Viking이 중세(1021년)에 미대륙 Newfoundland지역에서 살던 흔적
Viking이 중세(1021년)에 미대륙 Newfoundland지역에서 살던 흔적
Oct. 20, 2021 Robert Lee Hotz at sciencejournal@wsj.com
북미에서 유일한 확인된 Viking 유적지 L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland, 목재탄소분석에 따르면 1021년에 지었던 건축물로 추정된다고 함. PHOTO: GLENN NAGEL PHOTOGRAPHY
A new look at wooden artifacts found amid the ruins of an ancient homestead shows that Vikings had crossed the Atlantic Ocean and settled in North America as far back as 1021—exactly 1,000 years ago and almost five centuries before Columbus’s famous voyage.
The finding represents “the first, earliest evidence for Europeans in the Americas and the first evidence that the Atlantic has been crossed in all of human history,” said Michael Dee, an expert on dating techniques at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands and the senior author of a paper about the finding published Wednesday in the journal Nature.
The artifacts—including a tree stump, a branch and a block of timber all splintered by the swing of a metal ax—were found at L’Anse aux Meadows near the northern tip of Newfoundland, the only verified Viking settlement on the continent, and analyzed via a new radiocarbon dating technique.
Researchers have long known that Vikings reached North America near the end of the first millennium. In the 1960s, archaeologists working at L’Anse aux Meadows unearthed the ruins of eight wood-framed peat buildings built in a style common among the Norse of the Middle Ages, along with hundreds of wooden, bronze and bone artifacts. No more than 40 people are believed to have lived there, perhaps refitting the Viking long ships for voyages home.
The new research, conducted by scientists in Canada and Germany as well as the Netherlands, may put to rest lingering doubts about when the Vikings arrived in North America.
”It proves when they were there,” said Anders Winroth, a University of Oslo historian and the author of the “The Age of the Vikings,” a book published in 2014. “It is refreshing and exciting to have an exact date.” Dr. Winroth wasn’t involved in the research effort.
To pinpoint the year that Vikings occupied the site, the scientists scoured the ancient settlement for wooden artifacts, hoping to find any made from trees that had grown during an unusually intense burst of cosmic radiation known to have occurred in the year 993. The barrage of charged particles, perhaps triggered by a supernova or a mammoth solar storm, flooded Earth’s atmosphere with carbon-14, a radioactive isotope commonly used in the dating of ancient artifacts.
The wooden artifacts were analyzed via a new radiocarbon dating technique.
PHOTO: PETRA DOEVE (2)
In normal times, carbon-14 is created in the upper atmosphere at a fairly constant rate and then absorbed by plants growing on the ground below. The flare in 993 caused a roughly 20-fold spike in levels of the isotope—evidence of which can be detected in the annual growth rings of any tree alive at the time, like a time stamp on a digital recording.
These charged particle storms are so rare they make for unambiguous dating. Only one other such event, called a Miyake event, has been detected so far. That radiation burst, which seems to have hit between 774 and 775, produced the largest and most rapid rise in carbon-14 ever recorded, according to scientists.
“Any tree growing in the world in 993 will have embedded this rich carbon level,” said Dr. Dee, who helped pioneer the use of the carbon-14 spikes for dating. “There will be this jump.”
Dr. Dee and his colleagues tested wood specimens that showed the distinctive cut marks left by a metal blade—an implement unknown among the indigenous people of the era, who used only stone tools. Using the carbon spike as a reference point, they counted the tree rings in each specimen until they reached the bark, indicating the year the tree was cut down—in this case 1021.
“We have three wooden artifacts from three different trees and they all give the same date, “ Dr. Dee said. “This is really a big change in the precision that is achievable with scientific dating.”
Write to Robert Lee Hotz at sciencejournal@wsj.com
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Appeared in the October 21, 2021, print edition as 'Viking Artifacts Pinpoint Europeans’ Crossing.'Oct. 20, 2021 Robert Lee Hotz at sciencejournal@wsj.com