The Vikings arrived in the United States about 500 years before Columbus, the study reveals

60 years ago, a Norwegian explorer discovered an archeological site in the northeastern part of the country called “L’Ans Oaks Meadows”. Canada There, as the Vikings had built, they found the remains of at least seven houses. The researchers also found a number of materials, of course Vikings, such as the bronze cufflinks used to fasten their garments.

It is the only Viking archeological site found on the American continent and is today a tourist attraction. Scientists have been trying for years to find out at what point in history they lived here.

The new research found three pieces of wood used in construction. To find the age of a piece of wood, scientists analyze the concentration of carbon 14. It works like this: Every tree absorbs carbon 14 from the atmosphere while alive. When wood dies, the opposite happens, and it is lost, every year, by the same amount of carbon 14.

If scientists find out how much carbon 14 is left in a dead tree, they will find out when the wood was cut down.

In an interview with the Journal National Journal, Dutch geologist Michael Dee, who is responsible for the research, says the method is not very accurate, but a new discovery has given scientists the power to know exactly when the tree was cut down, because at some point in history, there have been rare solar storms. Explosions in the Sun increased the concentration of carbon 14 on Earth during that period.

Under a microscope, the researcher noticed that the tree showed signs of a solar storm in 992. In addition, the trees produce a new ring every year. Thus, researchers found that the tree was cut down with a Viking ax in exactly 1021, a thousand years ago, exactly a thousand years before the village existed.

One hundred years before that, the Vikings had colonized Iceland, A small island in the North Atlantic. Icelandic sagas written in the 13th century tell of Leaf Eriksson, an explorer who left Iceland and discovered a new world.

Researchers believe that this is “L’Ans Oaks Meadows”. Saga describes the encounters with the natives, but no one knows how much of the fantastic descriptions are myth or reality.

Studies show that a group of 100 people lived there for 13 years and then abandoned everything and moved to it Greenland.

Michael Dee says we now have at least one fact: 470 years before Christopher Columbus set foot in America, a date of this fairy tale that proves that a Viking was the first European to arrive in the New World.