 years ago

It showed they had decent boats a long time ago though.

jjtheblunt• 5 years ago

also interesting:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bjarni_Herj%C3%B3lfsson

efa• 5 years ago

I thought this has been known for awhile. I visited the site in Newfoundland like 15 years ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L'Anse_aux_Meadows

roywiggins4• 5 years ago

The research is about pinning the date down.

jonny_eh• 5 years ago

I thought this has been known for awhile

What, in particular, are you referring to?

Afforess• 5 years ago

Leif Erikson? Popularized by Spongebob, no less.

thereddaikon• 5 years ago

I was taught that Leif Erikson led an expedition to Newfoundland over 20 years ago in public school.

"Transatlantic exploration took place centuries before the crossing of Columbus. Physical evidence for early European presence in the Americas can be found in Newfoundland, Canada1,2. However, it has thus far not been possible to determine when this activity took place3,4,5. Here we provide evidence that the Vikings were present in Newfoundland in AD 1021. We overcome the imprecision of previous age estimates by making use of the cosmic-ray-induced upsurge in atmospheric radiocarbon concentrations in AD 993 (ref. 6). "

Seems that before hand the evidence was circumstantial and while everyone was confident it was the case, they can now prove it with better dating techniques.

SketchySeaBeast• 5 years ago

Leif Erikson led an expedition to Newfoundland over 20 years ago

I guess that's technically not wrong.

wolverine8762• 5 years ago

From the paper:

The received paradigm is that the Norse settlement dates to the close of the first millennium9; however, the precise age of the site has never been scientifically established.

The paper is about more precise dating, afaict, not a revelation that they arrived around then.

not2b2• 5 years ago

The news is the accurate dating, not the existence of the site (which is so well known that it is a UNESCO World Heritage site).

pvaldes2• 5 years ago

That depends entirely on the species of tree. Absolutely crucial in this case. Do they mention this data in the article?

dboreham• 5 years ago

From tfa: "However, it has thus far not been possible to determine when this activity took place"

sleavey• 5 years ago

Anyone else learn about the Viking landings on North America from Age of Empires 2 (1999)?

0000011111• 5 years ago

"These sudden increases were caused by cosmic radiation events, and appear synchronously in dendrochronological records all around the world" #### That is a pretty interesting method for dating historical sites. I wonder how much it will change the records as future research is done globally.

AlotOfReading6• 5 years ago

It's neat, but practically speaking it's an incremental improvement over what already exists. Dendrochronology is already capable of dating the felling year (which may be years or decades removed from the actual construction date). This allows you to date certain fellings to a particular season under ideal circumstances, and to start local dendrochronological records from a different fixed point.

lifeisstillgood3• 5 years ago

An interesting counter-factual that comes to mind - if the Norse Greenlanders had brought smallpox or other diseases with them, then Native Americans would have had 500 years to recover (and keep immunity?) - The conquistadors would have faced millions of not-dying-natives. A much different world would have resulted.

munk-a4• 5 years ago

Additionally - if natives had adopted and continued the domestication of animals that norse greenlanders brought over (probably pigs at least) then there might have been a counter-plague when europeans again visited in 500 years.

kypro2• 5 years ago

Not quite a plague, but syphilis likely came from Native Americans.

jjk1665• 5 years ago

That's unlikely. Part of the reason for the one way transmission of disease is simply the fact that Europeans were the ones making the crossings. Plenty of europeans got sick in the new world, but they either died in the new world or died on the ships during the long return journey. For a disease to cross the ocean, a carrier who is adapted to the disease must make the crossing. A few natives did go to Europe, but they were likely to die en route while surrounded by Europeans in rather unsanitary conditions.

Further, the europeans making these journeys were typically young and fit individuals who, again, could survive long voyages at sea and the difficulties of setting up new colonies. The elderly and infirm stayed in Europe. Thus the europeans were far less likely to suffer an outbreak of disease simply by virtue of having fewer human incubators. For the natives, however, there was nothing to prevent their most vulnerable from being exposed, nor any way to stop isolated cases from blowing up into large scale pandemics.

The only ways for a counter plague to get to Europe would be for either large numbers of natives to successfully cross the atlantic, which is unlikely when their population is simultaneously being decimated by disease, or for the Europeans to pick up a disease that took a long time to cause serious problems and thus could survive the return journey, which may have been the case for Syphillis. Either way, an "America Pox" is highly unlikely.

saiya-jin• 5 years ago

maybe that 1/few ships just happened to didn't carry smallpox and other nasties aboard

sillyquiet2• 5 years ago

yeah, unfortunately (I guess??!) smallpox didn't reach Europe until the Crusades.

queuebert3• 5 years ago

Parallel evolution of two strains of smallpox might have meant still no immunity to the Spanish version several centuries later.

And the diseases were only a small factor in the outcome of the colonization. Guns being a much larger factor, for example.

Y_Y• 5 years ago

And the diseases were only a small factor in the outcome of the colonization. Guns being a much larger factor, for example.

That's quite the claim to toss out. I can certainly imagine gunless conquistadors taking over New Spain in a slightly longer span just by waiting for people to die.

irrational4• 5 years ago

Is that true? I've read that 90+% of the population died from diseases, the vast majority without ever knowing about the European conquerors (that is, they never saw a gun). Imagine if 90% of the people in your nearest city died. How difficult would it be for a new group, immune to whatever killed almost everyone in the city, to move in and take over?

wbsss4412• 5 years ago

Source? Guns of the period weren’t very effective in that period. Most accounts I’ve seen attribute the conquistadors success to disease and political instability.

thehappypm3• 5 years ago

It would also mean smallpox would spread the other way. It’s interesting that the transfer of disease was so heavily one-sided.

throwaway8943455• 5 years ago

And the diseases were only a small factor in the outcome of the colonization. Guns being a much larger factor, for example.

I don't know how you get there. I'm pretty sure diseases went ahead of the colonists in many cases and wiped out entire civilizations before the colonists ever made contact. Even if it didn't wipe out literally everyone, it would have significantly destabilized or collapsed all significant political or economic systems.

Relatively speaking, any advantages of guns versus bows and arrows seem small. If I were inclined to make arguments about military technology, I'd speculate that plate armor and horses were more significant advantages than guns, but all of these pale in comparison to contagion.

jnwatson• 5 years ago

Between “discovery” and permanent settlement of the continental US, an estimated 55 million Native Americans died of disease. [1]

The colonization of North America would have gone quite differently with that many folks to contend with.

1. https://www.businessinsider.com/climate-changed-after-europe...

kibwen2• 5 years ago

Parallel evolution of two strains of smallpox might have meant still no immunity to the Spanish version several centuries later.

Though by the same token it could also have produced a plague that was devastating to the conquistadors, and might then have been carried back to Europe for Black Death Round 2, devastating the imperial powers and generating a long-lasting fear of New World contact. Lots of interesting AU scenarios to consider here.

WalterBright7• 5 years ago

And the diseases were only a small factor in the outcome of the colonization. Guns being a much larger factor, for example.

I'm not so sure about that. Writing gave a huge advantage to the Western forces. By that I mean military men had access to a couple thousand years of military tactics books. Having advanced weapons is one thing, knowing strategy and tactics is quite another.

For example, there are battles where the Romans were outnumbered 10:1 and still defeated a better armed barbarian army. The Romans were organized, disciplined, and trained to fight as a unit. They would just slaughter the barbarians who fought as individuals.

Remember, guns at the time were muzzle-loading, and had some rube goldberg contraption to light the powder. They were unreliable, inaccurate, and very slow to reload.

BurningFrog4• 5 years ago

That's really interesting!

Of course, if the native population died off around them, the Vikings would probably have expanded their settlements and perhaps ruled North America instead.

munk-a4• 5 years ago

It depends if they kept coming back. Smallpox worked to the settlers' advantage because colonizers were establishing themselves in the carribean and south america before any serious ventures into north america got going - so there was time for a pandemic to actually spread before folks really started getting serious about settling. I think with statistics and spread rates and all that it's likely that viking settlers would need to stick around for a decade or two to really see the effects in terms of population thinning.

lifeisstillgood3• 5 years ago

I don't think it works like that.

There seems to be a need for a minimum primary settler population and a decent amount of native assistance- it's fairly easy to build a new town 10 miles from your last but I am not aware of any long distance unsupported settlers.

So if the natives around the Mayflower had all died, so would the Founding Fathers. If the Norse diseases had killed off the locals they might not have made it through winter.

runarberg5• 5 years ago

I doubt it. The distances are simply too large to maintain a supply lines needed for a self sufficient colonies to thrive. The Norse needed the natives both to trade with and to learn from if they were to settle these lands, they couldn’t do it on their own.

Now you might think of Iceland and Norse Greenland as a counter example. But Norse Greenland never really thrived, and was eventually abandoned. Iceland however thrived, but it is so much closer to Norway about 7 days at see with the potential to stop at the Faeroe Islands.

The voyage between Greenland and Iceland is similar (only a bit longer + sailing up the west coast of Greenland). And finally you need another week or two to cross the Labrador sea from Greenland. However that route is much harder in the winter then between Iceland and Norway, and Greenland is not nearly as populated as Iceland or Norway and don’t generate enough surplus food which they can supply to a potential colonies on the North American mainland.

So the logistics of supplying a colony in North America without help from the people already living there must include a summertime only supply line from Iceland with enough supplies to last the whole year. Where each voyage from Iceland is going take maybe a month, maybe more, just one way. These ships are still pretty small and not a lot of room for cargo, so you’ll need a few of them. I’m not sure the economy on Iceland could have afforded such an expensive endeavor.

gremloni5• 5 years ago

Maybe but the Viking’s modus operandi seemed like it was pillage/rape/kidnap the best looking women and then head out. I can only think of one settlement the Vikings set up in Gaul.

Symmetry• 5 years ago

I dunno, the Norse settlers were apparently getting a lot out of trading red died cloth for native produce and if it hadn't been for the altercation that somehow grew up around that cow or bull the possibility of trade might have drawn a lot more Norse in, the way the fur trade did in French North America.

But then again farming populations can expand really fast with low population pressure. The 13 colonies were seeing their populations double every generation just from natural fertility even before immigration.

headcanon• 5 years ago

I do think about that idea as well, but population density (on both sides) is an important factor though. Both the Vikings and the native populations had far lower population densities than, say, 15-century Spain and Italy, which is likely why the diseases didn't spread in the first place.

Mesoamerica a few centuries later did end up having the density required for disease transfer as history shows, but it was also helped along by the Spanish's active invasion. If the Spanish hadn't ever set foot on shore and the Mesoamerican society was allowed to develop, they would likely have developed their own diseases and the subsequent immune response, which may have helped fight Smallpox. But the Spanish got there before they had that opportunity.

If the Spanish invasion had been replaced by a smaller troupe of Viking traders, I would be interested to see what would happen, and you might be right if you only change that one variable. But who knows?

AlotOfReading6• 5 years ago

Mesoamerica had high population densities long before Spain was even a thing.

Indigenous Americans didn't carry over many of the serious diseases from the old world and the animals that were there mostly didn't contribute serious new ones. There are a few cases where we can see things like tuberculosis (from seals), but they're limited and evidence of them largely hasn't survived in extant populations. Likewise, Icelandic populations were isolated and relatively healthy. Those that survived the long trip to Greenland and the Americas would have been even more so.

hyperpallium2• 5 years ago

They were "living in the future", but that doesn't always work out so well.

fennecfoxen• 5 years ago

If the Spanish hadn't ever set foot on shore and the Mesoamerican society was allowed to develop, they would likely have developed their own diseases

Not really. Old World societies had access to many more domesticated animals, a key reason that they also had major diseases.

bhickey• 5 years ago

If the Spanish hadn't ever set foot on shore and the Mesoamerican society was allowed to develop, they would likely have developed their own diseases and the subsequent immune response, which may have helped fight Smallpox.

The most charitable reading of this is "if cowpox, monkeypox or some other zoonotic pox virus had an opportunity to spread through Mesoamerican society, they might've fared better with smallpox."

A less charitable reading is "they might've faired better with smallpox if they had some other disease exposure prior to invasion."

Either of these cases seems implausible. I don't know of any pox virus from the Americas that provides immunity to smallpox. In Europe we know that cowpox provided immunity among milkmaids. We also know that it didn't spread between people. There's no reason to believe that the only missing element was time for some other pox to emerge. As for the less charitable reading, prior infection with a pathogen is unlikely to provide any benefit against an unrelated pathogen. In the decades after smallpox swept through Aztec society the Cocoliztli epidemics killed twice again as many people.

Fundamentally the problem was the introduction of a virus with a high mortality rate to an immunologically naive population. There's a major difference between a disease killing 50% of your under 12 population and 50% of everyone. The former is a disaster, the latter will collapse society, particularly one already fighting against an invasion.

shele• 5 years ago

I remember that this is not the whole story, the Spanish invasion and then European invasion was on the larger scale moving slower than the diseases.

29athrowaway2• 5 years ago

Most of the time, Europeans fought one tribe at a time, rather than a large alliance of Native Americans.

Then, in many cases, they made natives fight each other, and they recruited "auxiliary indians".

The siege of Tenochtitlan involved 200,000 Tlaxcalans fighting on the European side.

In other cases, such as the Battle of Cajamarca, they used their horse + armor advantage to kidnap the leader and ask everyone else to stand down.

If natives had fought together as an alliance since the beginning, they would have time to adapt and catch up. Like the Mapuche did (they won the Arauco war).

sillyquiet2• 5 years ago

"They made" natives fight each other is a weird way of putting it. Warring tribes were more than happy to use the Europeans against their enemies. And many of those enmities long predated the arrival of Europeans.

kens• 5 years ago

The book "1491" describes the Americas before Columbus, and is very interesting. In particular, the population density was much higher than generally realized.

TedDoesntTalk• 5 years ago

Especially in Aztec cities

zeckalpha• 5 years ago

Indigenous populations started dropping centuries before Columbus and we don’t know why. (Of course they dropped further after Columbian contact)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cahokia#Decline%20(13th%20an...

The population of Cahokia began to decline during the 13th century, and the site was eventually abandoned by around 1350.

ProjectArcturis3• 5 years ago

The Cahokia region did, certainly, but that would have been a minor blip in the total North American population, especially compared to the ~90% loss that happened following European arrival.

finiteseries• 5 years ago

No, there’s no indication of population dropping in that article, only the dissolution of a city.

I’m not read up on Cahokia, but it’s probably more similar to the dissolution/dispersal of the (lowland) Maya vs something like a mass die off.

Pre contact population centers were additionally in Mesoamérica & northern South America, where most of the total post contact population drop occurred.

gremloni5• 5 years ago

That’s no indication at all. That’s like saying everyone in the old world was dying because gobekli tepe was abandoned in 3000 BC.

lkrubner• 5 years ago

As Fernand Braudel said, populations in Europe, China and and North America seems to roughly mirror one another for most of the last 5,000 years. The only possible explanation is the climate. Some centuries were good in the northern hemisphere, and some were bad. Not all at once, and not uniformly, but enough that we can see some link.

noetic_techy• 5 years ago

There are stories of Roman and Asian contact with the America's. Perhaps disease was brought over earlier then we thought.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Columbian_trans-oceanic_co...

mytailorisrich• 5 years ago

Newfoundland is an island and it was, at best, extremely sparsely populated when the Vikings arrived. According to Wikipedia [1] the estimated local population when Europeans arrived in 1497 was 700 (that's on an area only slightly smaller than England). So I'm thinking that contacts were very limited and the potential for any disease to spread minimal.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newfoundland_(island)#First_in...

ren_engineer• 5 years ago

is there any explanation for why disease didn't kill in the reverse direction? Why weren't Europeans wiped out by Native American diseases?

sampo• 5 years ago

According to Guns, Germs, and Steel, by Jared Diamond, Europeans had a history of living in close encounters with farm animals, so they had adopted diseases from the animals.

And also the Eurasian geography made trade, and exchange of both culture and domesticated animals, and also diseases, easier in the east-west direction. Because in east-west direction the exchange happens inside the same climate zone. Cow, horse, pig, sheep, goat, donkey, chicken, duck, goose, cat, dog, these didn't all originate in a single location. But in Eurasia, people were able to adopt domesticated animals and plants from their eastern and western neighbors.

The geography in the Americas makes it more easy to travel and trade in the south-north direction. But this is less useful, because you would only get access to domesticated plants and animals from different climate zones.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel#Outline...

noselasd• 5 years ago

There were few, if any, diseases in the americas that was new to the europeans.

cestith• 5 years ago

There are quite a few branching subthreads talking about the spread of different diseases, different living conditions leading to different immunity levels, and all sorts of ideas around why it didn't seem to spread deadly illnesses back to Europe as much as Europeans spread deadly ones to the Americas. One I don't see much about is that in the initial exploration, settlement, and colonizing groups the traffic of Europeans was largely one way and screened for serious diseases as best they could before being allowed on a ship.

If Europeans became deathly ill in the Americas, they were probably left in the Americas to die rather than being taken back to Europe. The First Peoples from the Americas were not on average traveling to Europe and staying there for months, years, or lifetimes. They were staying among people in the Americas where they could continue to spread the illnesses. Healthy young soldiers, sailors, and merchants could bring both asymptomatic and presymptomatic cases of illness across an ocean to populations who weren't traveling nearly as much in the opposite direction. When entire colonies of mixed ages, genders, professions, and social roles moved permanently from Europe to the Americas, likewise the trips back to Europe also for former Europeans were far less common and included far fewer than the number of people continuing to interact with others in the Americas.

In short, it was probably easier for mass migrations of Europeans to spread one or more cases of a disease to the Americas where it then spread from more prolonged contact with the population than it was for a European to contract a serious illness in the Americas and take it back to Europe on a military or merchant ship.

As to the Norse and smallpox, the Crusades of the late 11th century and the 12th century were a big part of its spread to most of Europe. There's a very good chance I think there was little risk of a Norse ship spreading it in the early 11th century. As you said, it could be a very different world if they had.

RugnirViking• 5 years ago

while true that infectious diseases would have been unlikely to make it back to europe, at least in the early colonialism period, surely if there were a mysterious new disease that was affecting colonists it would still be known about, and probably still be around

coliveira• 5 years ago

Smallpox only spread in Europe starting in the 15th century. Before that it was known mostly in Asia (China and India). It was probably the increased trade with Asia that was responsible for spreading smallpox in Europe.

goldenshale• 5 years ago

I highly recommend you read (or listen, the audiobook was great) to Conquistador by Buddy Levy. It might change your mind on this point. It tells the story of Cortez from the day they arrive on the shores of Mexico to when they take over the Aztec empire, where there were still many, many native peoples. The European advantages were many more than just disease... for better and worse.

Cyberthal• 5 years ago

I doubt you can assume that such diseases would spread and persist in the Native American dispersed population. European immivasion created adjacent disease reservoirs of urban and concentrated agriculturalists.

Also, Europeans colonized other regions where they did not have as great a disease or technological advantage.

godelmachine• 5 years ago

Greenland is a cold country. I doubt if viruses can survive there for so long unlike a tropical country like Spain.

chestertn8• 5 years ago

Spain is not tropical

anthk7• 5 years ago

Spain is not tropical. It has three main climates:

- Atlantic. Windy and coldish climate, with lots of rain. Like the UK, or worse.

- Continental Mediterranean. Hot Summers (over 40c) and cold Winters (below 0).

- Mediterranean. Overall a warm climate with a few days of slight cold in Winter, with OFC some spots of cold winter depending on the location.

- On top of that, the mountain climate, chill and always snowy in winter.

Then the Archipielagos (Canaries/Balearics) are their own thing, and Iberia has several distint microclimates and terrains everywhere because the highly mountainous orography distorts the overall climates a lot.

Think of Spain as a micro-condensed US, where you have near every climate in the Earth.

hnbad2• 5 years ago

Others have cited Guns, Germs and Steel but I hope I don't have to explain that its premises have in many parts been debunked by actual historians who specialize in these subjects.

It's easy to forget that most of the Indigenous peoples in North America didn't die simply from "catching" diseases but were directly and intentionally killed or worked to death. Most people are hopefully familiar with the extent of the genocide in what is now the US (with everything from "plague blankets" to eradicating the bison to literally paying bounties for dead Indians) but Columbus' treatment of the Natives was also so violent and brutal that other Spanish colonialists complained about it.

In other words, the problem wasn't so much settlers bringing their diseases with them than settlers capturing the natives, working them to death, destroying their livelihoods and then actively trying to genocide them.

Having some level of immunity to smallpox or other diseases wouldn't have changed much.

OneTimePetes• 5 years ago

Not really. The disease was a important bio-weapon, but the technological gradient was what allowed the conquering and exploiting. There was no basis for a American Native Confederacy and a renaissance like fast build up towards a industrial basis. None of the American Native Factions ever showed the reaction that japan had - which is the only correct approach to a invading external force with technological superiority.

eurusd• 5 years ago

It is exactly one of the starting points of this uchrony, Civilizations from Laurent Binet (in french, i believe not translated to english), where native get sick during first venue of Vikings then when Colombus appears they just don't get sick at all + kill him and get to Portugal back on their boats and then travel in Europe, meet Luther, Erasme & Charles Quint, convert people to Sun god religion and create an Empire in Europe. Good book btw

wly_cdgr• 5 years ago

Misread "1021" as "2021" and got excited

mseepgood• 5 years ago

I misread it as "1024" and got excited, too.

beschizza2• 5 years ago

This was the era of the Anglo-Scandinavian Empire, formed in Britain and Scandinavia under the king of England, Canute, a Danish prince. It didn't outlast him by long (and Norway was independent until the 1020s) but the coincidence of political consolidation in northern europe with brief settlement in north America is interesting.

sleepyhead• 5 years ago

Norway was independent until 1397.

beschizza2• 5 years ago

It was part of Canute's empire (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Sea_Empire) for a few years in the early 11th century, until his death.

zw1234563• 5 years ago

Apparently there is some evidence about Vikings bringing Native Americans back to Iceland. https://phys.org/news/2010-11-vikings-brought-amerindian-ice...

bingohbangoh• 5 years ago

I've never understood the significance of this.

The vikings were in North America for a few years and then went back to Europe. They brought back (almost?) nothing, left a few scattered settlements, and completely forgot about it.

So what.

wnscooke• 5 years ago

There are some who think that if the First Nations weren’t “the first”, that diminishes modern day claims and grievances, making it easier for modern day Canada and the USA to ignore legitimate claims, and treat us as they’ve always wanted to treat us. So, this sort of research is important for many.

iammisc• 5 years ago

It doesn't matter if they were first, or if they themselves slaughtered whomever lived here before... being 'first' to be somewhere doesn't give you automatic rights over something. That is not how human civilization has ever worked.

goto112• 5 years ago

Since the Norse met native Americans (according to the Saga), I don't see how this changes who was there first? It was only a thousand years ago after all.

s1artibartfast4• 5 years ago

Weird take. I have never read any claims that Europeans were in N America before the indigenous.

Even with visiting in 1000 AD, the "indians" have 10-20,000 year lead.

CRConrad5• 5 years ago

Huh? You seem to be getting shit wildly mixed up.

Everyone agrees Native Americans / First Nations / Indigenous population have been in the Americas for over ten thousand years. The Vikings went there about -- or, according to this discovery, exactly -- a thousand years ago.

Absolutely nobody thinks proving the Viking journeys can in any way deligitimize the native's claim to primacy. Well, absolutely nobody who isn't totally befuddled.

chestertn8• 5 years ago

There are plenty of valid claims that many other civilizations contacted America: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Columbian_trans-oceanic_co...

But it is meaningless since they did not write about it nor they stablished commerce. The fact is that before 1492, most civilizations in Africa/Asia/Europe did not know that America existed and that other humans lived there. After 1492, that changed forever.

cschmidt• 5 years ago

    A monk in 14th-century Italy wrote about the Americas
    https://www.economist.com/the-americas/2021/09/25/a-monk-in-14th-century-italy-wrote-about-the-americas

There was an interesting recent Economist story about that. There is a 14th century Italian monk that did write about Newfoundland based on the oral testimony of “sailors who frequent the seas of Denmark and Norway”. It is possible Columbus was aware of this.

chestertn8• 5 years ago

Colombus was trying to find India and he explored the area trying to find proof that he indeed found India.

Furthermore, Colombus brought an interpreter with him, Luis de Torres: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luis_de_Torres

"Their task was to explore the country, contact its ruler, and gather information about the Asian emperor described by Marco Polo as the "Great Khan". "

There is a lot of effort put today to downplay the importance of what happened. I understand that it makes sense politically. But the fact remains that what happened in 1492, for good or bad, changed the world forever.

bebop• 5 years ago

There is a possibility that this was known much earlier than the 14th century. St. Brendan may have been speaking about the americas as early as 500 AD.

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brendan Interesting read: https://www.amazon.com/Brendan-Voyage-Sailing-America-Explor...

CRConrad5• 5 years ago

Discussed here a few weeks ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28648793

Retric• 5 years ago

It’s not commerce but native peoples where apparently regularly crossing the barring straight without realizing anything unusual was going on.

If this had gone on long enough we might have turned into a ring species. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_species

waserwill• 5 years ago

But it is meaningless since they did not write about it not they stablished commerce

Depends on what you find meaningful! There was almost certainly exchange of goods between Polynesians and South Americans. The presence of early sweet potato agriculture in Polynesia and genetic admixture in both regions points to non-trivial contact. There are even parallels in terms of folk-tales [0]! (Though these are likely older events, more to do with ancient dispersal).

There are also possibly earlier relationships across the Pacific, but these would have been ancient and interesting largely from historical curiousity [1].

[0]https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-39445-9_...

[1] https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aav2621

mtoohig• 5 years ago

I live in Vanuatu and is it very far to the west side of the Pacific yet the almost southern most island of Vanuatu, Aneityum, has stories of what they called the "Yellow People" that were on the island before they, Melanesians, arrived from northern islands. These people on the island were excellent stone carvers and could make stone walls which the current locals admit they never learned from the "yellow people". Old engravings exist still of these original people that to me sound like those may have come from the east, South America. I don't have photos though, this is a story I just heard recently from family members of that island.

chestertn8• 5 years ago

I have talked about this a bit more in another comment below:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28936345

There are also possible contacts between ancient peoples in Europe and the Americas:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Columbian_trans-oceanic_co...

But as I mention, the impact of 1492 eclipses it all (that is why is called Pre-Columbian!)

avgcorrection4• 5 years ago

But it is meaningless since they did not write about it nor they stablished commerce.

The first African to climb Mt. Everest, you say? Well he didn’t help build a network of base camps so I’m just going to say that it’s meaningless.

avgcorrection4• 5 years ago

Come to think of it: none of Buddha’s followers even wrote about him or Buddhism itself until several centuries after his death. Meaningless.

chestertn8• 5 years ago

Yes. Meaningless. 1492? Very meaningful.

One of the most important feats if not the most important of what we used to call the Age of Exploration: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Discovery

This led to global trade that changed the face of the earth. It opened philosophical debates about human rights, the legality of wars, etc., which are still important today.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/school-salamanca/#IusGent...

These debates led to the prohibition of American Indian slavery in... 1542!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Laws

The first recorded christian marriage in current United States was an interracial union in 1565!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_colonial_Spanish_Am...

I could go on an on.

singularity20013• 5 years ago

I find it highly likely that crucial bronze age inventions like smelting, Eridu/Elamite 'pyramids' and writing were introduced to America in one way trips between 4000 and 0BC, however until we find artifacts or mummy DNA it's pure speculation.

Laremere• 5 years ago

Civilizations around the world definitely acquired similar technology with suspicious timing, but the common factor doesn't need to be humans. One theory I'm fond of is river deltas. The major ones all formed around 7,000 years ago (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A47ythEcz74) as a geological result of the end of the ice age. After humanity spread to the Americas during the ice age, the end of the ice age seems to have created the conditions necessary for agriculture to flourish. Once you have agriculture you get cities, writing to track harvest numbers, pyramids from laborers working in the off season, and metalworking from craftspeople .

Ericson2314• 5 years ago

I don't doubt there were "rafting" events, like that which brought over the new world monkeys, but I don't think isolated individuals can transmit culture like that.

"Connecticut Yankee" type stories underestimate how diffuse culture is, and overestimate the prevelence and prowess of "polymaths" in the weakest sense.

hapticmonkey• 5 years ago

That's like saying The Apollo moon missions were meaningless because they failed to set up commercial hub on the moon.

CamperBob2• 5 years ago

Sadly, while Apollo was important as a proof-of-concept exercise, it was up to future generations of spacefaring explorers to give it meaning by following through on the initial achievement. Unlike the post-Columbian European settlers, we've dropped the ball.

By the time we get back to the Moon, my guess is that over half our population will believe that the Apollo missions never happened at all. There can't be much of a leap from "Bush blew up the WTC" and "Trump won the election" to "The moon landings were faked in Hollywood."

WalterBright7• 5 years ago

I hate to say it, but in a sense, they were meaningless because there was no followup. We haven't had a machine that could even get us back there for 50 years now.

hnbad2• 5 years ago

In a way they're meaningless because they were just a way to extend the "space race" to an arbitrary milestone the US could claim for itself after having lost almost everything else to the reds.

runarberg5• 5 years ago

But it is meaningless since they did not write about it

The story of Leifur Eiríksson lived in the oral tradition and was eventually written down in Grænlendinga Saga around 250 years later (which is still another 250 years before Columbus).

I bet that possible Polynesian contact would have lived in the oral tradition in a similar manner. Though way more time passed until the stories Polynesian were written down so I would expect them to be a bit more fantastical with the added time.

makeitdouble• 5 years ago

But it is meaningless __to western european cultures__ since they did not write about it __in the dominant languages__ nor they stablished commerce __with europe__

Added the implicit bits. That doesn’t take anything from your point, I just think having the perspective explicited helps grasp it better.

It will also cover the discussions when ancient China will be found to have had extensive links as well, etc.

chestertn8• 5 years ago

No, no. To China and the Ottoman Empire as well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Discovery

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_world_maps#After_1492

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_international_trad...

It is one of the greatest feats of European civilizations. Don't take that away! Not everything is implicit bias and Eurocentrism.

nashashmi• 5 years ago

This brings up a good point about what does discover mean. People lived in north America but they did not write about it to Europeans so they had to be discovered.

Why does my understanding of history seem to revolve around what Europeans did and did not do/know?

warkdarrior• 5 years ago

For better or for worse, different civilizations took different approaches to keeping written records. The Chinese, many European people, the Arabs, the Persians, the Indians, the Mayans, the Aztecs, many African people all had detailed written records. So we tend to tell history from their point of view, since this is the info we have.

Do we have written info from the Native Americans who met the Vikings or from the Caribbean peoples about Columbus? Not that I know of. We have the Vikings view of things and Columbus' view, so we tend to rely on them.

soylentnewsorg• 5 years ago

I think there's also a point everyone who talks about other "discoveries" of America purposely ignores. This is about the discovery of it not for Europe the continent. This is about its discovery for what was the civilized nations in Europe. So if we look at Iceland - a place that's essentially a standalone island already half way to America - where a bunch of vikings lived who at the time weren't hanging out with people from places like Spain or Italy or France - it's an apples to oranges comparison.

runarberg5• 5 years ago

This might be a simplistic view of history.

First Iceland is only half way to North America if you consider Greenland (which is kind of weird since both Iceland and Greenland are islands between the two continents). The distance between Iceland and Labrador is twice as long as the distance between Iceland and Norway. And the double distance is on top of much much rougher seas of the Labrador sea then the North Atlantic. So for small sailboats Europe is definitely close while North America isn’t.

Second, people traveled a lot both to Iceland and from Iceland in the centuries after the voyages mentioned in Grænlendinga Saga. Ships went to Iceland to trait, or fish and people went from Iceland to continental Europe for pilgrimage, trade, etc. These people definitely talked to each other and told each other stories of their ancestors. I wouldn’t be surprised if some Portuguese fishermen were told Grænlendinga Saga while wintering in Iceland sometime in the 14th century after their trip home was delayed for some reason. Or that a pilgrim from Iceland told a fellow Spanish Christion in broken latin about Leifur Eiríksson on their way to Rome.

Third. Flateyarbók (which contains written stories about the norse settlements in North America) was written down in the mid 13th century. The Icelandic sagas were coveted by Scandinavian royalty and I bet royalty in both Norway and Denmark knew about it’s existence, and might even have heard Grænlendinga Saga recited.

Now it probably wasn’t common knowledge that there were lands west of the Atlantic which people once tried to settle, but it probably wasn’t unknown either.

It is not hard to imagine an alternative scenario where by some freak luck Christopher Columbus happens to talk to a person who’s great grandfather told a story about an Icelander they walked part of the way to Rome with. “Curious folks those Icelanders”, they say, “in the old times they used to sail all around the world. Even going West of Greenland”.

“Greenland? You mean the icy land way north in the Atlantic where they get those Walrus husks?” Columbus replies.

“Yes, there! Apparently there are some much more favorable lands south west of there. I wonder how much further south it reaches, maybe as far south as Africa?”

Or maybe a scenario where a common crewman on Columbus’ voyage knew about these stories from a Basque fisherman who in turn heard them while on a fishing trip to Iceland. “This isn’t Japan”, he claims. “An old friend of mine heard stories about lands as far west as this—albeit further north as well. Maybe these islands are of the same island chain which lie between Europe and Asia”. This crewman is promptly laughed at. “Off course this is Japan, our captain says so.” They say, and the crewman never mentions it again.

runjake• 5 years ago

The debate on whether Vikings were in Pre-Columbus America is starting to sound a lot like the back and forth of "$food is (good|bad) for you".

Thrymr• 5 years ago

I do not think this has been in serious dispute in the last 50 years. This paper just puts a more precise date on the settlement in Newfoundland that was already well known.

moksly• 5 years ago

As a Danish person it’s sort of interesting to see how much focus this particular area gets in comparison to other Norse history, but no, it hasn’t really been disputed in any serious manner for a while.

A lot of the evidence doesn’t really prove anything. The map turned out to be a forgery, and wood having been worked by metal tools could have happened through trade.

L’anse aux Meadows is a Norse settlement similar to those found in Greenland, however, and that’s sort of the evidence you need.

This is the only settlement found however, and it may never have had contact with the indigenous people considering how isolated it was. The “vikings” weren’t there to raid, they were there to find some decent farmland, and if that’s what they found, they could have died out without anyone knowing about it until a thousand years later.

But what they actually did is anyones guess.

goto112• 5 years ago

There is no doubt Vikings were in Pre-Columbus America.

e0m• 5 years ago

Happy 1000th anniversary Vikings!

justinzollars• 5 years ago

This is so cool. So much earlier than I could have imagined!

olvy0• 5 years ago

Tangentially related: Kim Stanley Robinson's early story Vinland The Dream, in which an archeologist discovers that those very remnants here were actually planted there as an elaborate hoax 100 years ago.

newfriend• 5 years ago

The media is really pushing this (and related) story hard this year. Anything to delegitimize Columbus.

anthk7• 5 years ago

Columbus was a bastard by himself, and I say this as Spaniard. The local Castillian-Aragonese kingdom (proto-Spain maybe) punished Columbus because of his overseas behaviour.

arduinomancer• 5 years ago

What is wrong with that?

Don't you prefer accurate history?

mandmandam2• 5 years ago

... Good.

Listening to the story in school it was obvious there was some stuff being glossed over; like, how did he discover America if there were people there already? ... And those people just gave their land to Europeans because ... ?

And, in the years since grade school, the answer to those questions have led to darker questions, with dark answers.

And oh shit, we're actually still pulling this shit. So again - good. Fuck that guy, and fuck his fake myth.

CountDrewku2• 5 years ago

Ok then fuck the Vikings too. Do you realize how much violence and destruction they wrought?

At least keep your shit logically cohesive.

While you're at it do a little research on "indigenous" culture and how they treated each other. I assure you it wasn't butterflies and kisses before Columbus got here.

how did he discover America if there were people there already

He discovered it in relation to Europeans who didn't know of its existence. This is one of the dumbest things I've read today. Your take would mean literally nothing could be discovered.

heikkilevanto• 5 years ago

What I find most amazing in the article is the technology of radiocarbon dating individual year rings in a piece of wood, correlate that to known cosmic radiation events, and get the precise year when the tree was felled.

NelsonMinar• 5 years ago

Yeah that was the most interesting part to me too; we already knew about Vikings in Greenland, but now they have a specific year to pin it too.

The science that enables that is described in this paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms2783

cheaprentalyeti• 5 years ago

I was hoping they'd have found out more about other settlements in Newfoundland besides L'anse aux Meadows. Did they ever find out more about that possible settlement in SW Newfoundland?

ytdytvhxgydvhh• 5 years ago

Apparently no evidence of Norse activity there: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_Rosee

fijiaarone• 5 years ago

Literally the article states that they know exactly when and where Norse vikings were because of "cosmic rays"

nixpulvis2• 5 years ago

"Our new date lays down a marker for European cognisance of the Americas"

Is "cognisance" really the right term here? I didn't really follow the whole article and it seemed mostly unrelated to my question anyway, so sorry if I missed something. It just seems to me that for there to be any European awareness, there would have to be proof of a return voyage, no?

Is this not really just talking about "European presence"? I'm being highly pedantic, I'm well aware.

CRConrad5• 5 years ago

The existence of Grönländinga Saga -- specifically, the bits in it about Vinland and Markland and Helluland -- is in itself proof of European cognisance of the Americas. And yes, obviously at least some of them must have made it back, or their exploits would never have been recorded in the saga(s?). There's a couple of timelines in the article, reconstructing the sequence of events both from the artefacts and from the sagas; ISTR the fact-based one also mentions the return trips.

I think what they mean by "lays down a marker" is that this finding marks that already-established-as-existing cognisance in time, since they established the exact year those trees were felled and the Viking settlement built. (And, nice coincidence -- or did they sit on it for a while to make it so? -- it's apparently exactly a millennium ago.)

OK, since the Vikings then had to winter in their in their new-built settlement before returning in the spring, and if you want to count "Europeans know of it" as pertaining to at least Icelanders in general[1], you could argue that the specific marker for "European cognisance" goes a year or two later. But that's academic -- literally, as in, let the academics discuss it. But now they have a starting year to hange their discussion on, so this finding marks not only the age of the settlement and discovery of North America, but ultimately also of Europeans' consciousness thereof.

___

[1]: Not just the also rather precarious settlement on Greenland, which I suppose could have died out after the return of the Vinlanders but before anyone went from there to Iceland, so without ever getting word back to Europe at large.

nixpulvis2• 5 years ago

Thank you for the very informative reply. I think that basically resolves my confusion about this.

Teknoman1172• 5 years ago

A few of the other comments had me curious, but while it's widely known that diseases brought over from Europe were devastating to the native populations of the Americas, are there any notable examples of transfer in the other direction - i.e. new diseases the Europeans encountered in the Americas that got brought back to Europe?

cogman10• 5 years ago

Syphilis is thought to be a new world disease.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_syphilis

staticfloat• 5 years ago

Aha! A chance to plug one of my favorite CGP Grey videos that explores this very question: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEYh5WACqEk

Teknoman1172• 5 years ago

That's a super interesting video. Thanks!

tschwimmer• 5 years ago

Syphilis was thought to have been carried from the Americas to Europe by Columbus' crewmen.[0]

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syphilis#History

bcaulfield2• 5 years ago

A millennia from now, I think people may well be kind of shocked to learn that we got to the moon in 1969 if a collapse, global recession or some other calamity derails the latest efforts to get back there within the next few years.

mkrazzledazzle• 5 years ago

So what? This news reads to the rest of the world as.. Europeans squabbling between each other as to who amongst them first visited a continent they'd previously not known about, already brimming with other populations of humans. End of story. It's 2021 folks, no one cares about eurocentric land grab claims.

culi2• 5 years ago

It truly is bizarre. The amount of effort and research into this very difficult to answer, and ultimately not all that useful, question is insane. Even the anthropologists arguing about the Polynesian sailors (~1200AD), the Chinese boats(~1421AD), or even the African sailors (~400AD). The overall point is somewhat useful. We know there's clearly been points of contact between all sorts of people from Afroeurasia and the Americas. But this inane squabbling over who was technically first is honestly kinda cringey

bigyikes• 5 years ago

Couldn’t you say that about any piece of history you’re not interested in? This comment is needlessly dismissive.

ncmncm• 5 years ago

The evidence for collapsing agriculture in the Amazon basin a couple of centuries before Columbus hints at disease spreading from contact there, such as from a (historically attested, well equipped) African expedition in 1311 that might not have returned.

The Amazon has proof positive of tree domestication 10000 years ago. The coincidence of collapse right about then seems hard to account for without contact. But we may never know.

0xBABAD00C• 5 years ago

There's a fun wikipedia article [1] on various theories of pre-columbian contact with the Americas. Some of these are very dubious, of course, but the Roman fruit bowl from 2000 years ago does look like it contains an actual pineapple, which is an American fruit [2]. There is also evidence of nicotine and other substances found in Egyptian mummies from even longer ago, which could indicate at least some sort of indirect trade/contact across the ocean.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Columbian_trans-oceanic_co...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Columbian_trans-oceanic_co...

jjallen• 5 years ago

I hope someone else noted that this is not new evidence. What they did is reanalyzed existing wood samples and determined an exact year that they were definitely in Newfoundland.

They did through dating of tree rings based on known cosmic radiation events from the year 993 (if I recall the year correctly). Very interesting paper to read.

tim3332• 5 years ago

I was curious how the solar storm giving radiocarbon works. It seems approx:

In the storm the sun chucks out hydrogen and helium ions.

It is not uncommon for [these] to collide with an atom in the atmosphere, creating a secondary cosmic ray in the form of an energetic neutron, and for these energetic neutrons to collide with nitrogen atoms. When the neutron collides, a nitrogen-14 (seven protons, seven neutrons) atom turns into a carbon-14 atom (six protons, eight neutrons) and a hydrogen atom (one proton, zero neutrons).

bryanrasmussen• 5 years ago

Marckalada: The First Mention of America in the Mediterranean Area (c. 1340) https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/epub/10.1080/00822884.2021.1...

pradn• 5 years ago

One remarkable person from this time period is Gudrid Thorbjarnardóttir, who had the first European child in the Americas (outside Greenland) and then made a pilgrimage to Rome. She's probably the most well-travelled woman of the 11th century.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gudrid_Thorbjarnard%C3%B3ttir

chalcolithic• 5 years ago

I can't quite recall who eloquently described this discovery as "Christopher Columbus was the last person to discover America"

Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021

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