Re: The Vinland Map's Ink

On 29 Apr 2005 18:14:45 -0700, "Ken Towe" <ken.towe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

>Mr. Stevens:
>
>I'm truly sorry that you have concluded that I have resorted to ad
>hominems. I hope I have not. If you will reread what I wrote you will
>see that I asked you a question...essentially wouldn't one be justified
>in drawing such a conclusion from your reluctance to provide answers
>one way or the other.

I did not appreciate you referring to me as a 'gad fly'. I
particularly did not appreciate it when the only reason I keep
responding in this thread is that you pose me yet another question.

>You can draw you own conclusion. I apologize if
>you feel that I was making a flat-out assertion (such as some others
>have commonly done here).

I would not use the word 'assertion'. Your ongoing unwillingness to
accept that I justified in having reasonable doubts makes 'implacable
belief' more appropriate.
>
>Remember, though, you wrote this at the outset...
>
>McCrone's discovery of anatase in the ink of the Vinland Map appears
>to provide an almost insurmountable hurdle for those who argue for the
>map's authenticity. From shortly after the time when McCrone announced
>his discovery it has been suggested that the presence of anatase may
>be due to modern contamination, specifically shedding of chalking
>paint from rooms in which the map has been exposed. However, more
>recent discoveries as to the distribution of the anatase suggest that
>it is more concentrated in the ink than elsewhere and hence
>inconsistent with recent random contamination.

Please note that I repeatedly used qualifying terms such as 'almost',
'suggested', 'inconsistent'. Nowhere did I claim absolute proof. Nor
did I exclude the possibility of new evidence or understanding of the
evidence.

Further, you have failed to note that this was the first of several
paragraphs leading up to my quotation from James Enterline. In other
words you have taken an incomplete selection of my words and are using
them out context. Do you really think that such an argument is worthy
of a response?
>
>I would have thought that you would have at least embraced this, if
>nothing else. I am, however, not familiar with what you think about the
>ink that would support the map as an authentic document, and if I read
>you correctly, you apparently have nothing that you are willing to
>share with us about that. I'm not forcing you into any
>conclusion...nobody can do that. I'm simply trying to understand where
>you currently stand. If you read that as hounding you, again, I'm
>sorry. But, at this point you appear to have no stand. Help me (us?) to
>know where you are coming from. You seem to be quite knowledgable about
>the VM so I don't think that is really too much to ask. Do you?

In this context, yes. I have no intention of opening up my conclusions
to attack before I have reached them.
>
>By the way, your assessment of my changing views over the years is
>incorrect. I began working with Mrs. Olin in 1974 and regarded her
>theory as quite plausible...until I met with the chemists at Titanium
>Pigments Division of NL Industries.

I apologise for that remark. Nevertheless, your continual hounding of
me to accept your conclusion, or at least put forward a contrary one
of my own, is become more than a little wearying. You may have now
made up your mind but I have not. Nor can I on the basis of what I
presently know.

>They convinced me that her idea
>would not work. And here, in an attempt to again set the record
>straight, it is NOT simply the temperatures involved, it is the STEPS
>required as well. Obviously, such high temperatures were easily
>obtained in the middle ages, but as I tried to show in an earlier post,
>if such temperatures had been used in the STEP where the green vitriol
>is made this would have destroyed the very material that is used to
>make iron-gall inks.

I accept all that. In fact, most of it is self evident in my 50 year
old chemistry text books.

>Green vitriol is decomposed at temperatures well
>below those necessary to convert the initial colloidal anatase
>precipitates to the well-crystallized anatase used commercaily and seen
>in the VM ink (seen without clay minerals or sand!). Thus, I went from
>someone who thought that the VM might, indeed, be authentic to someone
>who doubted it. Cahill's PIXE data just added to my doubts, and then
>Brown & Clark's study confirmed it (your high degree of confidence).
>You seem to discount most of this (raising Jim Enterline's theory as a
>substitute?) and that's why I'm trying to learn what you are using to
>balance these results. What do you see as support for the VM ink being
>consistent with authenticity? Where does your doubt lie?

No, I don't discount any of this. Nor do I consider Enterline's theory
as a substitute although it might yet in one form or another provide
an explanation for the anatase. My reservations have always been based
on the amount we do not yet know about either material in the vellum
or the nature of the ink. I cannot bring myself to reach a conclusion
when I know there is a significant possibility that new information
could show it to be wrong.

My attitude is in part derived from the mysterious provenance of the
VM. We don't know who has had it, where they got it from or what they
have done to it. Things might be easier if we did.
>




Eric Stevens

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: The Vinland Maps Ink
    ... McCrone's discovery of anatase in the ink of the Vinland Map appears ... map's authenticity. ... straight, it is NOT simply the temperatures involved, it is the STEPS ...
    (sci.archaeology)
  • Mr Towe libelling
    ... > Repeated requests have been made to those who cling to Vinland Map ... > The Renfors Facts? ... The Cahill PIXE analyses found anatase, not only in the ink ...
    (sci.archaeology)
  • Re: The Vinland Map Find Or Fraud?
    ... that has NO RELEVANCE to anything at all being discussed. ... "Anatase particles having all of these properties can only have been ... relevance to the Vinland Map inks." ... content of nanogram flakes of the yellow ink itself, ...
    (sci.archaeology)
  • Re: The Vinland Map Find Or Fraud?
    ... > idea as deriving anatase for the VM ink from clays. ... > then appear in an ink on the Vinland Map. ... > anatase without kaolinite is like finding a needle or two in a haystack ...
    (sci.archaeology)
  • Re: The Vinland Maps Ink
    ... the ferrous iron begins to oxidize to ferric iron and hematite ... talks about a "leaching process" - quite the opposite from calcining. ... In modern practice, when anatase is ... the association of anatase with a medieval ink ...
    (sci.archaeology)
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