Strange America

The strongest evidence yet of a Viking outpost on Baffin Island has been presented by archaeologists.It had long been suspected that the seafaring Vikings had traversed the Atlantic ocean as long ago as the 10th century, but it wasn"t until the 1960s when two Norwegian researchers unearthed the remains of a Viking base camp in Newfoundland that this suspicion was confirmed. Now archaeologist Patricia Sutherland has announced new findings including Vikingalloys and blade-sharpening tools that suggest a second outpost has been located in Canada.Sutherland believes that parties of Viking explorers may have traveled to Canada in search of valuable resources such as furs and walrus ivory.

It is also thought that they may have traded with Native Americans as part of what could have been a fully fledged transatlantic trade network. For the past 50 years - since the discovery of a thousand-year-old Viking way station in Newfoundland—archaeologists andamateur historians have combed North America"s east coast searching for traces of Viking visitors.  

View: Full article |  Source: National Geographic  

A special type of caffeinated drink made from holly leaves was all the rage one thousand years ago.Evidence of the drink was discovered at the site of the pre-Columbian settlement of Cahokia near the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers. Up to 50,000 people lived there between 1050 and 1350 AD and the infamous "black drink" was part of their culture, it isbelieved that it may have been used as part of purification ceremonies."We"re not sure when Native Americans stopped using black drink," said researcher Thomas Emerson.

"I think its use went more into the closet, due to pressure from Europeans to drop pagan practices." Caffeine-loaded black drinks apparently dominated the heartland of America earlier than once thought — a beverage neither coffee nor cola, butinstead brewed from holly leaves, researchers say.  

View: Full article |  Source: Fox News  

A settlements on the shore of Lake Ontario was once the New World"s answer to New York City.The "Mantle" site would have been at its peak some 500 years ago as Europeans were first beginning to arrive in the Americas. At the time the settlement would have been a bustling metropolis, the equivalent to modern day New York. 98 longhouses and over 200,000 artefacts have been unearthed at thesite."This is an Indiana Jones moment, this is huge," said archaeologist Ron Williamson.

"It"s the largest, most complex, cosmopolitan village of its time. "All of the archaeologists, basically, when they see Mantle, they"re just utterly stunned." Today New York City is the Big Apple of the Northeast but new research reveals that 500 years ago, at a time when Europeans were just beginning to visit the New World, a settlement on the northshore of Lake Ontario, in Canada, was the biggest, most complex, cosmopolitan place in the region.  

View: Full article |  Source: Yahoo! News  

New examination of a 425-year-old map offers a clue to an enduring mystery - the fate of Roanoke Colony.It"s one of the most enduring mysteries in the history of the United States - what happened to the colony at Roanoke, Virginia? Experts in London now believe that closer examination of a 425-year-old map may provide the answer. An image on the aging map indicates a previously overlooked symbol for a fort at the confluence of the Roanokeand Chowan rivers, believed to be the destination of the colonists.

The symbol itself had been covered by a patch and while it"s unclear why, it is thought it may have been meant to indicate that there was more than just a fort at the site. "We believe that this evidence provides conclusive proof that they moved westward up the Albemarle Sound to the confluence of the Chowan and Roanoke rivers," said author James Horn. "Their intention was to create a settlement. And this is what we believe we are looking at with this symbol - their clear intention, marked on the map." Experts from the First Colony Foundation and the British Museum in Londondiscussed their findings Thursday at a scholarly meeting on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Their focus: the "Virginia Pars" map of Virginia and North Carolina created by explorer John White in the 1580s and owned by the British Museum since 1866.  

View: Full article |  Source: Telegraph