|
|
Apparently on date Tue, 23 Aug 2005 16:06:40 -0500, "t(nospam)kavanagh"
<"tkavanag"@(nospam)indiana.edu> said:
>lorad474@xxxxxx wrote:
>> Stein R wrote:
>> > lorad474@xxxxxx wrote in
>>
>> > > Th K stone has not been dis-proved nor approved. And therefore it is
>> > > not only symbolic of Norse arrival in NA (which precedes any British
>> > > arrival - but also may represent a unique literary history.
>> > > The K-stone remains, potentially, much more important.
>> > The KRS is mainly an Internet duck - a few crackpots believers who
>> > create quite a bit of noise, but little of any scientific value. Even
>> > *if* it was authentic, it would mean little. At best it would be a
>> Myself, I'm not ready to label KRS crackpot or authenic. And 'ducks'
>> persist in being interesting. Nether side has proven anything. I am
snip
>
>> A few hundred years later, ca. Jamestown founding, it seems that the
>> native population had already collapsed massively. It would be
>> significant to determine if Norse intrusions (thinking disease vectors)
>> had anything to do with that.
>
>Jamestown is late!
>
>Moreover, the population "collapse" in the surrounding areas is better
>explained (although there are questions about the numbers involved) by
>reference to immediate post-Columbus events than to alleged events a
>century before. There is no evidence of massive depopulations of the
>northern areas where Norse from Greenland would have made sustained
>contact. Indeed, despite of Inger's precious Crow Creek Massacre in
>South Dakota, the Middle Missouri area saw no population loss or
>contraction of occupation area.
Would there necessarily have been a similar effect? We're not talking about
shiploads of colonists drawn from all manner of areas around europe carrying
with them things they'll be giving each other through the voyage.
We'd be talking about handfuls of Norse, probably the same ones each time,
coming from a somewhat isolated Greenland settlement loosely connected to a
somewhat isolated Iceland, or possibly linked by trade ship to Norway. I
imagine this is a poor way to spread pestilence across the continent.
|
|