Christopher Columbus’ status as an innovative explorer is being questioned – again.
A handful of bright blue beads have put historians and archaeologists in debate over a new study that could challenge the story that Columbus was the first European to colonize the New World in the late 15th century.
The azure glass balloons unearthed in Alaska may have Venetian origins, according to a report in the American Antiquity, and probably traveled 10,500 miles from Italy through Eurasia and the Alaskan Arctic, just across the Bering Strait land bridge that once connected America. North and Siberia.
Radiocarbon dating of the string found attached to the beads, probably made of shrub willow bark, indicates that the bracelet may date from the 14th or 15th centuries, possibly prior to Columbus’ voyage in 1492. However, the margin of possibility suggests also origins as early as the 16th or 17th centuries.
“We were amazed, because that was before Columbus ever discovered the New World in decades,” University of Alaska researcher Michael Kunz told Live Science.
If the researchers’ hypotheses are true, the beads would be the oldest known European artifacts that made their way to North America.
However, critics argue that the style of glass beads, called “drawn” beads, is not in line with the range of the 14th-15th centuries, as all previous research has indicated that this type was not manufactured before the 16th century. lea.
“These beads cannot be pre-Columbian because Europeans did not make such beads so early,” said University of Alabama anthropologist Elliot Blair, who was not involved in the study. He told Live Science that even without the pre-Columbian look, the results suggest a “very great story.”
“Even with this subsequent encounter, once in the early seventeenth century for these beads is still much earlier than the first documented contact between Alaska Natives and Europeans.”
Kunz acknowledged that his study “goes against the flow” by claiming that the beads probably came centuries earlier than I previously thought. “But we have good solid scientific evidence – radiocarbon dating, neutron activation analysis – that is behind what we say,” he said.
Regardless of the exact age of the beads, bead expert and historian Karlis Karklins, who also spoke to the scientific press, said the study’s authors could trust their claims that these beads were indeed the oldest European products ever found in Alaska.
“How they got to far-flung Alaska from western Europe in the late 16th or early 17th century is a mystery in itself,” Karklins said. “That really requires serious investigation.”
It is well known that Leif Erikson led a crew of Norwegian Vikings in Canada and Greenland, reaching the Great White North more than 500 years before Columbus. However, historians continue to understand that Columbus’ landing in the West Indies was the impetus for systemic colonization by a number of European countries, including Italy, Spain, France, England, and the Netherlands.