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Is This The Oldest Map of North America?
An anonymous reader writes: "Scientists from the University of Arizona, the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory, and the Smithsonian Institution have used carbon-dating technology to determine the age of a controversial parchment that might be the first-ever map of North America."
Update: 07/30 03:04 GMT by T : Bill Reardon writes: "Thought you might like to know there's another story running via the AP on
the map. New study says Yale University's Vinland map is a forgery. Poor Yale. First hacked by Princeton, now their map is a forgery."
This is just something for people with too much money to get their panties in a tangle about.
Prehistory isn't prehistory because there wasn't history, but because no documents survived the battle with time. We already know the people traveled to NA before Columbus. This map means almost nothing, it has just because another collectible to the uber-riche. Also arguing about which dead man in the recent past was the first to get here is of absolutely no use, except to some grad student/professor.
"I don't know that atheists should be considered citizens, nor should they be considered patriots." George HW Bush
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=624&nci d=624&e=1&u=/ap/20020729/ap_on_sc/vinland_map_ 1
NEW HAVEN, Conn. (AP) - Yale University's parchment map of the Vikings' travels to the New World, purportedly drawn by a 15th century scribe, is a clever 20th century forgery, according to a new study.
Find a very old piece of paper. Write something on it. When they date the paper, they'll think the writing on it was just as old.
Fools some of the people some of the time...
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
If this could be used as a way to make postal and bank workers not take a holiday the 9th of october, I'd say this is worthwhile.
Now this article suggests that McCrone's analysis was faulty (or at least limited). It is very interesting to see these types debates evolve with the science. Maybe someday DNA analysis even will be able to prove that OJ did it ... or maybe not.
More info on McCrone's analysis from his site.
The article says that the map dates to around 1434AD. That date is entirely probable because the Basques had been trading in Norh America since at least the fourteenth century. Actually, the date is precisely one year after the end of records showing the landing of North American beaver pelts by Basque traders at English ports. The folloqing recycled quote is from Europe's Mystery People: Did the Basques Beat Columbus? by Evan Hadingham, in World Monitor, September 1992, p34-42 (p37):
Now, the proximity of the map's date (as reported by the linked article) to the unexplained end of the beaver pelt trade, and the connection between the Catholic Church and this allegedly long-lost map (a connection to which the linked article refers only in passing) would go together quite well in the mind of your average conspiracy theory buff. Surely, this suggests that today's governments are not the first in history to protect their citizens from news of an alien civilization. ;) In any case, I just thought I'd toss that in FYI.
Are we to infer that the original inhabitants of North America had no map making skills?
The map has the same handwriting as other maps found by the same guy.
Here is some more information about it and other things that may never be proven real or not.
http://www.mcri.org/vm_shroud_update.html
As a caption under a picture in this article they say "The removed slice was approximately three inches long. Based on the Vinland map's estimated value of $20 million this slice would be worth approximately $40,000" this seems to raise one main question to me. who is going to buy "A small strip of what might have been the first map of North America (map may not have been first and strip contains no portions of anything like a map)". This question leads me to the question of will they buy it from a random person on ebay... to get more serious i hate it when people say things like this. Thats the sort of nonsense trivia i hated in grade school and hate now no one in the world needed them to write that
Good luck in hell.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2002-07/acs -tvm072902.php
Where do those spaces come from? [The one between 'acs' and '-tvm'. I didn't put it there]
It makes about as much sense as a reporter who sees that Tom Cruise is getting paid $20 million for an upcoming movie -- and then concluding that a small strip of his flesh would earn $40,000 in the role. When, of course, the small strip of flesh would do a better job.
It could be worse. Allow me to demonstrate. From the article:
Whence "Maybe it's OJ's nod to Dennis Erickson [sic? :) ], who coached Oregon State to their first win over Southern Cal since 1967, when OJ's number-one ranked Trojans were held scoreless by the Great Pumpkin's Beavers."
Now, that would be far fetched. Get some perspective, man! :)
Yup, it's a fake, that's for sure.
Just look at the writing, it is precisely in line and spaced absolutely perfectly, on a standard European A4 lined notebook sheet.
Compare that with authentic maps from that period, even with authentic written works.
That alone makes it a fake. Also, examine the geography of the map overall and compare that with the geography of the North american part.
And that completely ignores the ink data. Dating the paper doesn't prove that the map is old, only the paper.
Later . . . . . . WebBug
This article talks about a study which suggests the map is a fake.
There are more than a few problems with these kinds of pre-contact (Phoenicians, Polynesians, etc.) theories, though. If the Basques were trading North American pelts with the English, they somehow never encountered Native Americans, traded with them, or left any other sort of influence. No Basque artifacts have been found in North America. A one-way contact sounds extremely unlikely. Contrast this with the French, for example. Here in Minnesota the voyageurs made incredible inroads. Their presence here is found in place-names, clay pipes, iron tools, and trade (and marriage) with the local Native American population.
) . You'll note that it's not at the Smithsonian, but rather a small town in central Minnesota. You'll also note that it's been mechanically cleaned, so accurate dating is no longer possible. But there are still people who swear by the authenticity despite overwhelming odds against it, and no real support from serious archaeologists.
We also have a pre-columbian mythology here, with the famed Alexandria Runestone (http://www.atc.tec.mn.us/runestone/runestone.htm
Many historical/archaeological claims become an article of pseudo-scientific faith at some point for many people -- but it's safest to be quite skeptical of claims based on singular lines of evidence.