Re: Clams before Columbus

Alan Crozier wrote:

In my review of Nielsen/Scott on the Kensington Rune Stone I
criticized the absence of references for certain claims. One of
the claims concerned clams. I asked "Where are the clams from
Klagen [Skagen?] in north Jutland that must have come with ships
from New England in the 13th and 14th centuries?"

Richard Nielsen has now kindly provided an Internet source with
a reference to something published in Nature 1992:
http://www.science-frontiers.com/sf085/sf085a01.htm

(I note that my suspicion was right about the correct form of
the place-name: it is indeed Skagen/the Skaw at the northern tip
of Jutland. See
http://www.vulkaner.no/t/skagen/skagen1-n.html)

Come on folks, we went thru this before, thanks to Yuri, back in 1998:

Quote from the thread:

shells indicate Nordic-American links
42. "tkavanag<no spam>" <"tkavanag Mar 19 1998, 3:00 am

Newsgroups: sci.archaeology
Date: 1998/03/19
Subject: Re: shells indicate Nordic-American links

OK, folks, here it is:

K.S. Peterson, K.L. Rasmussen, J. Heinemeir, N. Rud
1992 Clams Before Columbus. Nature. Vol. 359, p 679.

....We have dated a sample from the Kattegat region on the east coast of
the Skaw in northern Jutland, Denmark. ...

We took three samples from the east coast of the Skaw, ... with
fragments of M. arenaria. ... The conventional radio-carbon dating of
the three samples ... showed calibrated ages in the range of ad
1400-1650... We subsequently radio-carbon dated one M. arenaria specimen
from each of the three samples by accelerator mass spectrometry ... The
age of the AMS sample found in the sand barrier farthest from the coast
(... AD 1245-1295 +/- 1 SD)... It is obvious from the distribution that
there is a very slight probability of the sample being younger than
Columbus's discovery...

Note that indeed, we are talking about a date from the fragment of ONE
shell found in a sand dune, with no archaeological context. Moreover,
the authors suggest that it might even be younger than Columbus.

/endquote/

ONE SHELL.

tk
.

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