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Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021

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Re: Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021

#341

Post by singularity2001 »

Laremere wrote: post #191
singularity2001 wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it highly likely that crucial bronze age inventions like smelting, Eridu/Elamite 'pyramids' and writing were introduced to America in one way trips between 4000 and 0BC, however until we find artifacts or mummy DNA it's pure speculation.

Civilizations around the world definitely acquired similar technology with suspicious timing, but the common factor doesn't need to be humans. One theory I'm fond of is river deltas. The major ones all formed around 7,000 years ago (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A47ythEcz74 ) as a geological result of the end of the ice age. After humanity spread to the Americas during the ice age, the end of the ice age seems…

Suspicious timing is a good term. As far as I know the 4000 years of development which preceded the Eurasian bronze age are absent in america (tokens, cold hammering, accounting, step by step increases in architectural complexity), even though agriculture must have been part of a much earlier package or human condition as you said. Wooden idols and totems go back to ice age times, I give you that.

Re: Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021

#342

Post by vintermann »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #136
BurningFrog wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's really interesting! Of course, if the native population died off around them, the Vikings would probably have expanded their settlements and perhaps ruled North America instead.

I don't think it works like that. There seems to be a need for a minimum primary settler population and a decent amount of native assistance- it's fairly easy to build a new town 10 miles from your last but I am not aware of any long distance unsupported settlers. So if the natives around the Mayflower had all died, so would the Founding Fathers. If the Norse diseases had killed off the locals they might not have mad…

I agree with this. It's about economic and social support. Leif Eriksson was the son of the notorious murderer Eric the Red. Eric was twice outcast, first from Norway to Iceland, then from Iceland to Greenland. On top of that, Leif was an enthusiastic convert to Christianity, which somewhat alienated him from his still pagan father. They lived on a fringe of a fringe of the European economic, cultural and religious community. They didn't even really have the economic support to sustain a settlement on Greenland (where they were more by necessity than opportunity, due to Eric's crimes), let alone Nova Scotia.

Re: Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021

#343

Post by vintermann »

BurningFrog wrote: post #253
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it works like that. There seems to be a need for a minimum primary settler population and a decent amount of native assistance- it's fairly easy to build a new town 10 miles from your last but I am not aware of any long distance unsupported settlers. So if the natives around the Mayflower had all died, so would the Founding Fathers. If the Norse diseases had killed off the locals they might not have mad…

This is very far from my expertise, but surely you can also live off the land? Hunting and fishing shouldn't be very different in Newfoundland compared to Norway/Iceland. Bring a few chickens along, and you have another food source. I assume/guess the vikings were better at this stuff than the Mayflower crowd.

They didn't want to live like that. It's one of the things Jared Diamond argues in Collapse: sure, they could have survived longer in Greenland if they adopted more of the customs of the Inuit, but this went against everything they considered important and valuable in life. They wouldn't be themselves any more if they did (and for all we know, a few of them may have been assimilated into the native population and stopped being Norse in any sense recognizable to us).

Not least of all, Leif Eriksson was a Christian, a Catholic in modern terms. It's reasonable to assume most of his followers were, too. He had gained the epithet "the lucky" due to his habit of coming across and rescuing castaways at sea. To the Norse, luck was evidence the cosmos was on your side, and one of the most important attributes a leader offered to potential followers was a share in this cosmic luck. This probably helped Leif the missionary securing a lot of conversions!

But the heart of Christianity at the time was in Rome. They were already profoundly cut off from the mystical fellowship of believers, the communion. How much worse wouldn't it be for their sense of self if they were not only to go off in an impossibly distant land, but to live as the savages there?

Re: Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021

#344

Post by vintermann »

PeterisP wrote: post #313
s1artibartfast wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simply put, living off the land is HARD, even with an established settlement and some trade, mass starvation is a pretty likely outcome. Reality is more complex and challenging than Farmville or AnimalCrossing.

I'm just wondering why the same process how vikings settled Greenland would not work in the (IMHO much more hospitable) North America.

The Norse mostly settled Greenland because they had to, not because it was such a great place to be. It was a frontier, settled by desperate people. Leif's father, the chieftain Eric the Red, had moved there because he had been banished from Iceland over a murder.

And of course the Greenland colony wasn't really sustainable, which is why it died out when a couple of hard turns came their way (climate change and getting cut off from trade for a few years).

Re: Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021

#345

Post by vintermann »

gremloni wrote: post #198
BurningFrog wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's really interesting! Of course, if the native population died off around them, the Vikings would probably have expanded their settlements and perhaps ruled North America instead.

Maybe but the Viking’s modus operandi seemed like it was pillage/rape/kidnap the best looking women and then head out. I can only think of one settlement the Vikings set up in Gaul.

Not even close. For one thing, Leif was a Christian. For another, his father, who more lived up to the stereotype of the murderous psycho Viking, had been twice banished for murder already, which was why he found himself in Greenland in the first place. The Norse were never a lot like the rapey pagan party Vikings they're portrayed as in popular culture, and certainly not by 1021.

Re: Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021

#346

Post by bumbada »

WalterBright wrote: post #236
queuebert wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parallel evolution of two strains of smallpox might have meant still no immunity to the Spanish version several centuries later. And the diseases were only a small factor in the outcome of the colonization. Guns being a much larger factor, for example.

> And the diseases were only a small factor in the outcome of the colonization. Guns being a much larger factor, for example. I'm not so sure about that. Writing gave a huge advantage to the Western forces. By that I mean military men had access to a couple thousand years of military tactics books. Having advanced weapons is one thing, knowing strategy and tactics is quite another. For example, there are battles wher…

People in America were not stupid, there were not repetition guns yet, like Repeating rifle or early machine guns.

The biggest significant factor for Spanish people was getting the support of the local population. It was not foreign powers against local powers. But local powers against local powers.

And that was because local empires were terrible with the subdued tribes. There was human sacrifices with subdued tribes and they were slaves. Under Spanish rule those who supported the Spaniards were soon considered Spanish citizens, a huge improvement.

And Rome usually worked the other way around. Rome did outnumber everybody and squashed any opposition. First they did because mandatory Conscription ("the draft")in the army, an army of peasants that was way more numerous than anybody else and a population that will replace casualties much faster than anybody else.

The Army of peasants did fight against elite warriors that were much better trained and equipped but were way less numerous, for example against the Macedonian Army,and they won.

Finally, after growing and organizing themselves much more, Rome will use infrastructure that only they had like the Mediterranean sea and specially roads to move massive amounts of soldiers very fast from one part of the Empire to another.

This was the equivalent of the train that will make it possible for Germany, Russia or the US moving so much people to the war front fast.

It was the Romans those who did outnumber everybody else concentrating the army at one point, defeating the enemy and moving the Army to another place.

And it was Julius Caesar who wrote "divide et impera" because that was the Roman way of doing things, dividing their enemies, and fighting them isolated with a much bigger army.

Re: Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021

#347

Post by vintermann »

runarberg wrote: post #184
BurningFrog wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's really interesting! Of course, if the native population died off around them, the Vikings would probably have expanded their settlements and perhaps ruled North America instead.

I doubt it. The distances are simply too large to maintain a supply lines needed for a self sufficient colonies to thrive. The Norse needed the natives both to trade with and to learn from if they were to settle these lands, they couldn’t do it on their own. Now you might think of Iceland and Norse Greenland as a counter example. But Norse Greenland never really thrived, and was eventually abandoned. Iceland however…

Not to mention that the ships, while nice by 11th century standards, were not exactly airline level safety. A significant number of would-be traders (and raiders for that matter) ended up on the bottom of the sea, with the implications that would have for prices.

Re: Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021

#348

Post by moksly »

Thrymr wrote: post #121
runjake wrote: post #86

The debate on whether Vikings were in Pre-Columbus America is starting to sound a lot like the back and forth of "$food is (good|bad) for you".

I do not think this has been in serious dispute in the last 50 years. This paper just puts a more precise date on the settlement in Newfoundland that was already well known.

As a Danish person it’s sort of interesting to see how much focus this particular area gets in comparison to other Norse history, but no, it hasn’t really been disputed in any serious manner for a while.

A lot of the evidence doesn’t really prove anything. The map turned out to be a forgery, and wood having been worked by metal tools could have happened through trade.

L’anse aux Meadows is a Norse settlement similar to those found in Greenland, however, and that’s sort of the evidence you need.

This is the only settlement found however, and it may never have had contact with the indigenous people considering how isolated it was. The “vikings” weren’t there to raid, they were there to find some decent farmland, and if that’s what they found, they could have died out without anyone knowing about it until a thousand years later.

But what they actually did is anyones guess.

Re: Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021

#349

Post by vintermann »

VHRanger wrote: post #156
seph-reed wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CPG Grey has a great video on this exact subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEYh5WACqEk In short, you need cities to develop these types of viruses. Cities where the virus can just keep killing, without ever hitting a dead end.

Fwiw that's based on "Guns, Germs and Steel" which is not very respected as an academic work

A lot of what he says in it is uncontroversial stuff that he didn't come up with himself. But you don't get much academic respect for things others have said before you, even if you succeed at bringing it to a new audience (especially if you don't pepper it with source references, which I don't recall GGS doing!)

Being a wildly successful popularizer is always risky for an academic. The most serious criticisms I've seen have been about tangential stuff.

Re: Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021

#350

Post by WalterBright »

bumbada wrote: post #346
WalterBright wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And the diseases were only a small factor in the outcome of the colonization. Guns being a much larger factor, for example. I'm not so sure about that. Writing gave a huge advantage to the Western forces. By that I mean military men had access to a couple thousand years of military tactics books. Having advanced weapons is one thing, knowing strategy and tactics is quite another. For example, there are battles wher…

People in America were not stupid, there were not repetition guns yet, like Repeating rifle or early machine guns. The biggest significant factor for Spanish people was getting the support of the local population. It was not foreign powers against local powers. But local powers against local powers. And that was because local empires were terrible with the subdued tribes. There was human sacrifices with subdued tribe…

> People in America were not stupid

I didn't say they were. I said they lacked writing. Writing preserves orders of magnitude more information for others than oral tradition possibly can.

Yes, I know the Mayans had writing, and their books were burned by the Spanish. But the Spanish conquered the Inca and the Aztecs, not the Mayans.

The ideas of recruiting the locals to your side, and divide and conquer, are part of western military tradition. If the Aztecs and Inca used such tactics, I'd be interested if you have sources.

There were battles that the Romans fought and won against the barbarian much greater numbers. That isn't going to happen without superior organization, discipline, training and tactics.

And finally, the Roman idea of conquest was to assimilate, not exterminate.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defeat_of_Boudica

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Alesia

And, of course, this triumph of discipline, tactics, organization and training:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Thermopylae

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