The Vinland Map
AP Photo
Posted on 07/29/2002 4:41:39 PM PDT by Pharmboy
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.
The Vinland Map
AP Photo
The study is the latest development in a debate that began in the 1960s when the map was given to the university by benefactor Paul Mellon.
Scholars who believe it is real have said it predates Christopher Columbus and proves he was not the first European to reach America.
But researchers at University College in London who analyzed the ink have concluded the map was produced after 1923.
"The results demonstrate the great importance of modern analytical techniques in the study of items in our cultural heritage," said Robin J.H. Clark, a University College professor who did the analysis.
Another map expert, however, said Clark's study does not prove the map is a fake.
"Nothing so far has changed my opinion that the map is consistent with other documents of the same age we had analyzed," said Thomas Cahill, a professor of atmospheric science and physics at the University of California at Davis.
The research by Clark and a colleague, Katherine Brown, is published in the July 31 issue of Analytical Chemistry, the journal of the American Chemical Society.
The map depicts the world, and includes the north Atlantic coast of North America. It includes text written in medieval Latin and a legend that describes how Leif Eiriksson, a Norseman, found the new land around the year 1000.
Other experts have dated the map to around 1440 — 50 years before Columbus sailed to the New World.
The map was sold by a dealer in rare Spanish books to a Connecticut dealer in the 1950s, who then sold it to Mellon. The original dealer never revealed his source. Now valued at more than $20 million, the map is housed at Yale's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
Yale has not taken a position on whether the map is authentic, said the university's head librarian, Alice Prochaska.
"I think probably research will reveal one day what the truth is, but it is certainly very much under discussion and debate," Prochaska said Monday.
In the 1970s, Yale hired the late Chicago chemist Walter McCrone Jr. to do a microscopic analysis of the map. He focused on the map's ink — a black layer that is flaking off over a yellowish layer that adheres firmly to the parchment.
McCrone found round, uniform crystals of anatase in ink. Anatase, a form of titanium dioxide, has been used to produce inks since the 1920s.
Anatase is found in nature, but in small amounts that would be found in jagged, irregular crystals if a medieval scribe had used it to make the Vinland Map's inks, he said. Based on this conclusion, McCrone pronounced the map a fake.
In a 1995 book, however, Cahill and a colleague debunked McCrone's conclusions.
Among other conclusions, they found that most of the crystals McCrone found were not anatase, and that a third of the ink contained no titanium.
Clark's study, using a Raman microscope, found that anatase was detected solely in the yellowish ink lines, and not elsewhere on the parchment. The Raman microscope uses a laser beam that scatters off molecules as radiation with different colors.
Yellow lines are sometimes left behind when medieval ink, made of iron gallotannate, degrades. Clark said a forger would know about the yellow residue and would try to reproduce it.
But, the black ink on top of the yellow ink was found to be carbon-based, not iron gallotannate, so no yellow residue should be present, Clark said.
Where did they get this old parchment to write the map hoax upon?
The Solutrean technology and artifacts crossed from Europe to the up-to-then uninhabited continent of North America. That definitely took place. If anyone can explain how this continent came to speak English, with no English crossing the Atlantic, then I will listen to arguments that the Solutrean technology and tools crossed the Atlantic without any Solutrean people!
Honestly, the things people will post to me these days!
Sorry, blam, I know you're a good guy. But the flamers have been very vicious on another thread yesterday and today.
I heard it was Phoenician. There was some Roman coins and a Roman statue dug up near the Bay of Guayaquil in Ecuador though.
There's also a cave close to me here in Illinois that had 20,000 articles in it from India dated at 3000 B.C., I think it's 3000 B.C. anyway. Burrows cave. If it was a hoax, would a hoaxer carve ancient writing on 20,000 rocks?! :^)
Okay.
If you just change one word in this statement from remains to artifacts, we do not have a dispute. Widely accepted data supports all your other statements. Albeit, I think the Calico site in California (200,000 years old) will eventually be accepted by the main-stream. (Probably not in our life time though)
George Carter's book, Earlier Than You Think, is a good read on the Calico site.
I expect we'll have accepted dates of 50-60,000 years old (in our life time) in the Monte Verde area in South America.
I mean of course, items discoverable which prove human residence beyond any doubt. Not just their own bones.
As to Calico, that is a real bitch, isn't it? It is like somebody a quarter million years ago transported a few homo erectus to California by UFO just to astonish us. Maybe erectus COULD float around the N. Pacific rim, though, who knows? One thing is sure, whoever MHB at Calico left no living descendants in the present.
Of course at Monte Verde, we already have humans proven some 33M years ago. At Pedra Furada, some evidence that Africans, perhaps accidental and without descendants in the present, may have come ashore and lived for some generations....
The reason Monte Verde is so critical is that this is where, and getting close to WHEN, that famous Original Boatload of Asians landed, from whom TAIP the whole Amerindian population of both continents, and also the islands and isthmus between, is descended TAIP.
Lang, who had a direct contact to God I guess, suggested it landed near Copiapo, IIRC.
Scientists Determine Age Of New World Map; "Vinland Map" Parchment Predates Columbus's Arrival In North America
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. In a paper to be published in the July 2002 issue of the journal Radiocarbon, the scientists conclude that the so-called “Vinland Map” parchment dates to approximately 1434 A.D., or nearly 60 years before Christopher Columbus set foot in the West Indies.
“Many scholars have agreed that if the Vinland Map is authentic, it is the first known cartographic representation of North America, and its date would be key in establishing the history of European knowledge of the lands bordering the western Atlantic Ocean,” said chemist Garman Harbottle, the lead Brookhaven researcher on the project. “If it is, in fact, a forgery, then the forger was surely one of the most skillful criminals ever to pursue that line of work.”
Housed in Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, the map shows Europe (including Scandinavia), Northern Africa, Asia and the Far East, all of which were known by 15th-century travelers. In the northwest Atlantic Ocean, however, it also shows the “Island of Vinland,” which has been taken to represent an unknown part of present-day Labrador, Newfoundland, or Baffin Island. Text on the map reads, in part, “By God's will, after a long voyage from the island of Greenland to the south toward the most distant remaining parts of the western ocean sea, sailing southward amidst the ice, the companions Bjarni and Leif Eiriksson discovered a new land, extremely fertile and even having vines, ... which island they named Vinland.”
The map, drawn in ink and measuring 27.8 x 41.0 centimeters, surfaced in Europe in the mid-1950s, but had no distinct record of prior ownership or provenance in any famous library. The map and the accompanying “Tartar Relation,” a manuscript of undoubted authenticity that was at some point bound with the Vinland Map in book form, were purchased in 1958 for $1 million by Paul A. Mellon, known for his many important gifts to Yale, and, at Mellon's request, subjected to an exhaustive six-year investigation.
In 1965 the Yale University Press published “The Vinland Map and the Tartar Relation,” a detailed study by R.A. Skelton, T. E. Marston and G. D. Painter that firmly argued for the map’s authenticity, connecting it with the Catholic Church’s Council of Basel (A.D. 1431-1449), which was convened a half-century before Columbus’s voyage. Two scientific conferences, in 1966 and 1996, featured strong debates over the map’s authenticity, but no final determination could be made based on the available facts.
Beginning in 1995, Harbottle, along with Douglas J. Donahue, University of Arizona, and Jacqueline S. Olin, Smithsonian Center for Materials Research and Education, undertook a detailed scientific study of the parchment. The scientists traveled to Yale, where they were allowed to trim a 3-inch-long sliver off the bottom edge of the parchment for analysis. Using the National Science Foundation-University of Arizona’s Accelerator Mass Spectrometer, the scientists determined a precision date of 1434 A.D. plus or minus 11 years. The unusually high precision of the date was possible because the parchment’s date fell in a very favorable region of the carbon-14 dating calibration curve. This new analysis of the map parchment reaffirms the association with the Council of Basel since it dates exactly to that time period, and makes a strong case for the map’s authenticity.
Several previous studies challenging the map’s authenticity have focused on the chemical composition of the ink used to draw it. Some initial work found anatase, a particular form of titanium dioxide, in the ink. Since anatase only went into commercial production in the 20th century, some concluded that the ink was also a 20th-century product, making the map a forgery. Recent testing, however, only revealed trace quantities of titanium, whose presence may be a result of contamination, the chemical deterioration of the ink over the centuries, or may even have been present naturally in the ink used in medieval times. Another recent study detected carbon, which has also has been presented as evidence of a forgery. However, carbon can also be found in medieval ink. Current carbon-dating technology does not permit the dating of samples as small as the actual ink lines on the map.
“While the date result itself cannot prove that the map is authentic, it is an important piece of new evidence that must be considered by those who argue that the map is a forgery and without cartographic merit,” said Harbottle.
Editor's Note: The original news release can be found at http://www.bnl.gov/bnlweb/pubaf/pr/2002/bnlpr072902a.htm
Discovery of an Ancient 3D "Relief Map" of the Ural Region. Discovered in China!
James C. Chatters (The guy who did all the Kennewick Man Work), states in his book, Ancient Encounters, that prior to 6,000 years ago there are zero skeletons of the people we refer to today as American Indians/Native Americans in North America. Prior to that time, they were all the Kennewick Man type, the Ainu/Joman strain without the 'shovel' teeth (see Christy Turner, ASU) found in today's Native Americans. (BTW, what does TAIP mean?)
Authentic? Only that it was engraved in/on some very old rock. (When it was engraved has not been answered, IMO)
Map notwithstanding, it's certain that they were in Labrador by the 1200's. Icelandic sagar vividly recount Leif's voyage and subsequent colonization voyages. Remains of Viking settlements have been excavated in Anse aux Meadows in Labrador.
Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on or off the "Gods, Graves, Glyphs" PING list --
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Thanks, guvna. Blast from the past. :^)
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