Re: The Vinland Map's Ink

On Sun, 10 Apr 2005 10:06:24 GMT, "David B" <tronospamchos@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

>Eric Stevens wrote in message ...
>>
>>none of the unbelievers "can come up with even a primitive
>>start-to-finish model of what happened" either.
>
>Rubbish.
>I presented a primitive start-to-finish model in 2003;
>but if you insist, here's a new version:
>
>1) A smart prankster, having seen news items about the wondrous new
>carbon-14 dating technique, decides to put it to the test
>2) Prankster unbinds an old manuscript book containing part of the Speculum
>Historiale, plus the Tartar Relation, and removes a couple of pages, which
>may or may not already be blank
>3) Prankster scrubs (so vigorously that they become seriously frail),
>polishes and prepares the removed pages, ready to be drawn on. In the
>process, though the prankster doesn't realise it, one of the chemicals
>which soaks into the parchment introduces serious carbon-14 contamination
>4) Prankster, who knows the date of the old book from text on the re-used
>parchment of the cover pastedowns, obtains a high-quality slide of the
>Andrea Bianco circular world map from 1436 (or rather, probably of just the
>northern part of the map, down to the page fold)
>5) Prankster makes a frame with a roughly elliptical aperture, which is
>then placed over the prepared pair of pages
>6) Prankster obtains some brown paint, and modifies it for use as a rather
>thick ink

Here is where you fall down. Can you tell me:

1. What kind of paint it was.

2. How they modified it.

3. How you know this.

>7) Projecting the slide into the frame aperture from different angles and
>distances, prankster copies sections of the Bianco map coastline to make a
>new, oval world map
>7a) As part of the incentive to carbon-date the map, some details are
>modified from Bianco, to add anachronistic features like parts of Japan
>7b) See step 14
>8) After the frame is removed, anachronistic representations of Iceland and
>Greenland are added, plus a slightly less anachronistic Vinland. The actual
>position of these features is based on a map made about a decade after the
>Columbus voyage
>9) Rivers are added to the main landmass, but for the dual purposes of
>avoiding too much awkward drawing across the page fold and adding intrigue,
>most of these rivers do not correspond with the rivers depicted by Bianco
>10) Place-names and detailed captions are added; most of these are
>Latinisations of names from Bianco, but some are taken from Ptolemaic maps
>of the same period, and some from the first few pages of the Tartar
>Relation (which supplies much of the text for the detailed captions,
>sometimes out-of-context)
>11) As part of the carbon-14 challenge, the prankster then prepares a
>second, black ink by burning some pages of the Speculum Historiale and
>collecting the soot

This is speculation. You don't know this and, if you are correct, you
will never know unless you obtain a confession. Your only basis for
claiming this is the missing pages from what now appears to be the
original set.

Question: How do you prepare carbon suitable for use in ink by burning
paper?

>12) A second line is drawn over the map outline using the new ink. This
>process is time-consuming and not altogether satisfactory, so no attempt is
>made to redraw over the finest writing of the captions
>13) Because the second line looks, in many places, very obviously like a
>second line, most of it is rubbed off, leaving only tantalising specks in
>most areas, except where the register with the brown line was most accurate
>14) The components of the Speculum volume all have wormholes, which link
>them together. Originally I assumed that the map lines were deliberately
>drawn across some of these wormholes to add to the appearance of age, which
>would be step 7b, but information in Kirsten Seaver's "Maps Myths and Men"
>suggests that they are equally likely to have been made deliberately by
>placing live worms in suitable spots after the map was completed.
>15) Our hero roughly re-binds the remaining part of the Speculum
>Historiale, but keeps the Tartar Relation and the map separate
>15a) A guard strip is applied to bind the map in with the Tartar Relation,
>and patches are pasted over the wormholes- no attempt is made to hide the
>modernity of these additions
>16) The tempting items are introduced, at bargain prices, into the rare
>book trade, via a less-than-scrupulous dealer named Enzo Ferrajoli
>
>
>David B.
>
>
>
>




Eric Stevens

.

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  • Re: The Vinland Maps Ink
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