Credit: Soren Thirslund
Posted on 03/29/2014 9:14:22 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
A team of researchers working in Hungary has proposed that a sun compass artifact found in a convent in 1948 might have been used in conjunction with crystals to allow Vikings to guide their boats even at night. In their paper published in Proceedings of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical & Engineering Sciences, the team describes theories they've developed that might explain how Viking sailors were able to so accurately sail to places such as Greenland.
Since the discovery of the sun compass fragment, researchers have theorized that Viking sailors used them to plot their course—at least when the sun was shining. They didn't have magnetic compasses, however, which suggest they must have had some other means for steering in the evening or the later hours. In this latest effort, the researchers describe a scenario where the Vikings might have used a type of crystal that they called a sunstone to help them use light from the sun below the horizon as a guide.
The sun compass fragment, prior research has suggested, operated in similar fashion to a sundial, using the position of the sun to determine direction, instead of time. Some have suggested the Vikings also used a dome shaped object with slits in it, placed on top of the compass to help narrow the light during the time when the sun moved low towards the horizon.
(Excerpt) Read more at phys.org ...
Credit: Soren Thirslund
Did Vikings navigate by polarized light?
Nature | 31 Jan 2011 | Jo Marchant
Posted on 1/31/2011 11:30:21 PM by Palter
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2666520/posts
Ancient man, contrary to some popular misconceptions, was not stupid...I find this to be a credible hypothesis.
Modernity has beget a bevy of ignorance and superstition—not necessarily “enlightenment” when it comes to knowledge and morality.
I was also going to post ‘this is not new’.
I’m sure not everybody with interest saw it, though.
But children are still taught the ‘myth’ (CC ‘discovering’ America)...and the Egyptians still won’t permit the ‘solid gold’ artifacts to be assayed to show they’re not just ‘plated’...
Very interesting.
I think this theory has been around for some time.
As my son said, if they were so dumb, why is it their monuments are still standing 1000, 5000, 20,000 years later, and ours will last ... ?
The rise of the over-credentialled, under-informed class (popularly known as “academics” and “PhD’s”) would want everyone to believe that without them around, humanity sinks into a cesspool of ignorance.
Contrary to their twaddle, humanity got along pretty well before PhDs were being granted to everyone and their cousins. In the old days, we had real world tests for competence.
People were either competent... or they were dead. In hindsight, it was a pretty good test.
PROOF POSITIVE: 1) They didn't listen to rap "music" and 2) They didn't elect Obama.
well said
They’d have to be acclimated, just as we all have been without necessarily realizing it, but the same basic abilities are what made them human as well.
World’s oldest telescope? [ Assyrian telescope? ]
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/1879740/posts
Fathers Of The Zodiac Tracked Down
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/1844629/posts
Thanks for the reminder.
Forty years ago I lived in a Scandinavian county for a few years. The fact that the Vikings navigated, including to their North American settlement(s), using a “sun stone” was well known at that time. It’s good to see the “scientific” community catch up. One day they may even discover that ancient people used fire to cook food!
I’m always amazed and often disappointed when I learn of scientific “types” finding artifacts from thousands of years ago. They speculate and postulate, and all along, they give the impression that they think our ancestors (or other civilizations) were too stupid to know how to do things.
It is to laugh. Most of the scientists today seem to cling to popular myths, and don’t bother trying to find out the truth of the past, and what mankind has been capable of for millenia.
Well dang, here’s me thinking all these years they would use Polaris to navigate at night......Dang :)
Here's a pretty complete run-down by my gemologist friend Elise Skalwold, who has deep Norwegian roots: VIKING SUNSTONE
Think of the effect government regulation has on competency. They set some minimal standard that the status quo accepts and then leave it in place. A license or a permit replaces a reputation.
Ancient people had trial and error on their side—and lots of Time. Writing helped a great deal and organization—thats why Egypt advanced—necause the Egyptians were in a place where all the germs of Africa came down the Nile—they became the best doctors in the Ancient World—and developed cures and drugs that could rival a 19th Century Western Sawbones. They did this because they had to. same with the Vikings (Norse) They were a sea faring people and needed to develope fine ships and ways to navagate—They had writing too—the Runes.
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