Vinland map

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The Vinland map.
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The Vinland map.

The Vinland map is purportedly a 15th century Mappa Mundi, redrawn from a 13th century original. In addition to showing Africa, Asia and Europe, the map depicts a body of land across the Atlantic called Vinland; the map describes this region as having been visited in the 11th century. If authentic, such evidence is an important addition to archeological findings such as the L'Anse aux Meadows site, documenting pre-Columbian Norse travels to the Americas.

The map was discovered bound together with a codex, Historia Tartorum ("Description of the Tartars," sometimes referred to as the Tartar Relation). The Historia is a manuscript of undoubted authenticity that was at some point bound with the Vinland Map. It is a description of the history and manners of the Mongols that appears to be an early version of the memoir of Giovanni da Pian del Carpine (q.v. for full details), an Italian Franciscan friar who in 1245 made a trip to the supreme khan at Karakoram. Carpine went on to write a more robust account of his travels, but the shorter "Tartar Relation" survived until the 15th century by being included as an addendum to a volume of Vincent of Beauvais's encyclopedic "Historical Mirror" (Speculum historiale).

The map first came to light in 1957 and was donated with funds from Paul Mellon to its current owner, Yale University, in 1965; The New York Times reported that insurers valued the map at $25 million. It was first published by Dr. Raleigh Ashlin Skelton et al. The Vinland Map and Tartar Relation, 1965. In 1995 Yale released a second edition of the book, together with further articles that claim the map is authentic.

Contents

[edit] Authenticity

[edit] Dating of parchment

There have been claims that the map is a forgery and examinations by a number of institutions, including the Smithsonian Institution, have returned conflicting results. Radiocarbon dating, performed by physicist Douglass Donahue and chemists Jacqueline Olin and Garman Harbottle, place the origin of the parchment somewhere between 1423 and 1445, although the entire map appears to have been coated with an unknown substance sometime in the 1950s. This could have been part of a previously undocumented attempt at preservation, or could have been done by a forger as part of the process of drawing a new map on a previously-used piece of 15th century parchment. It is unclear whether the ink on the map is on top of this more recent layer of material or not.[1]

[edit] Dating of ink (a Controversy)

Chemical analysis of the ink dated the map to after 1923 due to the presence of anatase (titanium dioxide) –a naturally rare compound that has been used as a synthetic pigment since the 1920s. Anatase was not manufactured before the 1920s, which suggests that the yellowing of ink on the map was faked. Although in 1992 Dr. Thomas Cahill of University of California, Davis found natural anatase in a variety of medieval manuscripts, the rounded crystals in the ink from the map were characteristic of synthetically created anatase. In July 2002, the authenticity of the map was again challenged. Using Raman spectroscopy, the drawings on the map are claimed to consist of simulated stains from the decay of an iron-based ink, although the ink itself is carbon-based and should have generated no decay stains. [2] All of the other pages of the Historia Tartorum and Speculum historiale were written using standard medieval iron-based ink. Nevertheless, chemist Jacqueline Olin, a retired researcher with the Smithsonian Institution, has concluded that the map's ink was made in medieval times.[3]

[edit] Content of map

Finally, there are a number of questions about the actual content of the map. The most obvious anomaly is that the map depicts Greenland as an island of the correct size and shape, although most contemporary Viking accounts–including a rare map from 1427–depict Greenland as a peninsula descending from the north. This is unusual because Greenland was not believed to have been successfully circumnavigated until the turn of the 20th century. In addition, the text uses a Latin form of Leif Eriksson's name ("Erissonius") more consistent with 17th century norms and with transmission through a French or Italian source. Thirdly, the Latin captions include several usages of the diphthong æ; this was almost unknown in later medieval times (a simple e was written instead) and although the diphthong was revived by Italian humanist scholars in the early 1400s, it is found only in documents of deliberately classicising style produced by Italian scribes, and never in conjunction with a Gothic style of script such as we see in the Map. Finally, Vikings were known for their navigation skills and did not use maps in naval travel.[citation needed] For this reason, some experts question why this map would have been created.

[edit] Other evidence for Vinland

Regardless of whether or not the map is genuine, it has been independently proven to general satisfaction that Greenland was settled by Vikings around 970, a settlement which lasted until the fifteenth century. In regards to the Americas, the archeological finds in L'Anse aux Meadows in present day Newfoundland, Canada, show that there was a Viking settlement which predates Christopher Columbus and his accidental "finding of the New World" in 1492.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

[edit] Sources

  1. ^ Donahue, D. J.; Olin, J. S.; Harbottle G. (2002). "Determination of the Radiocarbon Age of Parchment of the Vinland Map". Radiocarbon 44: 45-52.
  2. ^ Katherine L. Brown, Robin J. H. Clark (2002). "Analysis of Pigmentary Materials on the Vinland Map and Tartar Relation by Raman Microprobe Spectroscopy". Analytical Chemistry 74: 3658 - 3661. DOI:10.1021/ac025610r.
  3. ^ Jacqueline S. Olin (2003). "Evidence That the Vinland Map Is Medieval". Analytical Chemistry 75: 6745 - 6747. DOI:10.1021/ac034533c.
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