[HN Gopher] How far into the Americas did the Vikings travel?
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How far into the Americas did the Vikings travel?
Author : xenocratus
Score : 48 points
Date : 2020-09-24 09:39 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (aeon.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (aeon.co)
| doodlebugging wrote:
| I had never heard of murals showing blonde men being sacrificed
| and the significance of boats made from planks in Maya murals
| would not have been apparent to me. Fascinating stuff. The more
| you learn, the more you wish you could know.
|
| Also, for a while there was another potential Viking site in the
| Americas at Heavener, Oklahoma. Formerly a state park, now a city
| park, there is a runestone and other have been found within a few
| tens of miles of Heavener.
|
| Once thought to be possible evidence of Viking excursions into
| Oklahoma, the Heavener Runestone may in fact be a marker laid out
| by one of the members of the Rene Robert Cavelier De La Salle
| expedition's attempt to reach French settlements northeast of
| Texas in 1687.
|
| This website has a horrible, no good, very bad layout and is
| difficult to read but it weaves a very interesting historical
| tale that explains the Heavener Runestone and others found nearby
| in Oklahoma.
|
| [Heavener Runestone - Heavener Oklahoma](http://heavener-
| runestone.com/)
|
| If you have a while and enjoy some archaeological and historical
| intrigue this is the place to get your fix today.
|
| I visited the site using Firefox with Https Everywhere and
| microblock Origin and other than the lack of https the site is
| largely free of objectionable things. It could use a serious
| rebuild though as the story woven is compelling when the evidence
| is presented and so thoroughly researched.
|
| Makes more sense than Vikings.
| lobster45 wrote:
| Interesting!
| sebmellen wrote:
| Vikings in Chichen Itza. Wow. That would be pretty stunning.
|
| > Could the Vikings who left a settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows
| have made it to the Yucatan Peninsula - some 3,700 miles (c6,000
| km) south of where the Viking penny surfaced at the Goddard site?
| One of the murals at the Temple of Warriors, painted around 1000
| CE, depicted a naval battle scene showing blond-haired men being
| thrown into the water.
| markdown wrote:
| > blond-haired men
|
| Do 1000yr old murals retain their color enough to be able to
| tell that the subjects originally had blonde hair?
| liability wrote:
| If the original were still intact, perhaps chemical analysis
| of the pigments used could provide information about this.
| Unfortunately it seems that can't be done since the mural was
| destroyed decades ago. But maybe fragments of it remain in
| the area waiting to be found?
| gpm wrote:
| I don't know anything about how these murals were made.
|
| 1000yr old books do for the most part. Silver pigment will
| have turned grey, but other high quality pigments were often
| based on minerals that are still vibrant to this day. (Cheap
| pignents on the other hand were often organic, which would
| often not have lasted).
| c54 wrote:
| Found myself disappointed by the lack of images in this piece.
| Does anyone have or know of maps or images of the art referenced?
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| This is a pop-sci article that is nearly as out there as the
| (well-debunked) fantasies of Gavin Menzies, suggesting that the
| Vikings made it down to Central America. Beware when pop-sci
| articles on history ask a constant series of questions "Could the
| X people have done Y?". Sometimes they act like they are being
| cautious about the answer, but they are never straight with the
| reader that among experts, even raising that question in a non-
| specialist venue seems inappropriate. To be honest and forthright
| that there isn't even room for speculation with our current state
| of knowledge, does not sell copies and create ad impressions.
| HuShifang wrote:
| Just to add here, the article's author is an expert on middle
| period (Tang-Song) China (her first book was on local deities,
| her second on contracts). She then shifted her focus a bit
| westward to the Silk Road. She has apparently shifted her focus
| yet again. I'm not an expert on pre-Columbian archaeology. But
| neither is she.
| liability wrote:
| The article mentions arsenical bronze being unlike bronze made in
| the rest of the world, but that's not true. Arsenical bronze has
| been made around the world for thousands of years. This is likely
| due to arsenic often being found in close proximity to copper
| while sources of tin are harder to find. However it's my
| understanding that some cultures in the Andes did have access to
| tin and produced tin bronze as well as arsenical bronze.
| TheGallopedHigh wrote:
| Two major sources of Tim in ancient times were Britain (often
| called Tin island by the romans before they went on to conquer
| it) and Afghanistan.
| mxcrossb wrote:
| > Even after their departure, the Norse continued to return to
| the Americas, most likely to pick up lumber since no trees grew
| on Greenland and Iceland.
|
| This actually never occurred to me, and it's interesting that
| these famous seafarers would have resource constraints for
| building boats.
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(page generated 2020-09-24 23:00 UTC)