[HN Gopher] The Vinland Map is awash in 20th-century ink
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The Vinland Map is awash in 20th-century ink
Author : weare138
Score : 150 points
Date : 2021-09-05 05:15 UTC (17 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (news.yale.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (news.yale.edu)
| redis_mlc wrote:
| FYI:
|
| - half of all art works on the US market today are fake (source:
| US LEO)
|
| - that makes old collections very valuable since the art has
| provenance
|
| - but note that even very old fakes are valuable. A work by a
| master faker can still be a masterpiece. You could make a lot of
| money by buying those and holding.
|
| - anything in bronze is valuable, whether new or old.
| FatalLogic wrote:
| The backstory is interesting. The map first showed up in the
| 1950s, bound into a book that was owned by a Spanish-Italian
| dealer, Enzo Ferrajoli. He did not explain where it had come
| from, but that wasn't uncommon in the years after the chaos of
| WWII.
|
| Ferrajoli sold the book and map for $3,500 to a US dealer,
| Laurence Witten, who also further obscured its origins[0]. Later,
| a benefactor purchased it on behalf of Yale, for $300,000
|
| Notably, when Yale announced their discovery of the map, in 1965.
| The original source, Ferrajoli, was already in prison in Spain,
| charged with stealing other manuscripts (which he had also sold
| to Yale the year before)[1]
|
| edit: added a citation
|
| [0] https://www.maphistory.info/saenger.html para. 13-
|
| [1] https://www.nytimes.com/1964/11/07/archives/dealer-
| defends-r...
| pvg wrote:
| The story is somewhat similar to that of Drake's Plate of
| Brass, shifted by a few decades
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake%27s_Plate_of_Brass
| cafard wrote:
| 'I have "serious reservations" about it--the polite scholarly
| term for saying that you suspect fakery.... Not one of the Danish
| and Icelandic scholars who I consulted at Copenhagen in May 1969
| believes the Vinland Map to be genuine, although they have every
| national and sentimental reason to accept it as such.'
|
| Samuel Eliot Morison, _The European Discovery of America: The
| Northern Voyages_ , notes to Chapter III, "The Norsemen and
| Vinland".
| madaxe_again wrote:
| So many "artefacts" appeared in the early 20th century, many of
| which are now cornerstones of our understanding of various
| different histories, that one has to wonder just how many are
| fabrications that haven't been subjected to sufficient scrutiny
| due to their reified status. I mean, the Vinland Map was always
| out on the fringes, but less "revelatory" fakes could pass as
| real with little to no controversy, and have a significant impact
| on historical studies if not identified as a fake at the time of
| "discovery".
| njharman wrote:
| Tis why scientists and historians when presented with a single
| "fact" throw up their arms and exclaim "Well that proves it!"
| No point in looking for collaborating or conflicting evidence.
| Or, to reexamine when new technology or techniques arise.
| njharman wrote:
| Y'd think if you had access to 1400 "paper", the effort of making
| your own gall ink for your forgery. It ain't hard. Maybe the
| galls aren't common in Norway?
|
| Otoh the deception lasted 100yrs.
| jcranmer wrote:
| > Otoh the deception lasted 100yrs.
|
| Not really. Pretty much from the inception, the academic
| community was strongly skeptical of its authenticity. While
| Yale has only recently admitted that it's a forgery, that's
| probably due in large part to reluctance to admit that they
| spent a lot of money on a pretty clear forgery.
| sharmin123 wrote:
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| mzi wrote:
| This is more a conclusion of something suspected since it was
| first revealed, and not something that will rock the foundations
| of science.
| abstrakraft wrote:
| I'm really curious what this means in the larger context: does it
| refute the fundamental evidence that Norsemen reached the New
| World before Colombus, or is there enough other evidence that
| this is no big deal?
| aaaaaaaaaaab wrote:
| It is beyond doubt that Norsemen reached North America before
| Colombus. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27Anse_aux_Meadows
| Lazare wrote:
| It means nothing.
|
| Archeological evidence found in the 1960s proves quite clearly
| that Norsemen reached the Americas 500 years before Columbus.
| In fact this evidence turned up - and got quite a lot of
| attention - in the 1960s, which is when this map was first
| published. But by the 1970s, analysis of the ink made it fairly
| clear it was a forgery.
|
| This news is just that a more detailed analysis has been done,
| proving the map long believed to be a forgery was definitely a
| forgery. But the map was never really considered evidence of
| anything in particular; it was always questionable.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| No, we have archaeological remains from where the Norsemen
| camped in North America:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27Anse_aux_Meadows
|
| This doesn't change any understanding of history.
| abstrakraft wrote:
| I hoped as much...so what _are_ the repercussions, if any?
| stan_rogers wrote:
| None, really. People will still pay extraordinary amounts
| of money for old documents with shaky provenance on the
| basis that they'll have it and you can't, only to find out
| they've been duped. T'was ever and t'will ever be thus.
| sokoloff wrote:
| At least people know an NFT is genuine when people pay
| extraordinary amounts for a number on the basis that
| they'll have it and you "can't".
| input_sh wrote:
| Except everyone has access to any NFT in the same quality
| as its "owner", you just have to look up the transaction
| to access it.
| simonh wrote:
| An NFT is just a number on a ledger. The fact it
| represents ownership of anything is an agreement, and
| there's nothing about the NFT itself that enforces that
| agreement. What are you going to do about it if someone,
| maybe the artist or their estate decides to disagree?
| sokoloff wrote:
| I agree of course. That's what the quotes around 'can't'
| was intended to convey.
| amyjess wrote:
| Given that most NFTs of artwork are created without the
| knowledge or permission of the artist, I wouldn't call
| them genuine either.
| hultner wrote:
| Yale spent a lot of money to prove that their expensive
| piece of paper is worthless.
| a9h74j wrote:
| As have so many of their graduates.
| goto11 wrote:
| It doesn't have any significant impact. The map was already
| assumed to be fake by most scholars. We have both historical
| and archeological evidence for the Norsemen reaching the new
| world, so that is not in doubt.
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