Thread Rating:
  • 0 Vote(s) - 0 Average
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5

Over-hunting walruses likely forced vikings to abandon Greenland

#1
C C Offline
https://gizmodo.com/over-hunting-walruse...1840859102

EXCERPT: Scientists have struggled to understand why, after hundreds of years, Vikings suddenly abandoned their Greenland colony. [...] New research published in Quaternary Science Reviews now adds color to another possible explanation: the Viking over-exploitation of walruses in Greenland and the collapse of walrus ivory as a valuable commodity in Europe. The first author of the study, James Barrett from the University of Cambridge, isn’t saying this is the only reason why the Vikings had to abandon Greenland, but he and his colleagues believe it was a major contributing factor.

Indeed, without much to offer Europe in terms of trade, the medieval Greenlanders used walrus tusks to power their economy. Europeans happily traded goods such as iron and timber for the ivory, which they used to make elaborate jewelry, chess pieces, and other ornate items, according to the researchers.

Over time, however, this proved to be an unsustainable way to maintain an economy. By the 11th century, practically all ivory traded across Europe came from Greenland, the authors note. Eventually, however, the ivory had to be sourced from increasingly smaller walruses, as well as those living far away from the Norse colonies in southeast Greenland.

[...] Exacerbating the Vikings’ troubles, African elephant tusks started to arrive in Europe by the 13th century, and they soon became more popular than the walrus tusks. ... That a connection existed between the walrus ivory trade and the demise of Norse Greenlanders has been entertained by scientists before. “But the main theory has been that walrus ivory hunting and trade declined from the 1200s, when elephant ivory became the preferred medium for carving in Europe,” wrote Barrett in an email to Gizmodo. “Our discovery is the reverse—that hunting probably increased then. We think it must have been because the unit value of walrus ivory declined, and the Norse Greenlanders still had need to keep up trade with Europe. So they actually had to hunt more animals.”

[...] Nicolás Young, an associate research professor from Columbia University who’s not affiliated with the new study, said it’s becoming increasingly obvious that socioeconomic factors, and not the climate, resulted in the demise of Vikings in Greenland. “The demise of the Norse in western Greenland has long been a hot topic, and whether right or wrong, Norse demise in Greenland has been used a poster child of climate-driven societal collapse,” wrote Young in an email to Gizmodo. “I think people have naturally gravitated towards a relatively straightforward explanation of why the Norse disappeared from Greenland: ‘It was the climate.’ However, I think over the last decade or so it has become fairly clear that socioeconomic factors almost certainly played a large role in dictating Norse migration patterns, perhaps even more so than any changes in regional climate.” (MORE - details)
Reply


Possibly Related Threads…
Thread Author Replies Views Last Post
  Oldest-ever DNA shows mastodons roamed Greenland 2 million years ago C C 0 124 Dec 7, 2022 06:15 PM
Last Post: C C
  Vikings in paradise: Were the Norse the first to settle the Azores? C C 0 49 Oct 4, 2021 09:56 PM
Last Post: C C
  Were the Vikings smoking pot in Newfoundland? + In pics: 9,000 yr-old Israeli site C C 0 181 Jul 16, 2019 04:22 PM
Last Post: C C



Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)