----------------------------Original message---------------------------- In February there was quite a discussion on MapHist about the Vinand map. The discussion founds its origin in the New York Times article concerning a symposium at Yale. Andrew Cook posted the whole article to MapHist. For those on Maps-L interested in the matter, I forward Andrew Cook's posting. I am sorry, it's long and MapHisters have read it already. Those interested in the discussion should ask for the archives file of Feb. 1996 (or, order early January 1997, for the printed hardcopy of the MapHist messages - I produce them, 1994 and 1995 are available, those interested, send me privately a request for information). The NPR broadcast had renewed the discussion on MapHist. Peter Date: Fri, 16 Feb 1996 17:33:07 +0000 Reply-To: Map History Discussion List <[log in to unmask]> Sender: Map History Discussion List <[log in to unmask]> From: Andrew Cook <[log in to unmask]> Subject: Posting the New York Times article on the Vinland Map Now I've seen both texts, I echo Ed Dahl's comment. Simplest thing to do is post it to the list, so that more of us can review it (thanks to Deborah Natsios for e-mailing it) Andrew.Cook@ bl.uk +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The New York Times, February 13, 1996, pp. C1, C11. Disputed Medieval Map Called Genuine After All By John Noble Wilford [Photo] Site of Vinland is at left edge of Vinland Map; inset, modern map puts it roughly at Newfoundland. No map in the hands of a puzzled traveler in a strange land was ever examined as closely as the Vinland Map. Scientists and various scholars have pored over everything about it -- the ink and parchment, the faint lines of known and imagined coasts and inscriptions in Latin -- to see if this is a clever forgery or the genuine article, a map drawn about 1440 and containing the earliest cartographic representation of any part of the Americas. And still, after more than 35 years, they cannot be sure and perhaps never will be. The first detailed chemical test, completed in 1974, indicated that the ink might be a 20th-century product, which seemed to brand the map a modern forgery. But a more recent test and other research appear to tip the balance toward authenticity. At least the editors of the Yale University Press think so. On the strength of the new evidence, the press is publishing today a new, expanded edition of "The Vinland Map and the Tartar Relation," the book that created a sensation when the first editipn appeared in 1965. At the time, Yale called the map "the most exciting cartographic discovery of the century." In an introduction to the new edition, Dr. Wilcomb E. Washburn, director of American studies at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, said that while the dispute may never be resolved, it "can now be said to have reached a new stage." Those who have been charging forgery, he said, "must now assume a defensive role and respond to those previously on the defensive." Dr. Washburn was less circumspect in an interview. "I think the evidence is clearly on the side of authenticity," he said. John G. Ryden, director of the Yale press, said the decision to reissue the book was influenced by the strong challenge to forgery claims and a thorough examination of all recent findings conducted by Dr. George D. Painter, a retired scholar at the British Museum who is the last survivor of the team that produced the original edition. Dr. Painter wrote in an essay for the new edition that both scientific and cartographic evidence reestablished the map and accompanying manuscript as a "major and authentic message from the middle ages." The map was found bound with a text called the Tartar Relation describing Friar John de Plano Carpini's mission to the Mongols in the 13th century. At a symposium held on Saturday at Yale University in New Haven in conjunction with the publication of the book, the object of controversy made a brief appearance under armed guard. Valued by insurers at $25 million and normally locked away in a library vault, the Vinland Map rested on a lectern, covered by a protective layer of plastic. It is no bigger than two open pages of a moderately large book, in the book being published, it is reproduced at actual size. The ink, presumably black when first applied, has mostly faded to lines of pale yellowish-brown. On the far left side of the map is a large island in the Atlantic Ocean, the reason for the map's renown. The island occupies approximately the position of Newfoundland and is labeled "Vinlanda Insula." Since the material found with the map was prepared about 50 years before the 1492 voyage of Columbus, some scholars believe the map was drawn by an unknown European cartographer from records or oral traditions left by Norse explorers. A legend above the island describes how Leif Ericson and Bjarni Herjolfson sailed from Greenland about 1000 and discovered a new land, which they named Vinland. If genuine, the map further established the historical validity of the lcelandic sagas and the Norse priority in the discovery of America. Archeological excavations in Newfoundland and elsewhere have since convinced most scholars that the Norse had indeed reached northeast America 500 years before Columbus, though their attempts to establish settlements were failures. The map came to light in 1957 when a Connecticut rare-book dealer acquired it in Geneva and then sold it to Paul Mellon, a patron of the arts, who gave it to Yale. For eight years, Yale scholars quietly scrutinized the map and determined on the basis of the parchment and certain geographical errors that it had probably been drawn in Basle to illustrate the Tartar Relation, dated at about 1440. Not until after the book was first published, when several respected historians of cartography raised serious questions, did the map undergo the chemical test that forced Yale to concede that it "may be a forgery." Commissioned by Yale to conduct a chemical study, Dr. Walter C. McCrone, a Chicago microscopist and analyst of fine particles in air pollution, removed 29 particles of vellum and ink from the map. X-ray analysis showed that the particles consisted largely of anatase, a crystalline form of titanium dioxide that is rare in nature and was not commercially available as a white pigment until 1920. Dr. McCrone decided the map must be a fake. A decade later, physicists at the University of California at Davis came to a much different conclusion. They used a powerful cyclotron to fire a beam of protons through the map. The procedure, harmless to the map, generated X-rays from which all elements present in the ink and parchment could be almost instantaneously identified and quantified. The results were surprising and reassuring. Dr. Thomas A. Cahill, the physicist who directed the project, reported that the ink contained only trace amounts of titanium, amounts consistent with a genuine medieval document. "The prior interpretation that the map has been shown to be a 20th-century forgery must be reevaluated," Dr. Cahill's team reported in 1987. At the Yale symposium, Dr. Cahill said further studies strengthened the case for authenticity. Comparative analysis of other documents of the time, including a Gutenberg Bible, revealed traces of titanium occurring naturally in somewhat greater amounts than those detected in the map. None of the quantities were sufficient to be considered a purposefully added ingredient. Microscopic analysis of faded lines, Dr. Cahill reported, also seemed to discredit the hypothesis by Dr. McCrone about how the forger had worked to give the map an antique appearance. He could have first drawn lines with a vellow ink, presumably rich in anatase, and then applied a black ink over them. But the yellowish lines on the map, as analyzed by Dr. Cahill, turned out to have almost no anatase. "I leave it to others to talk about authenticity," Dr. Cahill said at the symposium. "What do we say? There is nothing about the chemistry or morphology of the Vinland Map that in any way makes it stand out from any of the parchments of that period that we have analyzed." Based on the new findings, Dr. Painter concluded: "The chemical constitution of the ink can no longer be used as an argument against authenticity. On the contrary it becomes, instead, a series of proofs of the map's entire medievality." But Dr. McCrone is unyielding. He had not been invited to the symposium, the organizers said, because he had previously declined to participate in such discussions, saying there was nothing new to say. He arrived unexpectedly and passed around copies of a letter he had sent to Mr. Ryden of Yale press, complaining about not being invited to contribute to the new edition. Had he been asked, he said, the title of his contribution would have been, "The Vinland Map, Still a 20th-Century Fake." Dr. McCrone continued to argue that the forger had produced the entire map after 1920, using a yellow ink for antique effect and then applying a black ink line down the middle of the yellow lines. He had one outspoken ally at the meeting, Dr. Kenneth M. Towe, curator of paleobiology at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History. In a new analytical approach to the problem, Dr. Garmon Harbottle, a physicist at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, L.I., conducted a statistical analysis of data from Dr. Cahill's group, looking for any patterns in the distribution of chemical elements over the map. The composition of the ink was uniform, he determined, except for one place on the map -- the part pertaining to Vinland itself and the legend above it. "I don't attribute much to this in terms of the authenticity question," Dr. Harbottle said. "Maybe someone came along a few years later and added Vinland to a map that already existed. The island does seem to be stuck out on the edge. Maybe a monk copying the map ran out of ink and made up a new batch at that point. But the ink is different, no question about it." Other scholars reported on their detective work trying to track down the origins of the map. Ardell Abrahamson, an independent scholar from Minneapolis, reported detecting what might be a modified double acrostic with an anagram in each of the two map legends, something a modern forger would have been unlikely to devise. Another independent scholar, James Enterline of New York City, suggested that some of the particle contaminants in the ink could have been introduced by anyone who had had the map cleaned in this century. He described how a bleaching technique used in the 1950's for cleaing old documents would have softened the map's yellow-brown stain and resulted in wrinkles and bumps. Scholars said new techniques in DNA analysis should reveal the type of animal skin used for the parchment, perhaps thereby identifying the area it came from. Although the sentiment of the meeting and most of the reported research tended to favor the Vinland Map's antiquity, Dr. David Woodward, a historian of cartography at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, who could not be at the symposium, said in an interview: "I'm not sure that anybody yet has come up with positive evidence that the map is a forgery. I am impressed by Cahill's work. But my mind is still very much open." [Close-up photo] Area of Vinland Map where two parts of inked line do not run exactly parallel was once taken as proof of double-inking by a forger; some now say such misregisters were common in authentic period documents. [End] >----------------------------Original message---------------------------- >I heard the last half of a story on the famous "Vinland" map, wednesday >on NPR. It turns out that the map is NOT a fake, but is in fact real. >The story mentioned something about a publication about the map. Does >anyone know when and where this new article or book about the "Vinland" >map can be found? > >--christopher jj thiry >map librarian >colorado school of mines > >[log in to unmask] >http://www.mines.edu:8080/library/maproom/ > >"At the mines, but far from the pits." > > +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+- Dr Peter van der Krogt FRW-Cartography University of Utrecht Mijerstraat 20 P.O. Box 80.115 2613 XM DELFT 3508 TC UTRECHT The Netherlands tel. +31 30 253 2052 fax: +31 15 212 6063 email: [log in to unmask] +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-