The Legend of Prince Madoc and the White Indians
(Paperback) by Dana Olson (Author)
Posted on 09/02/2003 11:38:57 AM PDT by blam
DNA study to settle ancient mystery about mingling of Inuit, Vikings
By BOB WEBER
(CP) - A centuries-old Arctic mystery may be weeks away from resolution as an Icelandic anthropologist prepares to release his findings on the so-called "Blond Eskimos" of the Canadian North.
"It's an old story," says Gisli Palsson of the University of Iceland in Reykjavik. "We want to try to throw new light on the history of the Inuit." Stories about Inuit with distinct European features - blue eyes, fair hair, beards - living in the central Arctic have their roots in ancient tales of Norse settlements and explorations.
"The Icelandic sagas, at several points, mention the Norse in Greenland meeting people who belong to other cultures," Palsson said.
Although those settlements pushed ever westward from Greenland as early as the 9th and 10th century, they had mysteriously disappeared by the 15th. The fate of settlers - did they simply disappear into the local population? - is unknown.
The Inuit tell legends of long-ago meetings with people from a strange culture.
Tantalizing accounts of European-looking Inuit surface in the accounts of some of the earliest western Arctic explorers, including Sir John Franklin, who was later to lead the doomed Franklin Expedition.
In the first decade of the last century, the famed Arctic explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson heard a rumour from a whaling captain about fair-haired people living among the Copper Inuit near what is now Cambridge Bay, Nunavut.
Stefansson, hungry for renown, used the rumour to raise money for an expedition to the area. In 1910, he finally caught up with the Inuit he sought.
A documentary entitled Arctic Dreamer, which premieres Friday at the Montreal Film Festival, quotes Stefansson's journals on the meeting:
"There were three men here whose beard is almost the same colour as mine and who look like typical Scandinavians," he wrote. "One woman has the delicate features one sees on Scandinavian girls."
Stefansson speculated the people he met had descended from the inhabitants of the vanished Norse settlements. His theory thrust him onto the front pages of newspapers across the continents with headlines of a "lost white race."
Palsson, with the help of biological anthropologist Agnar Helgason, has turned the light of DNA testing on Stefansson's speculations. Last year, he and his team took saliva samples from 350 Inuit in Cambridge Bay and Greenland and they have been comparing them with genetic markers known to have been prevalent in medieval Scandinavia.
The present-day Inuit of the area don't look markedly different than other Inuit, Palsson says.
"There has been lots of mixing over the last decades."
As well, Palsson points out that Stefansson had backers to please and lecture halls to fill.
"I'm not convinced that he actually saw Inuit who looked different than other Inuit. He may have exaggerated."
HASH(0x858e7c0)
Still, that doesn't mean Stefansson was wrong. Modern archeologists have lately found Norse remains and textiles as far west as Baffin Island.
"Things like that testify to at least economic exchange," says Palsson. "None of this is actual proof, but I think Inuit and Norse must have met, at least in western Greenland."
The last of Palsson's samples, which arrived in Iceland last month, are now being analysed. He expects to release his findings in October.
Although Palsson's results won't be indisputable proof, they will offer a high degree of probability. And a finding that Inuit and Viking blood probably mixed a millennium ago will change our understanding of human mobility, says Palsson.
"We now know the Inuit were not stationary and passive, outside of history," he says. "On the contrary, they were experimenting with travel routes and subsistence resources. And the same with the Norse.
"There's a tendency to undermine the mobility of the species. Archeology and biological anthropology are increasingly demonstrating that regions that people thought were barriers were really migration routes.
"And it may well be that we see the same results in the Arctic."
The Mandan were in North Dakota, and were well documented by Catlin, as were notable similarities between their language and Welsh. For all practical purposes they were wiped out by smallpox. Double Ditch or Fort Lincoln/On A Slant Village
The Legend of Prince Madoc and the White Indians
(Paperback) by Dana Olson (Author)
* The Mandans spoke Welsh
* They used a boat which was know as the Welsh Coracle
* Many of the Mandans had blond hair and blue eyes
Prince Madog ap Owain Gwynedd b.c. 1130
Thanks for the link!
2008 bump.
Just getting ahead of things, I like that. ;’)
'They' won't listen to me when I tell them that the time-travel experiments really disorient me.
Have You seen the above URL?
Hand held gun porn!
Antique Handguns Horst Held
interested in collectible small arms: derringer, pistol, revolver, engraved, cased,
odd system, early self-loading = semi-automatic,
Did they probe you? I hate that.
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Just updating the GGG info, not sending a general distribution. |
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Inukpasuit, Inuit and Viking contact in ancient times
The Arctic Sounder | 12 Feb 2009 | Ronald Brower
Posted on 02/18/2009 6:45:35 AM PST by BGHater
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2188278/posts
Strand of Ancient Yarn Suggests Early European Presence in Canada
New York Times | May 8, 2001 | editors
Posted on 07/21/2004 10:54:03 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1175712/posts
-ancient sidebar (stubborn to load)-
Ancient Site in Newfoundland Offers Clues to Vikings in America
Source: New York Times
Published: May 9, 2000 Author: JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
Posted on 05/11/2000 17:07:40 PDT by H.R. Gross
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a391b4b4c4693.htm
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the problem is that there are albino mutations in some Native American tribes, just as there are in Africa.
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