[HN Gopher] Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD...
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Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021
Author : bcaulfield
Score : 350 points
Date : 2021-10-20 18:50 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nature.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com)
| runjake wrote:
| 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".
| goto11 wrote:
| There is no doubt Vikings were in Pre-Columbus America.
| Thrymr wrote:
| 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.
| nixpulvis wrote:
| "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.
| heikkilevanto wrote:
| 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.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| 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.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| 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).
| sillyquiet wrote:
| "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.
| quadrifoliate wrote:
| An almost identical story took place played out in (the
| real) India, and is much better documented. Lazy Indian
| monarchs who didn't really know or care about the world
| beyond their borders perceived the East India Company as
| just another ally, unaware that behind it was an incredibly
| strong national identity and hereditary monarchy.
|
| Ended up winning the stupid prize of having large swathes
| of territory being governed by the EIC and later Britain,
| for a total of about 200 years.
|
| Source: Am Indian.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| Yes, that characterization is a bit more accurate.
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| Yes, many of the Central American tribes had been oppressed
| by the Aztecs for a long time, and were happy to have an
| advanced ally to fight against them.
| toxik wrote:
| There's something to learn here about calling on a bigger
| bully to stamp out the local bully...
| cestith wrote:
| 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.
| steve76 wrote:
| Turns out, it belonged to Columbus all along. Put his his
| statue back up, or get off his land. Europeans did not have
| smallpox then. Europe got hit with germs from foreigners too.
| munk-a wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| kypro wrote:
| Not quite a plague, but syphilis likely came from Native
| Americans.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| maybe that 1/few ships just happened to didn't carry smallpox
| and other nasties aboard
| sillyquiet wrote:
| yeah, unfortunately (I guess??!) smallpox didn't reach Europe
| until the Crusades.
| queuebert wrote:
| 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.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| > 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.
| polartx wrote:
| >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.
|
| This is absolutely what happened to the Incan empire
| predatory to its subjugation to a few hundred conquistadors
| led by Francisco Pizarro. For those interested check out
| Last Days of the Incas.
| dragontamer wrote:
| In the context of military technology, ships and wagons are
| the big thing. Ships and wagons to carry food to troops and
| establish supply lines.
|
| Logistics wins wars. With exception of WW1 and WW2,
| soldiers didn't really die in large numbers to the enemy.
| Soldiers died to the cold, to disease, and deserted due to
| lack of food / supplies / morale.
|
| There are occasional exceptions where large numbers of
| soldiers died in battle... but those exceptions become
| remembered for centuries. It certainly wasn't a regular
| event (except in WW1 / WW2, which truly were horrific).
| runarberg wrote:
| Even in WW2 it can be argued that the Allies biggest
| advantage on the western front was the USA build Liberty
| ships, which were built really quickly and mainly used
| for supply.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| Keep in mind that the technological advantage was eroded
| rapidly. People happily sold all of it to the locals,
| including firearms. There's something of a stereotypical
| image of a native American warrior on horseback, but
| that's not a native animal.
| bakuninsbart wrote:
| Was this generally the case for the native populations of
| the Americas? I'd actually be very interested in some
| works on native american supply line( problem)s.
| dragontamer wrote:
| I don't know much about Native American war theory.
|
| But I know that Medieval English Longbowmen were only
| given something like 6 arrows per battle. And even that
| was enough to stretch the capacities of Medieval
| Britain's supply chain. 10,000 Longbowmen x 6 arrows is
| 60,000 arrows per battle.
|
| IIRC, it was said that during wars, there wasn't any
| gooses or ducks to be found in all of Britain. They've
| all been killed, and their feathers plucked for the war
| arrows.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| >>> Medieval English Longbowmen were only given something
| like 6 arrows per battle.
|
| IIRC records for Henry in the Tower of London show a
| total of 3/4 Million arrows paid for and collected for
| the invasion that lead to Agincourt. With an estimated
| 5,000 archers at Agincourt.
|
| Modern reconstructions show about 6 arrows per minute -
| and again IIRC ten minutes of volley fire against the
| French lines - something like 60 arrows per archer, or
| around 300,000 arrows. Even in plate armour that shits
| gonna hurt.
| jnwatson wrote:
| 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...
| kibwen wrote:
| In particular we can imagine it might look more similar to
| how China, India, Africa, etc. turned out, with subjugated
| local populations serving under foreign imperial governors.
| The eventual collapse of the empire might then result in
| most of the Americas being populated by ethnically Native
| American states.
| pasabagi wrote:
| Not sure. China, India, Africa etc were colonized for
| much shorter periods of time.
|
| One point of comparison would be Ireland. They didn't
| suffer from colonist-brought diseases, because obviously
| they had all the same diseases already, but they did
| suffer a precipitous decline in population.
|
| Another example would be the west coast of Africa, which
| was similarly colonized from early modernity on.
| paganel wrote:
| > but they did suffer a precipitous decline in
| population.
|
| That was a TIL for me, because I was about to say tat the
| "precipitous decline in population" only happened in the
| mid-19th century, i.e. a couple of centuries after
| Cromwell's campaign (the point where the English power
| over Ireland really became a colonial one), but then I
| skimmed through the History section of the Ireland
| wikipedia page [1] and I read this:
|
| > This control was consolidated during the wars and
| conflicts of the 17th century, including the English and
| Scottish colonisation in the Plantations of Ireland, the
| Wars of the Three Kingdoms and the Williamite War.
|
| and
|
| > Physician-general William Petty estimated that 504,000
| Catholic Irish and 112,000 Protestant settlers died, and
| 100,000 people were transported, as a result of the
| war.[66] If a prewar population of 1.5 million is
| assumed, this would mean that the population was reduced
| by almost half.
|
| Again, I personally had no idea that Ireland's population
| was reduced by almost half immediately after the English
| conquest that happened during Cromwell's time, that's
| kind of gruesome and imo not studied enough outside of
| Ireland and the UK (I suppose that this subject is
| studied in there).
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ireland#The_Kingdom_of_
| Ireland
| InitialLastName wrote:
| In a lot of ways, though, the European subjugation of the
| Americas was the "tutorial mode" for European subjugation
| of Asia and Africa. Among other things, note that the
| business end of European colonization of subsaharan
| Africa and South and East Asia started ~a century after
| the colonization of the Americas (thanks to proximity,
| the Middle East and North Africa were much more tightly
| coupled to European history, and colonization played out
| differently there). The scramble for Africa and the
| opening of Japan didn't happen until the mid-late 19th
| century!
| kibwen wrote:
| _> 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.
| queuebert wrote:
| That's a very good point.
| Y_Y wrote:
| > 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.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Also, the guns the conquistadors had kinda sucked and at
| that time not massively better than bow and arrow (they
| required less strength and skill, but skilled archers were
| just as good, and the conquistadors could've sent them
| instead). Arguably the steel swords and armor, plus horses,
| were much more important.
| irrational wrote:
| 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?
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| This is not accurate. Individual epidemics did not have
| mortalities even approaching the 90% range. What actually
| happened were dozens of epidemics over decades or
| centuries. Moreover, outside the Northeast, Columbian
| epidemics are closely associated with persistent European
| contact and colonization.
|
| It should also be noted that human populations are
| incredibly resilient to epidemics. In the absence of "other
| things", populations suffering catastrophic virgin soil
| epidemics will typically rebound to pre-epidemic levels in
| decades. It's not a sufficient explanation for the
| centuries-long decline of indigenous American populations.
| The black death was no less severe and successor epidemics
| continued throughout Europe in the 15th century, yet we see
| nothing like the demographic collapse of the Americas post-
| contact.
| irrational wrote:
| Isn't that because Europe was able to bounce back while
| in the Americas, the diseases were immediately followed
| up by the European colonizers who didn't give them time
| or space to repopulate?
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| That's exactly the point. Epidemic disease alone is an
| insufficient explanation for the demographic collapse of
| indigenous Americans.
| irrational wrote:
| Yes, but guns are an insufficient explanation for the
| complete overthrown of indigenous Americans. Or even the
| primary cause.
| kristopolous wrote:
| I've always wondered why this wasn't a two-way street.
| Wouldn't native people also have diseases to share?
|
| I know the imperialists weaponized their diseases and
| intentionally tried to spread it and that may be the
| difference.
|
| Usually the smallpox theory is presented in a way that
| removes agency and culpability from the conquerers. It's
| always struck me as remarkably convenient and quite
| unbelievable; they were an idyllic people in some wondrous
| land without their own disease. Oh really now ... we're
| talking the Caribbeans here.
|
| Even the Wikipedia page on the matter (https://en.m.wikiped
| ia.org/wiki/Influx_of_disease_in_the_Car...), does it cite
| epidemiological sources with someone looking at like bone
| sample DNA? No. It's economic and social science. Excuse me
| for questioning the qualification of economists for being
| able to authoritatively make confident statements about
| historical virology.
|
| It may be true but I'd like more evidence than convenient
| stories by the descendent of a conquerer about how by sheer
| coincidence his/her ancestors were actually not guilty of
| genocide and as of by miracle, North America became a land
| without people; it just happens to follow Frederick Jackson
| Turners Frontier Thesis a little too closely to be called a
| coincidence.
| [deleted]
| space_fountain wrote:
| I think parts of it are deeply controversial, but Guns,
| Germs, and Steel argues this was because Europe had
| higher population densities for longer + more
| domesticated livestocks providing a more potent breading
| ground for deadly diseases. I also think that disease
| being a factor hardly removes culpability from the
| conquers, there are plenty of quotes of some of them
| saying things about how the plagues were a gift from god
| and similarly terrible things. I also am not an export,
| but I believe there was some transfer in the other
| direction, particularly syphilis.
|
| If we're just speculating though, I wonder if the fact
| that one group was traveling by boat could have insulated
| the disease transfer a bit. Most really bad diseases
| would run their course by the time a sailing ship made it
| back across the ocean and certainly people knew to
| quarantine ships with sick people on them in Europe. For
| a disease the ship crews were resistant to reach the
| Americas they just had to visit a village, where to go
| the other way it had to survive an in built month plus
| quarantine which is plenty of time for most diseases to
| show up
| dleslie wrote:
| > Wouldn't native people also have diseases to share?
|
| Not all diseases are equally harmful, right? Perhaps the
| indigenous populations of the Americas simply lacked a
| disease as deadly as those brought by the Europeans.
| handrous wrote:
| IIRC a lot of Eurasian diseases were a result of long-
| term close contact with domesticated animals. Guess which
| side of the Atlantic didn't really have domesticated
| animals....
| antasvara wrote:
| I think the key is density in Europe vs North America.
| Europe was living in densely packed cities with
| domesticated animals in close proximity, while North
| America had smaller communities and less domestication.
| As a general rule, this makes disease spread and zoonotic
| viruses much less likely.
| michaelbuckbee wrote:
| IIRC that certain aspects of how livestock were raised in
| Europe contributed to a long history of more virulent
| illnesses so that when the European population eventually
| met the North American it was the North American that
| suffered.
| not2b wrote:
| It's possible that syphilis was brought back to Europe
| from the New World by the Spanish. That hasn't been
| proven though.
|
| From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_syphilis :
|
| The first recorded outbreak of syphilis in Europe
| occurred in 1494/1495 in Naples, Italy, during a French
| invasion ...
| gameman144 wrote:
| From what I've read, native populations had less frequent
| interactions with livestock (through which many diseases
| arise) and less concentration in poor-sanitation settings
| (e.g. urban centers without sewers), both of which gave
| European settlers more exposure to transmissible
| pathogens in the centuries before settlement.
| roywiggins wrote:
| The usual explanation is that the Europeans lived in much
| closer proximity with livestock... smallpox probably came
| from cows, etc.
|
| Also it's generally believed that syphilis didn't exist
| in the Old World before 1492, so there's at least one
| disease that probably made the opposite journey.
|
| However, the disease narrative doesn't absolve the
| Europeans. Nobody _forced_ the European powers to
| colonize the Americas. If they 'd packed up and gone
| home, even if the Americas had still been decimated by
| smallpox, they would have bounced back, given the
| opportunity. Human populations tend to do that.
|
| (The Black Death is sort of an exception, it suppressed
| European population for a _long_ time, because it kept
| coming back, killing a bunch of people, and then going
| away again. But- Europe thrived during that period, the
| Renaissance was coterminous with very bad bubonic plague
| outbreaks)
| [deleted]
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| > I've always wondered why this wasn't a two-way street.
| Wouldn't native people also have diseases to share?
|
| Cities are a breeding ground for diseases. America wasn't
| densely populated at the time.
| sharikous wrote:
| Well, syphilis went the other way
| sjburt wrote:
| First, it was a two-way street. Syphilis, for one, is
| believed to have originated in the new world and have
| been brought to Europe post-contact.
|
| But Europe, Asia, and Africa combined was a much bigger
| population pool, so more opportunities for mutation and
| transmission leading to more types of infectious
| diseases.
| seph-reed wrote:
| CPG Grey has a great video on this exact subject:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEYh5WACqEk
|
| In short, you need cities to develop these types of
| viruses. Cities where the virus can just keep killing,
| without ever hitting a dead end.
| johncessna wrote:
| I think the other, more important, factor CPG Grey
| mentions in the video is domesticated animals.
| seph-reed wrote:
| Sorry. You're correct. I haven't watched the video in a
| bit.
| VHRanger wrote:
| Fwiw that's based on "Guns, Germs and Steel" which is not
| very respected as an academic work
| seph-reed wrote:
| So, I just went down a rabbit hole of criticisms on Guns,
| Germs, and Steel... it's largely coming from the far left
| and far right. Very few moderates.
|
| The far left says it's a cop out on racism, blaming white
| evil on natural conditions. The far right says that it's
| too PC, that plenty of other places had the right
| conditions and gives no credit to culture or innovation.
|
| So both the far left and far right want to take credit
| from chaos and put it on the people: either to hate them,
| or to take pride.
|
| This in and of itself is not proof of anything. But if
| something pisses off far left and right at the same time,
| I tend to think of it as a green flag.
| [deleted]
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| > I've always wondered why this wasn't a two-way street.
| Wouldn't native people also have diseases to share?
|
| They did: syphilis! But the Europeans had far more
| diseases to share because there was far more animal
| domestication going on in the Old World. And most of our
| diseases came as a result of that animal domestication,
| so they had already spread through the population which
| developed immunity in the millennia between the first
| human infection and the Columbian Exchange.
|
| > Usually the smallpox theory is presented in a way that
| removes agency and culpability from the conquerers. It's
| always struck me at remarkably convenient and quite
| unbelievable; they were an idyllic people in some welder
| land without their own diseases, oh really now ... we're
| talking the Caribbeans here
|
| Typically I hear "the smallpox theory" presented as
| "Europeans killed 90% of Native Americans including by
| disease" as though Europeans collectively set out to
| exterminate Native Americans. To be certain, there was a
| lot of brutality and genocide and even some _deliberate_
| spread of disease, but no European could have credibly
| believed that the disease would spread throughout the new
| world to such effect.
| alwillis wrote:
| _but no European could have credibly believed that the
| disease would spread throughout the new world to such
| effect._
|
| Certainly not, but once they figured out what was going
| on, they certainly aided and abetted the spread of these
| new diseases.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Which particular people? Was it like military people
| under orders from European leaders?
|
| Maybe someone could help me understand -- with such a
| prolific practice it must have been diaried and such?
| What are the best primary/secondary sources detailing the
| practice.
|
| I've heard the "they gave blankets but they knew the
| blankets had smallpox infection". But we presumably know
| who the they were.
|
| Presumably a lot of the colonists were sick as well. But
| not sick enough that the indigenous population noticed
| and stayed away.
|
| I guess people's capacity for evil is always greater than
| one can imagine.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| They didn't find out what was going on until the 20th
| century... Before that they thought it was God's judgment
| on the heathens or something.
| tomrod wrote:
| They sent blankets used by infected people. They didn't
| understand germ theory, but they understood contagion.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Population density and totals, and their proximity to
| animals and their waste, matter. Extensive trade and
| empire building exposes people to new pathogens and
| allows new ones to develop, as well.
| wbsss4412 wrote:
| 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.
| Swizec wrote:
| If I'm remembering Guns, Germs, and Steel correctly, a
| popular/pluasible theory is that even without the disease
| conquistador swords and armor were so much better than the
| natives, they'd eventually win regardless. Something about
| more advanced metallurgy.
|
| Having horses may also have helped. There were no beasts of
| burden (iirc) in North America until the Spanish arrived.
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| Well, there were around 3000 Spanish conquistadors. Could
| they really conquer the whole Aztec empire (5 mln people)
| without alliances with local tribes?
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Without local tribes? Probably not, but that's almost
| always how conquering actually happens (by exploiting
| existing fault lines). The situation with Alexander the
| Great is kind of representative. Alexander the Great had
| an army of about 30,000 people and conquered the Persian
| Empire which had a population of about 50 million. The
| Conquistadors had 3000 and conquered the Aztec Empire
| which had a population of 5 million, although the
| Conquistadors also had the benefit of disease traveling
| before them and not just better tactics but also far
| superior metallurgy. It doesn't necessarily take an
| enormous advantage to conquer large territories, and the
| Conquistadors had numerous advantages.
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| The biggest advantage the Conquistadors has was everyone
| else in the area fucking hated the Aztec. They were
| horrible to have as neighbors and when any chance to fuck
| them over, the Spanish, came everyone jumped on board.
| queuebert wrote:
| That was my point above that everyone seems to have
| missed. Even if diseases wiped out 90+% of the local
| population, they would still greatly outnumber the
| conquistadors. So it wasn't purely a balance of manpower.
| Sure, the diseases weakened the resistance, but it wasn't
| the deciding factor. Diamond says as much in his book.
| thehappypm wrote:
| It would also mean smallpox would spread the other way. It's
| interesting that the transfer of disease was so heavily one-
| sided.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| It's not surprising at all. If you assume naively that
| development rate of a novel disease is proportional to
| population, then the World, which had a 6:1 greater
| population would have 6 times as many communicable
| diseases. Similar argument if you base it off of land mass,
| number of wild animals, number of domesticated animals,
| etc.
|
| (Actually, I do think the New World peoples were
| particularly prolific when it came to domesticating
| plants... they punched way above their population size in
| terms of number of today's staple foods they
| domesticated... plus chocolate, vanilla, etc...)
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| You also had millions of years for diseases to evolve to
| infect people in the Old World. Then there were fairly
| small populations that traveled to the New World. If they
| didn't bring the diseases with them, there was only about
| 10,000 years for disease evolution, and a much smaller
| population for much of that time.
| thehappypm wrote:
| I've read that most human viruses jumped from
| domesticated animals. The pre-Columbian American peoples
| notoriously had almost no domesticated animals, with I
| think just one exception being the llama. So I think
| that's supposedly the primary factor, less so raw
| population.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Indeed, I even mentioned that. ;)
|
| > _"Similar argument if you base it off of... number of
| domesticated animals..."_
|
| But again, I think that fact isn't surprising, either,
| considering the Old world is much larger and had more
| wild animals and more humans than the New World.
| kens wrote:
| The book "1491" describes the Americas before Columbus, and is
| very interesting. In particular, the population density was
| much higher than generally realized.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| Especially in Aztec cities
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| 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...
| BurningFrog wrote:
| 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-a wrote:
| 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.
| runarberg wrote:
| 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.
| gremloni wrote:
| 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.
| HarryHirsch wrote:
| Not really - they had a three-pronged business model based
| on ranching sheep, trading and, yes, raiding. Wasn't it
| Erik the Red who had two brothers, and their father asked
| all three what they were going to be when they had grown
| up. Says the first he is going to be a farmer and his
| sheepflock is going to be so large that he will have to dig
| another waterhole. Says the second he will go trading and
| he will have to build another barn to keep his wares in.
| Says Erik, who was the youngest, he is going to be a Viking
| and he is going to raid both of them.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| 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.
| ren_engineer wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| ..
| headcanon wrote:
| 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?
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| 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.
| voz_ wrote:
| > Mesoamerica had high population densities long before
| Spain was even a thing.
|
| Citation needed?
| nl wrote:
| _According to NASA archaeologist Tom Sever, the Mayan
| civilization in Mesoamerica was one of the densest
| populations in human history. Around 800 A.D., after two
| millennia of steady growth, the Mayan population reached
| an all-time high. Population density ranged from 500 to
| 700 people per square mile in the rural areas, and from
| 1,800 to 2,600 people per square mile near the center of
| the Mayan Empire (in what is now northern Guatemala). In
| comparison, Los Angeles County averaged 2,345 people per
| square mile in 2000._ [1]
|
| [1] https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/Maya
| danjac wrote:
| > the animals that were there mostly didn't contribute
| serious new ones
|
| Aren't syphilis and Lyme disease of New World origin?
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| There's quite a lot of debate over the precise origins of
| syphilis. I'm only peripherally familiar with the
| literature, but my understanding is that recent work
| suggests (but not concludes) that it might have been
| endemic to afroeurasia rather than or as well as the
| Americas. Lyme disease is indeed wholly American, but
| it's not epidemic or even particularly mortal.
| COGlory wrote:
| I enjoyed this paper on the origins and distribution of
| Treponema (the bug that causes syphilis and a few other
| skin diseases).
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3956094/
| klyrs wrote:
| Lyme disease is not wholly American, though its incidence
| may be in more recent times.
|
| "Otzi the iceman" had it 5kya:
| https://www.utoronto.ca/news/u-t-researchers-find-
| ancient-ic...
|
| An ancestor to that bacteria was found in a tick that
| lived 15Mya: https://www.livescience.com/46007-lyme-
| disease-ancient-amber...
| foxhop wrote:
| Lyme is a scary to go through, I've had it twice now,
| here is my latest encounter: https://youtu.be/xbPr7DHwSIw
| bregma wrote:
| There is evidence that syphillis came from the Americas.
| There is evidence it was introduced to the Americas by
| Europeans. One problem is that it's hard to distinguish
| teritiary syphillis from tuberculosis or leprosy on
| bones.
|
| As for Borreliosis, there are many variants of it endemic
| to Europe and spread by ticks. No evidence that it came
| from the Americas.
|
| Neither of those spirochetes are zoonotic.
| vanattab wrote:
| Why is a tic biting a human and transferring Borreliosis
| not considered zoonotic?
| lostlogin wrote:
| According to everyone favourite source, Lyme disease is
| zoonotic.
|
| I had never heard the term until today, so take the claim
| with a pinch.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoonosis
| zeckalpha wrote:
| 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.
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| 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.
| barbacoa wrote:
| The population decline of the Mayans happened around the
| same time. This decline was steep enough to be called a
| collapse. There has been much discussion as to the cause.
| jcranmer wrote:
| Yeah, no. The Classic Maya collapse dates to around 900,
| which is before Cahokia even gets going.
| beaner wrote:
| I think by "around the same time" he probably just means
| "plus or minus a few hundred years, before the
| Europeans". Point being that native collapse happened at
| large scale in multiple areas prior to European settling.
| finiteseries wrote:
| 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
| Mesoamerica & northern South America, where most of the total
| post contact population drop occurred.
| gremloni wrote:
| 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.
| wly_cdgr wrote:
| Misread "1021" as "2021" and got excited
| mseepgood wrote:
| I misread it as "1024" and got excited, too.
| beschizza wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Norway was independent until 1397.
| zw123456 wrote:
| Apparently there is some evidence about Vikings bringing Native
| Americans back to Iceland. https://phys.org/news/2010-11-vikings-
| brought-amerindian-ice...
| bingohbangoh wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| wnscooke wrote:
| 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.
| goto11 wrote:
| 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.
| iammisc wrote:
| 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.
| stuff4ben wrote:
| 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?
| aww_dang wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| belval wrote:
| 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.
| mig39 wrote:
| Unfortunately, the aboriginal population of Newfoundland
| didn't survive contact with subsequent European settlers:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beothuk
| BurningFrog wrote:
| You can still get DNA from their bones.
| larrik wrote:
| They probably just went home.
| amackera wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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
| roywiggins wrote:
| They probably went home and/or died out, like in Greenland.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norse_colonization_of_North_...
| bcaulfield wrote:
| 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.
| sb057 wrote:
| 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.
| datameta wrote:
| And it is also possible that a Varangian that visited North
| America ended up as a chief or advisor of a slavic tribe.
| davidw wrote:
| 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.
| ilamont wrote:
| _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?
| sb057 wrote:
| Genetic research suggests American Indian descendants in modern
| day Iceland.
|
| https://phys.org/news/2010-11-vikings-brought-amerindian-ice...
| zw123456 wrote:
| you guys are too fast :) sorry for my dupe post.
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| > the exchange of human genetic information
|
| This sounds like a parody of scientific jargon. Why do people
| write like this?..
| arrosenberg wrote:
| 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
| zw123456 wrote:
| oops just saw you post, you are way ahead of me.
| https://phys.org/news/2010-11-vikings-brought-amerindian-ice...
| hprotagonist wrote:
| 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.
| ravenstine wrote:
| _" On second thought, let's not stay in America. It is a
| silly place."_
| mig39 wrote:
| 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.
| simonklitj wrote:
| I love that idea. "Man, this is just like back home, let's go
| boys."
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Newiceland
| irrational wrote:
| 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?
| pvaldes wrote:
| The major sea currents run towards north here
| kzrdude wrote:
| And they had no base nearby to launch from. Go back home
| and stock up? Noo.. home was Greenland, there's no riches
| there, and they went to Vinland to try to stock up.
| philwelch wrote:
| 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.
| mig39 wrote:
| Can you cite one of these sources? The archeological record
| doesn't seem to show a large aboriginal population in
| Newfoundland around 1000 C.E.
|
| I don't think the Beothuk, for example, were ever very
| numerous, certainly not as numerous as other aboriginal
| people in Labrador and Greenland at the time.
|
| It wasn't just the Norse that had a hard time living in
| Newfoundland at the time. It wasn't very hospitable to any
| humans.
| philwelch wrote:
| A good start is the book _1491: New Revelations of the
| Americas Before Columbus_ by Charles Mann. That book
| fundamentally changed my understanding of the pre-
| Colombian Americas.
|
| > It wasn't just the Norse that had a hard time living in
| Newfoundland at the time. It wasn't very hospitable to
| any humans.
|
| I don't think it was as crowded as, say, New England
| (early explorers of the coast of New England, IIRC, wrote
| that there wasn't enough open shoreline to even make
| landfall on). However much or however little of
| Newfoundland was habitable, though, was already inhabited
| by the time the Norse got there.
| [deleted]
| datameta wrote:
| There is a Norse description in the Saga of Icelanders of
| what the indigenous skraelings looked like, as the norse
| called them, as well as accounts of repelling assaults from
| the native populations.
|
| > They were short in height with threatening features and
| tangled hair on their heads. Their eyes were large and
| their cheeks broad.
|
| > despite everything the land had to offer there, they
| would be under constant threat of attack from its prior
| inhabitants.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skr%C3%A6ling
| 999900000999 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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?
| 999900000999 wrote:
| Many mixed raced people can pass as being completely apart
| of one race.
|
| I imagine a Norwegian/Indigenous American kid could just
| look Indigenous American.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > 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.
| Tagbert wrote:
| Those findings are based on the genetics of larger
| populations and specific samples of ancient DNA. If there
| were a only a handful of children born of both groups, that
| genetic trace would likely have faded out over time.
| golemiprague wrote:
| Hispanic is not a race, it is a combination of geographical
| and cultural denomination loosely defined by the USA
| perception of the lands south to their border.
| chestertn wrote:
| 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.
| waserwill wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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.
| koboll wrote:
| Wow. You should really, really write a blog post about
| this, and get some of them on the record about it. A Google
| search for 'Aneityum "yellow people"' returns only 4
| results.
|
| However, one of those four is this dissertation: https://sc
| holarsbank.uoregon.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1794...
|
| Which reads:
|
| >His canoe and his moiety were the first to adopt the
| chiefly system, and it was brought to Aneityum by natimi-
| yag (yellow-people), which he now believes to have been
| Polynesian.
| chana_masala wrote:
| I don't think I've come across anyone on HN from Vanuatu.
| If you're open to answering, I wonder if you work in tech?
| What's the tech industry like there?
| bitxbitxbitcoin wrote:
| Could also be that last push of Denisovans that was
| recently discovered through the genetic record.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| > 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.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| Come to think of it: none of Buddha's followers even _wrote_
| about him or Buddhism itself until several centuries after
| his death. Meaningless.
| chestertn wrote:
| Yes, but they continued the Buddhism tradition (orally).
| The Vikings did not continue commercing and tell other
| people... hey! there are humans in this place! its a new
| continent!
| MichaelMcG wrote:
| "Meh--same climate, different continent. We'll stick to
| raiding the shorter commute South, they have stuff worth
| taking."
| chestertn wrote:
| 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.
| chestertn wrote:
| A nuance here. Why is this important? Slavery was very
| common back then and the New Laws were revolutionary.
|
| The Ottomans were famous for their slave trade and did
| capture tons of Europeans.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_Ottoman_Empire
|
| Not only that, Aztecs and other indigenous peoples from the
| americas had Slavery as an institution:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aztec_slavery
|
| Indigenous slavery ended with the New Laws
| cschmidt wrote:
| 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.
| chestertn wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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...
| Retric wrote:
| 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
| hapticmonkey wrote:
| That's like saying The Apollo moon missions were meaningless
| because they failed to set up commercial hub on the moon.
| runarberg wrote:
| > But it is meaningless since they did not write about it
|
| The story of Leifur Eiriksson lived in the oral tradition and
| was eventually written down in Graenlendinga 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.
| singularity2001 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 .
| privatdozent wrote:
| Scandinavians are pretty proud of this fact. Look up Leif
| Erikson, supposedly the first European to set foot in America,
| 500 years before Columbus.
| broof wrote:
| 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.
| burkaman wrote:
| 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.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| 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.
| broof wrote:
| well yeah Erikson was first, but he didn't "discover" it in
| the sense that Columbus did. I would say they're
| categorically different. See my comment below.
| krapp wrote:
| Columbus never even set foot in North America. He
| "discovered" some islands in the Caribbean and Bahamas.
|
| The narrative of Columbus "discovering" the land that
| would become the United States has never been anything
| but propaganda[0].
|
| [0]https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/06/15/colu
| mbus-n...
| avgcorrection wrote:
| Yeah yeah, you're just repeating yourself. Setting your
| own idiosyncratic/arbitrary rules.
| capableweb wrote:
| 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.
| kypro wrote:
| When I was a kid I remember seeing weird bugs in the garden
| and wondering if I was the first person to find that bug.
| I'm sure I wasn't, but in theory I could have "discovered"
| loads of new species - but would it even matter if I wasn't
| aware enough of my own discovery to share it?
|
| Did the Vikings even realise they were on a new continent?
| My understanding is that they "settled" a tiny area and may
| have thought it was just an island off of Greenland or
| something.
| burkaman wrote:
| Columbus also didn't realize he was on a new continent.
| If that's the standard, then Amerigo Vespucci discovered
| it, because he's generally considered to be the first to
| realize it was a new continent.
| broof wrote:
| I would say yes, "making noise about it" would be a
| relatively important part of discovery. Did Erikson know
| that there was an entire continent with advanced societies
| completely seperated from the "old world"? Because that is
| what Columbus discovered. I'm making the distinction
| between Leif Erikson discovering a tundra-like landmass
| beyond Greenland that they didn't think was significant,
| and Columbus's actions which ended up connecting the old
| world to the new. Those two things are very different from
| each other. If I google "who discovered america" and got
| Leif Erikson, I think that would be more confusing than
| Columbus.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| If a tree falls in the forest, does it make a sound? If
| someone discovers something and nothing really comes of it,
| is it really a more significant discovery than one which
| changes the world profoundly, immediately, and forevermore?
| zardo wrote:
| 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
| jfengel wrote:
| 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".
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| also interesting:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bjarni_Herj%C3%B3lfsson
| efa wrote:
| 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
| [deleted]
| wolverine876 wrote:
| 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.
| not2b wrote:
| 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).
| pvaldes wrote:
| That depends entirely on the species of tree. Absolutely
| crucial in this case. Do they mention this data in the
| article?
| roywiggins wrote:
| Yes, at least two species of tree. You can read which ones
| in the paper!
| dboreham wrote:
| From tfa: "However, it has thus far not been possible to
| determine when this activity took place"
| roywiggins wrote:
| The research is about pinning the date down.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| > I thought this has been known for awhile
|
| What, in particular, are you referring to?
| Afforess wrote:
| Leif Erikson? Popularized by Spongebob, no less.
| cguess wrote:
| This is about nailing the exact date that this settlement
| was built. Leif Erikson was almost certainly earlier
| anyways.
| z3c0 wrote:
| According to Wikipedia, he died in 1020.
|
| So technically, you're correct. Which is the best kind of
| correct.
| thereddaikon wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > Leif Erikson led an expedition to Newfoundland over 20
| years ago
|
| I guess that's technically not wrong.
| elwell wrote:
| > guess that's technically not wrong
|
| Hey, don't command me to guess things.
| GauntletWizard wrote:
| I'm just impressed that Leif Erikson was leading
| expeditions while still in public school.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| I too love dangling modifiers
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dangling_modifier
| e0m wrote:
| Happy 1000th anniversary Vikings!
| cheaprentalyeti wrote:
| 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?
| justinzollars wrote:
| This is so cool. So much earlier than I could have imagined!
| newfriend wrote:
| The media is really pushing this (and related) story hard this
| year. Anything to delegitimize Columbus.
| anthk wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| What is wrong with that?
|
| Don't you prefer accurate history?
| Teknoman117 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Syphilis is thought to be a new world disease.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_syphilis
| staticfloat wrote:
| Aha! A chance to plug one of my favorite CGP Grey videos that
| explores this very question:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEYh5WACqEk
| tschwimmer wrote:
| Syphilis was thought to have been carried from the Americas to
| Europe by Columbus' crewmen.[0]
|
| [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syphilis#History
| 0000011111 wrote:
| "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.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| olvy0 wrote:
| 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.
| fijiaarone wrote:
| Literally the article states that they know exactly when and
| where Norse vikings were because of "cosmic rays"
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