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."

Comments

Map dated one year after end of pelt trade records

[iskander]

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):

Recently, historian Robert Delort, of Switzerland's University of Geneva, discovered remarkable evidence implying that the New World fur trade may go back long before the whaling expeditions and, for that matter, Columbus. Delort has unearthed British customs records indicating that Basque traders landed a heavy volume of beaver pelts at English ports from 1380 to 1433. Since north European beaver population were already nearly extinct by that time, Delort speculates the source is more likely to have been the New World (the pelts were delivered in rolls -- the way Quebec Indians stored them). Delort emphasizes, however, that his conclusion is preliminary. Certainly the idea is not far-fetched. An Icelandic chronicle from 1412 mentions the presence of Basque whalers in Iceland, a testimony backed up by two contemporary maps depicting Basque whaling ships there.

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.