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by abstrakraft 1754 days ago
I'm really curious what this means in the larger context: does it refute the fundamental evidence that Norsemen reached the New World before Colombus, or is there enough other evidence that this is no big deal?
4 comments

It means nothing.

Archeological evidence found in the 1960s proves quite clearly that Norsemen reached the Americas 500 years before Columbus. In fact this evidence turned up - and got quite a lot of attention - in the 1960s, which is when this map was first published. But by the 1970s, analysis of the ink made it fairly clear it was a forgery.

This news is just that a more detailed analysis has been done, proving the map long believed to be a forgery was definitely a forgery. But the map was never really considered evidence of anything in particular; it was always questionable.

It doesn't have any significant impact. The map was already assumed to be fake by most scholars. We have both historical and archeological evidence for the Norsemen reaching the new world, so that is not in doubt.
No, we have archaeological remains from where the Norsemen camped in North America: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27Anse_aux_Meadows

This doesn't change any understanding of history.

I hoped as much...so what are the repercussions, if any?
None, really. People will still pay extraordinary amounts of money for old documents with shaky provenance on the basis that they'll have it and you can't, only to find out they've been duped. T'was ever and t'will ever be thus.
At least people know an NFT is genuine when people pay extraordinary amounts for a number on the basis that they’ll have it and you “can’t”.
An NFT is just a number on a ledger. The fact it represents ownership of anything is an agreement, and there’s nothing about the NFT itself that enforces that agreement. What are you going to do about it if someone, maybe the artist or their estate decides to disagree?
I agree of course. That’s what the quotes around ‘can’t’ was intended to convey.
Given that most NFTs of artwork are created without the knowledge or permission of the artist, I wouldn't call them genuine either.
Except everyone has access to any NFT in the same quality as its "owner", you just have to look up the transaction to access it.
Yale spent a lot of money to prove that their expensive piece of paper is worthless.
As have so many of their graduates.
It is beyond doubt that Norsemen reached North America before Colombus. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27Anse_aux_Meadows