Re: Clams before Columbus


Inger's snippage restored:
"t(nospam)kavanagh" wrote:

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

"Inger E.Johansson" wrote:

tk,
you, as well as Yuri, missed in your debate back then ALL needed facts to prove the Clams correct.

ONE CLAM FRAGMENT with the "very slight probability of the sample being
younger than Columbus's discovery"

It's no use for you to refer to that debate any more.
Heard earlier today from a scholar of Scandinavian History and Archaeology

It does you no good for you keep referring to unnamed, anonymous
sources. Unnamed, anonymous sources do not support your claims.

that the ref which been presented not only is valid

The reference may be valid. BUT IT IS STILL ONLY ONE CLAM (fragment)
which has the "very slight probability of the sample being younger than
Columbus's discovery"

Let me make this very plain: ONE VERY SLIGHT POSSIBILITY.

THat's what you are basing your claim on?

but that there is much more to come from that corner.

Such as? your shells found in a nunnery? Do you in fact, know what a
Chesapeake Bay (the "other side of the Delaware Peninsula") soft shell
clam looks like?


Doesn't matter what you wrote back then, if
you want to be able to catch up here you need to learn a bit more about
Scandinavian archaeology and Scandinavian Medieval History.

Nice abusive ad hominem there.

But, Yes, it *does* matter what was written back then. The reference
Neilsen provided to Alan C in the first message of this thread is a
secondary source. You are such an advocate of primary sources, yet you
refuse to recognize them when they don't say what you claim them to say.
I went back to the primary source, the original 1992 Nature report. ONE
CLAM SHELL fragment with the "very slight probability of the sample
being younger than Columbus's discovery."

You are going to have to do a lot better than this.

tk

Ales Hrdlicka take note
.