Until now, it has been a mystery when the Vikings came to North America. But new methods have made researchers safe.
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In a research report published in the journal Nature scientists believe to be able to establish that the Vikings arrived on the continent exactly 1000 years ago, in 1021. Almost 500 years before Christopher Columbus.
The research comes from the only confirmed Norse archaeological site in America outside Greenland, a settlement on the northernmost tip of Newfoundland called L’Anse aux Meadows, the website writes NPR.
Four pieces of wood
A team of researchers, led by Margot Kuitems and Michael Dee at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, examined four pieces of wood found at L’Anse aux Meadows. The samples were no more than discarded sticks and tree trunks, but each had an important marker with at least one clean edge, indicating that it had been cut by a metal tool, the website writes.
As the indigenous people in that area at the time did not have metal tools, the researchers conclude that they must have belonged to the Norse.
The findings are the earliest evidence that Vikings traveled to North America, and provide important context in the history of North America and European travel to the continent, the website writes.
The research report provides a specific, independently obtained date, one that is not dependent on old texts for confirmation.
A Danish archaeologist called their findings “incredible”.
Cosmic ray activities
The research of Kuitems and Dee started almost four years ago when the two wanted to test the new method for radiocarbon dating, which examines rings for rare solar storms, writes NPR.
“The method came first and the archaeological example came in second place,” Dee told the website.
In the year 993, unusual cosmic beam activities resulted in a worldwide insight into atmospheric radiocarbon that can be observed in individual rings.
In other words, if a tree was alive in 993, using carbon dating techniques on the tree rings, even long after the tree’s death, one can reveal exactly what year it was cut by locating the ring with the carbon anomaly, and then just counting out, writes NPR .
83 treringer
Researchers Kuitems and Dee have also used this method.
The two said they had a hint that the Viking voyage to North America probably took place around the year 993. They concluded that the objects collected from the settlement in Newfoundland would be a good starting point for testing the method.
The wooden remains the researchers studied were not used by the Vikings to build homes or make tools, but it was perfect for their analysis of the rings, Kuitems said. Because they were not changed externally, the rings were in a perfect condition to be analyzed, the website writes.
In total, they were able to identify 83 individual trings in the elements. From there, they used the carbon dating technique to determine which year they were cut.
Worldwide attention
When the researchers dated the tree, they found that the year 1021 was “the only safe calendar date” for the presence of Europeans across the Atlantic – especially given the “remarkable and unexpected” finding that all the trees appear to have been cut down in the same year.
Since the findings were published, they have received worldwide attention.
The two researchers said that the worldwide attention their report has received has been both exciting and a little overwhelming. But they are still hopeful that this attention can motivate researchers to use the carbon dating method for other purposes.
We hope this will be used a lot for all kinds of questions where you need to get a specific date for a specific context, Dee told NPR.
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