Discovery of 1,000-year-old Viking site in Canada could rewrite history

[Lysandro Torie]

Discovery of 1,000-year-old Viking site in Canada could rewrite history
An iron-working hearth-stone was found on Newfoundland, hundreds of miles from the only known Viking site to date

    Chloe Farand
    Sunday 3 April 2016




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A second thousand-year-old Viking settlement may have been discovered on the island of Newfoundland, Canada Newfoundland and Labrador Tourism

The possible discovery of a 1,000-year-old Viking site on a Canadian island could rewrite the story of the exploration of North America by Europeans before Christopher Columbus.

The unearthing of a stone used in iron working on Newfoundland, hundreds of miles south from the only known Viking site in North America, suggests the Vikings may have traveled much further into the continent than previously thought.

A group of archeologists has been excavating the newly discovered site at the Point Rosee, a narrow, windswept peninsula on the most western point of the island. 

[Lysandro Torie]

To date, the only confirmed Viking site on the American continent is L’Anse aux Meadows, a 1,000-year-old way station discovered in 1960 on the northern tip of Newfoundland.

That settlement was abandoned after just a few years of being inhabited and archaeologists have spent the last 50 years searching for any other signs of Viking expeditions to the other side of the Atlantic.

American archaeologist Sarah Parcak, who has used satellite imagery to locate lost Egyptian cities, temples and tombs, applied the same technology to explore the island, seeking for traces of lost Viking settlements.
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[Lysandro Torie]

“The sagas suggest a short period of activity and a very brief and failed colonisation attempt,” Douglas Bolender, an archaeologist specialising in Norse settlements, told National Geographic magazine.

“L’Anse aux Meadows fits well with that story but is only one site. Point Rosee could reinforce that story or completely change it, if the dating is different from L’Anse aux Meadows. We could end up with a much longer period of Norse activity in the New World.

“A site like Point Rosee has the potential to reveal what that initial wave of Norse colonization looked like, not only for Newfoundland but for the rest of the North Atlantic."

[Lysandro Torie]

However there is not enough evidence for archaeologists to prove the Vikings settled on the site, as other populations also lived on Newfoundland after them.

If the site is confirmed as a legitimate Viking settlement, this could lead to further search for other settlements, built five centuries before the arrival of Christopher Columbus in the New World.

[Lysandro Torie]

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/world-history/discovery-vikings-newfoundland-canada-history-norse-point-rosee-l-anse-aux-meadows-a6965126.html

[Lysandro Torie]

The Vikings reached North America over a millennium ago. Image Credit: CC BY-SA 4.0 Wolfmann
Archaeologists have unearthed what is only the second known Viking site ever discovered in North America.
Christopher Columbus has often been attributed with discovering America - a feat for which he has gone down in history - but in reality the continent had actually been frequented multiple times by Europeans many centuries before the Italian explorer had even been born.

Among the early seafarers to have reached North America were the Vikings who were known to have constructed a waystation at L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland some 1,000 years ago.

Now archaeologists have revealed that a second Viking site has been found - this time at the peninsula of Point Rosee which is situated several hundred miles to the south.

The discovery not only cements the presence of the Vikings in North America but also suggests that they had been there a lot longer and had travelled far further inland than anyone had ever realized.

"The sagas suggest a short period of activity and a very brief and failed colonisation attempt," said archaeologist Douglas Bolender. "L’Anse aux Meadows fits well with that story but is only one site. "

"Point Rosee could reinforce that story or completely change it, if the dating is different from L’Anse aux Meadows. We could end up with a much longer period of Norse activity in the New World."