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Christopher Columbus’s status as a pioneering explorer is called into question.
A handful of bright blue pearls have prompted historians and archaeologists to debate a new study that may question the story that Columbus was the first European to colonize the New World in the late 15th century.
The azure glass balls unearthed in Alaska may have Venetian origins, according to a report by the journal American Antiquity, and likely traveled 10,500 miles from Italy through Eurasia and into the arctic territory of Alaska, l ‘across the Bering Strait land bridge that once connected North America and Siberia.
Radiocarbon dating of the string found attached to the beads, probably made from shrub willow bark, indicates that the bracelet could date back to the 14th or 15th centuries, potentially prior to Columbus’ 1492 voyage. However, the margin of possibility also suggests origins as late as the 16th or 17th centuries.
“We were stunned, because that was decades before Columbus even discovered the New World,” University of Alaska researcher Michael Kunz told Live Science.
If the researchers’ hypotheses are true, the pearls would be the oldest known European artefacts to have entered North America.
However, critics argue that the style of glass beads, referred to as “drawn” beads, does not match the range from the 14th to 15th century, as all previous research has indicated that this type was not made until the 16th century. .
“These beads cannot be pre-Columbian, because Europeans weren’t making such beads so early,” said University of Alabama anthropologist Elliot Blair, who was not involved in the study. . He told Live Science that, even without the pre-Columbian aspect, the results suggest a “really cool story.”
“Even with this later dating, an early 17th century date for these beads is still much earlier than the first documented contact between Alaskan natives and Europeans.
Kunz acknowledged that his study “went against the grain” by claiming that the cartoon pearls may have appeared centuries earlier than we previously thought. “But we have good, solid scientific evidence – radiocarbon dating, instrumental neutron activation analysis – that supports what we’re saying,” he said.
Regardless of the exact age of the pearls, pearl expert and historian Karlis Karklins, who also spoke with the science outlet, said the study’s authors can be confident in their claims that these pearls are indeed the oldest European products ever found in Alaska.
“How they got to remote Alaska from Western Europe in the latter part of the 16th or early 17th century is quite a mystery in itself,” Karklins said. “It really calls for serious investigation.”
It is well known that Leif Erikson led a crew of Norwegian Vikings to Canada and Greenland, arriving in the Great White North more than 500 years before Columbus. Nevertheless, historians continue to understand that the landing of Christopher Columbus in the West Indies was at the origin of systemic colonization by a number of European countries, including Italy, Spain, France, England and the Netherlands.
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