Monumental ship burial beneath ancient Norwegian mound predates the Viking Age
phys.org25 points by pseudolus 3 days ago
25 points by pseudolus 3 days ago
It isn't like boats were invented in Scandinavia by the vikings. At Tanum, close to the present Norwegian border we have rock carvings dating back to 1700BCE, with prominent ships depicted. Boatrs have been important in Scandinavia for a long time.
https://www.tanumworldheritage.se/rock-carving-facts/?lang=e...
Indeed - though the article doesn't really state the boats weren't in existence before the Vikings, it's about ship burials which apparently weren't supposed to exist in Scandinavia until the practice was imported from England. A theory I'd never heard before, but I guess that's on me. In any case, the find in the article seems to contradict that theory.
As for boats, the Viking age has been connected with acquiring sail technology, not so much with boats as such (which have existed for a long time, the rock carvings you linked to show depictions of boat designs which have actually been found in archeological digs, and that indicates that older, different carvings are also true and that boats were used for long distance trade and expeditions a millenium or two, at least, before the Vikings).
If the appearance of efficient sail technology really coincided with the beginning of Viking raids is still in the open I believe.
Stone ships had been burial sites for two thousand years before the Vikings came to Lindisfarne. And long distance trade has been established and given the extent of the Battle of Tollense contact between tribes must have stretched far and deep. And Britain was an important source of tin so trade routes both started and ended there.
I know it's frustrating but media sort of reflects the most cautious and the most adventurous opinions of archaeology. Because saying vikings started at 793 is just a safe archaeological opinion, while even the romans built coastal forts along the british east coast to defend against "pirates".
Then the media will turn around and print something absolutely outlandish based on a total hypothesis, just because it attracts clicks.
Is my understanding of carbon dating needing an update or the precision to distinguish 100y difference on a 1.2k to 1.3k years base not enough?
If 100y is the difference it could just be that the tree grew for 100y and the at the end they used it?