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Norse tech and the settlement of the Americas

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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Topic: Norse tech and the settlement of the Americas
    Posted: 14-Nov-2008 at 02:29
Something that makes me feel very upset is the so many pseudohistorical thesis about people from the Old World comming to the Americas across the sea. Make me feel upset because that wasn't an easy task at all. Theirs argument is something like this "If the vikings reached the Americas, then everybody else's did... Angry (steam...)
 
These fellows forget the following. Besides Polynesians that was an extraordinary people,  the most outstanding sailors of theirs times were -without doubt- the Norse!!! It is not a casuality they reached the Americas by sea because, of all the people of the Western part of Eurasia, they were the best sailors and the most prepared people to do so.
 
I remember a exhibition about the Norse some years ago in Chile, and how surprised I was when I saw theirs tools !! Amazingly modern.
 
Let's discuss, please, the technology available to the norse to cross the Atlantic. Later I will put some picture about it.
 
 
 


Edited by pinguin - 14-Nov-2008 at 02:30
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  Quote Reginmund Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 14-Nov-2008 at 09:01
I suppose their innovative ship design, with a light, streamlined hulk for maximum speed, was the most important technology in crossing the Atlantic. I don't know what other tools you are referring to, naval gear or everyday utensils?

I don't know if you are aware, but there is a particularly farfetched theory claiming the Norse, on discovering America, followed the coast further south and came into contact with the native civilizations of southern America. Allegedly these Norsemen did quite well for themselves and rose to high status among the natives, giving rise to the legend about Quetzalcoatl, the serpent rafts and the bearded men who would some day return. Of course when the bearded men returned they were Spaniards and Portuguese who were less inclined to adjust to native society, to put it mildly. In any case it's just speculation.

http://archaeology.suite101.com/article.cfm/the_vikingmaya_connection
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  Quote Jams Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 14-Nov-2008 at 11:41
I've heard of that idea, but I believe the original myth of Quetzalcoatl is probbly older than the Norse settlements. Anyway, the Sagas does not support the idea. The Sagas however, seems to be fairly trustworthy in some way, because the remains found correlate quite well with the description in the Sagas.
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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 14-Nov-2008 at 16:46
Originally posted by Reginmund

I suppose their innovative ship design, with a light, streamlined hulk for maximum speed, was the most important technology in crossing the Atlantic. I don't know what other tools you are referring to, naval gear or everyday utensils?


I was talking about theirs techniques of shipbuilding. They reinforced theirs ships with iron ribbets. Besides, they had navigation tools like the sun compass; something other peoples didn't know.

Originally posted by Reginmund


I don't know if you are aware, but there is a particularly farfetched theory claiming the Norse, on discovering America, followed the coast further south and came into contact with the native civilizations of southern America. Allegedly these Norsemen did quite well for themselves and rose to high status among the natives, giving rise to the legend about Quetzalcoatl, the serpent rafts and the bearded men who would some day return. Of course when the bearded men returned they were Spaniards and Portuguese who were less inclined to adjust to native society, to put it mildly. In any case it's just speculation...


If I am not wrong, Quetzalcoatl is previous to the Norse settlements in Greenland. Besides, it is based in a real human being whose history is sort of understood, more or less. Norse never were so far down South at all.
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  Quote ehecatzin Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 14-Nov-2008 at 21:33
I agree, the Nords were very competent sailors, who travelled the northern sea in a daily basis, that alone should give us an idea of how skilled they were.

Originally posted by Reginmund


I don't know if you are aware, but there is a particularly farfetched theory claiming the Norse, on discovering America, followed the coast further south and came into contact with the native civilizations of southern America. Allegedly these Norsemen did quite well for themselves and rose to high status among the natives, giving rise to the legend about Quetzalcoatl, the serpent rafts and the bearded men who would some day return. Of course when the bearded men returned they were Spaniards and Portuguese who were less inclined to adjust to native society, to put it mildly. In any case it's just speculation.


The part that bothers me so much of that theory, is not that its far fetched (its actually ridiculous) but that despite being pure fantasy many people consider it to be true, and it keeps popping in most discussions about european pre columbus sea exploration.

Quetzalcoatl, or the feathered snake to be more precise, has been present in mesoamerica since the olmec civilization, along with other just as old concepts that became a core of their religous belief sistem, like the calendar, jaguar/feathered snake dualism, sacrifice, piramids, urban planning, etc. so did these lost vikings tought them all that? and while we are at it, why didnt they teach them how to sail or some metalurgy like bronze, how about something even more basic like a cart wheel? Im sure these vikings knew how to make one.

Anyway, I dont want to sound agressive or anything like that, the whole subject just gets on my nerves.

The thing that we must be aware of when we talk about Quetzalcoatl, is that Quetzalcoatl was many diferent things across mesoamerican history, he is the feathered snake, which in Olmec times and Teotihuacan time simbolized rivers rather than wind, he was the ruler of the mythical city of Tollan (which is still being argued if is Teotihuacan or Tula) and was also the title of the Toltec rulers  (who apparently had a very powerful theocratic class, wich explains the title).
Finally when its mentioned in central Mexico civilizations that Quetzalcoatl went east...well east of Mexico highlands is: Yucatan! and, as we know, Teotihuacan and Toltec influence was present in Maya history, I guess its more realistic to think that by east they meant Yucatan rather than Europe.





Edited by ehecatzin - 14-Nov-2008 at 21:35
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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 15-Nov-2008 at 01:46
Originally posted by ehecatzin

....
The part that bothers me so much of that theory, is not that its far fetched (its actually ridiculous) but that despite being pure fantasy many people consider it to be true, and it keeps popping in most discussions about european pre columbus sea exploration.
....
 
Well, there is no need to get upset. That's the effect "King Kong" in popular culture. The idea that natives will receive gladly to foreigners and consider them gods. The facts couldn't be more different. Remember that Cook was killed by natives in Polynesia, and several others god-pretenders were killed on site as well. Even more, people like the Apaches, Sioux, Mayans, Amazonians and Araucanians never gave up and kept fighting up to very recent times.
 
With respect to Norse reaching Mexico, if they have had, Mexicans wouldn't be so naive when the real danger of the Spaniards finally arrived, that's for sure. Norse had similar problems with the pre-Inuit populations of Greenland and with Inuits themselves and as far as I know Norse weren't considered gods among them.
 
 
 
 
 
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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 15-Nov-2008 at 01:59

Well, the thread is about Norse technology. Here is some example of the sun compass. It was a tool similar to a gnomon that help to find the trajectory of a ship at sea.

 
A description, from:
 
 
The Viking Sun Compass is an ingenious device which allows the navigator to know where North was and, therefore, what direction he was sailing.
 
The Sun compass is essentially a sundial used in "reverse". Imagine a circular wooden disk about 4 or 4 inches in diameter set level to the ground. From the center rises a thin post or gnomon. When the sun is out, the gnomon casts a shadow on the disk. Were you to mark the position of the tip of the shadow each half an hour, and then connect the points, you would generate an arc. That arc is a recording of the sun's height during the day, at that time of year, at that latitude. If you drew a line from the center of the gnomon, to the point on the arc that was closest to the gnomon, you will have defined True North on the sun compass. From there you can mark out the rest of the 32 points of a compass. Now you've calibrated the Sun Compass. To use the compass you shove off to sea and wait for a sunny day. You must know whether it's morning or the afternoon. Once you know that, if you hold the Sun Compass completely level, and then spin the disk about it's axis (about the gonomon) there is one and only one point where the tip of the shadow cast by the gnomon touches the curve you drew. The compass is now oriented. You now look at the compass marks to determine which direction is North (or South etc.).

 


Edited by pinguin - 15-Nov-2008 at 02:17
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  Quote Count Belisarius Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 15-Nov-2008 at 02:25
I saw an article on BBC where a prof found viking telescopic viewing lenses that were almost perfect ellipsoids


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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 15-Nov-2008 at 03:05
Yeap. I saw it too, somewhere, a while ago. I don't know if it is verified. I attacked the article of BBC:
 
 
Did the Vikings make a telescope?
Dr%20Olaf%20Schmidt
The lenses must have been made by trial and error
By BBC News Online science editor Dr David Whitehouse

The Vikings could have been using a telescope hundreds of years before Dutch spectacle makers supposedly invented the device in the late 16th century.

This remarkable possibility has emerged from a study of sophisticated lenses just recognised from a Viking site on the island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea. They were initially thought to be merely ornaments.


Dr%20Olaf%20Schmidt
"Visby" lenses were initially thought to be ornaments
"It seems that the elliptical lens design was invented much earlier that we thought and then the knowledge was lost," says Dr Olaf Schmidt, of Aalen University in Germany.

The late Dr Karl-Heinz Wilms first heard of the so-called "Visby" lens in 1990 when he was searching for exhibits for a Munich museum. It was named after the major town on Gotland. Dr Wilms found a picture of the lens in a book and planned to examine the original.

But it was not until 1997 that a team of three scientists went to Gotland to take a close look at what were actually 10 lenses locked away in the storeroom of a local museum.

Perfect shape

One of the team, Dr Olaf Schmidt, told BBC News Online: "I was excited, of course. The polish of some of the lenses was almost perfect. The second thing that caught our eye was that their imaging was very good."


Lens%20Dr%20Olaf%20Schmidt
This lens was an almost perfect ellipsoid
When the lenses were put through their paces, the team was amazed. The lenses passed a series of tests almost as well as modern optics.

Made from rock-crystal, the lenses have an accurate shape that betrays the work of a master craftsman. The best example of the lenses measures 50 mm (2 inches) in diameter and 30 mm (1 inch) thick at its centre.

"The surface of some of the lenses have an almost perfect elliptical shape," Dr Schmidt said. "They were obviously made on a turning lathe."

The lenses have a flattened central area that makes them excellent magnifiers.

"They could have been used as magnifiers, allowing fine carving to be carried out, or they could have been used to start fires or to burn wounds and cuts so that they did not get infected."

What intrigues the researchers is that the lenses are of such high quality that they could have been used to make a telescope some 500 years before the first known crude telescopes were constructed in Europe in the last few years of the 16th century.

Lost knowledge

The Gotland crystals provide the first evidence that sophisticated lens-making techniques were being used by craftsmen over a 1,000 years ago.

At that time, scientists had only just started to explore the laws of light refraction.

According to the researchers, it is clear that the craftsmen who figured the lenses knew more about applied optics than did the scientists of the time. They must have worked by trial and error because the mathematics to calculate the best shape for a lens did not become available for several hundred years.

The researchers speculate that the knowledge to make such an accurate lens was known to only a few craftsmen, perhaps only one person.

But it seems clear that the Vikings did not make the lenses themselves. "There are hints that the lenses may have been manufactured in [the ancient empire of] Byzantium or in the region of Eastern Europe," Dr Schmidt said.

Some of the lenses can be seen at Gotland's Fornsal, the historical museum in Visby. Some are in the Swedish National Museum in Stockholm. Others have been lost.



Edited by pinguin - 15-Nov-2008 at 03:06
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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 15-Nov-2008 at 03:09

More on topic, there is also a thesis that say Norse used "sun-stones" for navigation as well. This is still speculative and don't have the same historical back up of the "sun compass" I show above. However, it is quite an interesting thesis:

This article is also from BBC. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6338535.stm
 
 
 
Crystals 'helped Viking sailors'
Sun%20
The sun was not necessary for Vikings to navigate, say researchers
Vikings may have used a special crystal called a sunstone to help navigate the seas even when the sun was obscured by fog or cloud, a study has suggested.

Researchers from Hungary ran a test with sunstones in the Arctic ocean, and found that the crystals can reveal the sun's position even in bad weather.

This would have allowed the Vikings to navigate successfully, they say.

The sunstone theory has been around for 40 years, but some academics have treated it with extreme scepticism.

Researcher Gabor Horvath from Eotvos University in Budapest led a team that spent a month recording polarisation - how rays of light display different properties in different directions - in the Arctic.

Polarisation cannot be seen with the naked eye, but it can be viewed with what are known as birefringent crystals, or sunstones.

Birefringence, or double refraction, is the splitting of a light wave into two different components - an ordinary and an extraordinary ray.

The researchers found that the crystals could be used to find out where the sun was in the sky in certain foggy or cloudy conditions.

It is already thought that Vikings used sundials aboard ships to navigate.

Vikings were a seafaring race from Scandinavia who used their longboats to explore and conquer parts of Europe, Greenland, Iceland and Russia.

 
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  Quote Count Belisarius Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 15-Nov-2008 at 03:13
Another interesting thing about the Viking's is that they had tweezers, soap, and baths which is pretty advanced in my opinion.  


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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 15-Nov-2008 at 03:20

More information on sunstones, from wiki:

 
 
Iolite%20%28cordierite%29.
 
Iolite%20%28cordierite%29
 
More details on how the sunstone could work:
 
 
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  Quote Boreasi Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 15-Nov-2008 at 07:03
"Prehistoric journeys across oceans are mere nonsense" (1947)
http://www.kon-tiki.no/Ny/e_aapning.php


"Distant journeys across the Pacific are very speculative."(2007)
http://www.uq.edu.au/news/?article=13018



"Ancient jouneys across the Atlantic are very unscientific." (2008)
http://www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/paint.html

Who have actually been missing the scientific concepts here?!

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  Quote edgewaters Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 15-Nov-2008 at 07:56
Originally posted by Boreasi

"Prehistoric journeys across oceans are mere nonsense" (1947)
http://www.kon-tiki.no/Ny/e_aapning.php


"Distant journeys across the Pacific are very speculative."(2007)
http://www.uq.edu.au/news/?article=13018



"Ancient jouneys across the Atlantic are very unscientific." (2008)
http://www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/paint.html

Who have actually been missing the scientific concepts here?!



Easy, the hyperdiffusionists. They don't even comprehend the most elementary principles of science. They confuse "possibility" with "probability" or, more commonly, "proof".

Is it scientific to say Celts inhabited Australia? Hey why not? They could get there, that's for sure. So they must have gone there! It's scientific ... if you don't think they did, you're missing "scientific concepts".  LOL
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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 15-Nov-2008 at 11:20
Yeap. The "Red Paint people" is a speculative topic. However, it could make sense that people from Labrador to Greenland and Iceland were in contact somehow for a long time.  Events of Inuits and other Americans in Europe are, however strange, something we should be aware it may had happened. However, all genetic evidence points that the peopling of the Americas came from East Asia and not Europe, and if there was any contact there, it was something sporadical and accidental.
 
With respect to Thor Heyyerdahl; he made a great job studying the balsa rafts of ancient Peru. That has helped to explain the ancient routes of trade along the Pacific between Ecuador and Mexico, and the settlements in Galapagos. However, all his ideas about migrations from Peru to the Pacific are absolutely wrong. He is also known for being the target of Easter Islander charlatans that sold them "ancient artifacts" that they manufactured themselves at home LOL
 
And with respect to the Pacific, Polynesians were superb sailors and they made trips of hundred of miles long. However, theirs folk is plenty of stories about dissaster; so it wasn't easy what they did.
 
 
 
 
 


Edited by pinguin - 15-Nov-2008 at 11:27
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  Quote Reginmund Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 15-Nov-2008 at 12:51
Originally posted by ehecatzin

The part that bothers me so much of that theory, is not that its far fetched (its actually ridiculous) but that despite being pure fantasy many people consider it to be true, and it keeps popping in most discussions about european pre columbus sea exploration.


Most likely it is pure fantasy but it's a good story and that's probably why many are drawn to it. People tend to remember spectacular fantasies more easily than the less colourful conclusions reached by the scholars.

Originally posted by pinguin

Well, there is no need to get upset. That's the effect "King Kong" in popular culture. The idea that natives will receive gladly to foreigners and consider them gods. The facts couldn't be more different. Remember that Cook was killed by natives in Polynesia, and several others god-pretenders were killed on site as well. Even more, people like the Apaches, Sioux, Mayans, Amazonians and Araucanians never gave up and kept fighting up to very recent times.


Let's not generalise about how the natives received the Europeans. I read some accounts of Columbus' expeditions, and how he and his men were received varied greatly from area to area and tribe to tribe. Some treated the Europeans like honoured guests and didn't mind if they mingled with their women, while others attacked them with no questions asked. The only instance I could find where the Europeans were believed to be gods was when Columbus took advantage of an eclipse foretold by his astronomers and acted like he was the one causing it to scare the natives.

Originally posted by Count Belisarius

Another interesting thing about the Viking's is that they had tweezers, soap, and baths which is pretty advanced in my opinion.


There is an Anglo-Saxon source contemporary with the Scandinavian colonisation of the British isles which states that Anglo-Saxon women preferred the Scandinavian men because they took a bath every week, dressed well and fixed their hair. It doesn't mention what the Anglo-Saxon men did, but there was a taboo on vanity in the Christian culture of this time. 

Originally posted by pinguin

With respect to Thor Heyyerdahl; he made a great job studying the balsa rafts of ancient Peru. That has helped to explain the ancient routes of trade along the Pacific between Ecuador and Mexico, and the settlements in Galapagos. However, all his ideas about migrations from Peru to the Pacific are absolutely wrong. He is also known for being the target of Easter Islander charlatans that sold them "ancient artifacts" that they manufactured themselves at home LOL


Thor Heyerdahl is a controversial case here, because the people worship him as a hero and believe anything as long as it came out of his mouth, among academics however Heyerdahl is considered to be little more than a psuedo-scientist. His theory about migrations from Peru across the Pacific are a perfect example; sure, he proved it was possible to sail across the Pacific on a Peruvian balsa raft, but this doesn't prove that the Peruvians actually did it.
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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 15-Nov-2008 at 15:42
Originally posted by Reginmund

...
There is an Anglo-Saxon source contemporary with the Scandinavian colonisation of the British isles which states that Anglo-Saxon women preferred the Scandinavian men because they took a bath every week, dressed well and fixed their hair. It doesn't mention what the Anglo-Saxon men did, but there was a taboo on vanity in the Christian culture of this time. 
...
 
LOL
That's quite interesting. What it is amazing about Norse is that they seem to have a more dynamic and advanced society than theirs contemporary. Just imagine the large number of traders that went to all over Russia and Ucraine, practically forming the Russian people. At the same time Vikings were assaulting and conquering pieces of Britain and France, while others went to places as far as Sicily to conquer or rule. At the same time other Norse were conquering Greenland and contacting the Americas.
They seem to be a quite inventive people and very progressive in the business of peace as well. Weren't some comercial post in Britain founded by the Norse as well? 
 
 
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  Quote Count Belisarius Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 15-Nov-2008 at 16:00
There were whole viking kingdoms in britian, and they sailed as far as china and india.


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  Quote Jams Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 15-Nov-2008 at 19:24
Originally posted by pinguin

 Weren't some comercial post in Britain founded by the Norse as well? 
 
Actually the whole north east of England was a Danish settlement, and they traded with the rest of the lands. They were also in Ireland, and made settlements there.
The whole reason that the Danish kings conquered England later was that the Anglo-Saxon kings tried to kill all Danes living there - total genocide. It was basically a rescue/revenge mission.


Edited by Jams - 15-Nov-2008 at 19:24
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  Quote edgewaters Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 16-Nov-2008 at 02:54
At their height, they were easily the dominant power in Europe in every respect: technologically, economically, and militarily. The reason they get such low recognition is that the winners write the history, and Christian Europe eventually came out on top, so the Norse place in received history tends to be, at best, a backhanded compliment. Little mention is made of their incredible contributions to European progress, in so many realms: political evolution (especially in Britain), technological refinement (it was the marriage of Baltic and Meditteranean shipbuilding techniques that produced transformed the medieval cog into the ocean-going caravel), economic infrastructure and trade routes, and perhaps even the knowledge of lands across the Atlantic - after all, it was the quest for the mythical "Stockfish Land" ("Bacalao") - probably an oral legend originally derived from the Viking explorations off Newfoundland's cod-filled coasts - that motivated early explorers like Columbus and Cabot.
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