The idea that Christopher Columbus discovered the Americas long ago moved from the history books to the garbage can, but if you need more disputing evidence, you can find it in a new study on the Vikings, whose quest for ivory is believed to have led them into the path of Indigenous peoples in North America centuries before Columbus set sail. Norse people are known to have established settlements as far west as Newfoundland by the 11th century. Who they might have encountered has been lost to time, yet the new study, an analysis of ancient walrus skulls found in European trade centers and ivory workshops, puts Norse people and Thule Inuit in the same place at the same time, per Newsweek.
Researchers extracted ancient DNA from walrus samples recovered from Viking settlements in Canada, Greenland, and Europe, which provided "a genetic map of the place of origin of various Arctic walrus populations at the time of the Vikings," says senior study author Morten Tange Olsen, an expert in evolutionary genomics at the University of Copenhagen. "This enabled us to show in which part of the Arctic the animals were caught."
The study published Friday in Science Advances shows the Vikings "regularly travelled" about 3,700 miles to Pikialasorsuaq, the largest Arctic polynya (meaning an open area of water surrounded by sea ice). It encompasses the northern part of Baffin Bay, where Thule Inuit, the ancestors of modern Inuit peoples, were also operating, Olsen says.
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This "hints at potential trade interactions centered around the walrus ivory trade," lead study author Emily Ruiz-Puerta, another University of Copenhagen evogenomics researcher, tells Newsweek. Indeed, the study points to an "Arctic Ivory Road" that connected Europe and North America centuries before the era of colonization. "This is big news" as such meetings would represent "the first 'full circle' reconnections of humanity after it had expanded out of Africa," another study author, Lund University archaeology professor Peter Jordan, tells Newsweek. He notes more research is needed to confirm such interactions took place but adds prior research into this area has leaned "very Eurocentric." (More Vikings stories.)
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