I’m guessing fish ain’t as easy to kill in Greenland and anyone starving will eat anything.
You would know.
For what it’s worth, Diamond does have concrete credentials, most importantly a Ph.D. in physiology and membrane biophysics from Cambridge University. What might be called his lifelong detour into social science (he’s now with the UCLA geography department having started there in the medical school) may lead him to overreach himself more than he would have otherwise, but he’s probably as well qualified as anyone to expotulate on his usual subjects.
With a Ph.D. in membrane biophysics, wouldn’t he have to have picked up significant math on the way?
(Information according to Wikipedia)
Didn’t say anything about Illinoids, this ain’t the Pit…
Not really. He expounds primarily on population biology, ecology, agronomy, genetics and palaeontology. Anyone with qualifications in those fields would be far more qualified to comment than someone with a Ph D. in what is essentialy in vitro science.
No reason to assume any more than anyone with a Ph D in science would have picked up. Basic stats, some mathematics specific to his field like enzyme rate reactions. Not mathematically illiterate but not terribly impressive.
Since I guess this was directed to me: no idea, sorry.
I recall reading that the last recorded event (in Norse Greenland) as a wedding, conducted in Hvalsoy Church(that building stands today) in 1450. Also, a Danish archaeologist excavated Norse graves in Greenland, and found the bodies dressed in the latest European styles-from about 1480 or so. Is it possible that these people just packed up and left? The worsening climate was making dairy farming difficult-so wouln’t the logical thing have been to move back to Iceland?
I suspect that the farms were slowly abandoned, as younger people saw no future, and decided to move. Travel to greenland in the 1500’s was difficult-the Norwegian government gave up collecting taxes around this time.
I don’t think these people were so foolish as to just stay and starve to deth.
I hope you don’t mean to generalize! ALL Texans?
That’s more or less the thesis of Kirsten Seaver’s “A Frozen Echo” (Stanford University Press, 1996), though she puts the dates a little earlier (the wedding of Sigrid Bjornsdaughter and Thorstein Olafsson at Hvalsey was 1408) Given the very small size of the Greenland settlement, it wouldn’t take many young people leaving for greener pastures to put the settlement population in a tailspin.
With regard to the evidence for Greenlanders not fishing, Seaver points out that Greenlanders often used nets, and probably would have decapitated and cleaned the fish down at shore. In addition, she suggests that fish scraps were too valuable to throw out, and would have been dried, crushed and used as food. “Remembering how useful fish meal was to man and beast alike in Norway during my wartime childhood, I suspect that the surprisingly large number of small millstones found in Norse Greenland sites were used more for grinding dried fish scraps and moss, to be made into porridge or soup for human consumption, than for the rare batch of imported grain.” (p. 57)
Mmm, fish meal soup!
There was an interesting article in the* New Yorker* a couple months ago about those Mexican fishermen whose boat was swept out into the middle of the Pacific – remember them? Apparently the guys who lived were the ones who could bring themselves to eat raw fish and turtle. The guy who couldn’t… well, let’s just say that in Pacific, raw fish and turtles eat him.
I think Elucidator was just demonstrating the conjugation of an irregular verb. Don’t take it personally.
Was the population in 1400 a few thousand people? Such a small number could easily have moved back to Iceland-i wonder if there is some forgotten book (in Iceland) which tells of the abandonment of Greenland. Another theory I’ve heard-English pirates were active off the coast of labrador, by the early 1500’s-they were known for rading and enslaving captives. is it possible that the people left this way?
again, the Norse in Greenland were TOUGH people, resourceful and daring. I can’t imagine them staying if their way of life could no longer be sustained.
by the way-Greenland was a diocese of the catholic Church-does the vatican have any records from the Bishops of Greenland?
I find no record that there was ever an episcopal see in Greenland. Greenland was administered from the Archdiocese/Metropolitan of Norway in Trondheim. The last Catholic Archbishop before the Reformation, Erik Walkendorf, is reputed to have made an effort to reconnect with the Greenland settlers, but he was forced into exile during the Reformation and it is unclear that he actually sent a delegation to Greenland or, if they went, that they actually returned. Apparently there is no record that they discovered any living Europeans on the island–if anyone even made the journey. The Catholic Encyclopedia gives the “Catholic period” as 1000 to 1450, (meaning that Archbshop Walkenburg’s efforts (1510 - 1521) would have been 60 or more years after contact was lost).
This isn’t quite right. There was a bishopric in Greenland with a seat at Gardar. The first bishop of Gardar who actually lived in Greenland seems, from a cursory glance, to have been Bishop Arnald, who arrived in Greenland in the late 1120s. According to this timeline http://www.personal.utulsa.edu/~marc-carlson/history/grontime2.html, the last bishop of Gardar who lived in Greenland was Bishop Alf, who died about 1378. (Seavers says he died sometime between 1376 and 1378.)
Oddly enough, the title Bishop of Gardar remains. Bishop Edward Clark, the auxiliary bishop of Los Angeles, is also the titular bishop of Gardar.
Bear in mind I’m an Illinoizianischer the same way you’re a Minnesotian, pard: We both came over on the Mayflower.
If it’s any comfort, papaw, li’l luc’s a roper, just like you, so when he insults you he insults himself. And he’d be able to understand that, were it not for an accident at birth. Said accident being born in Texas. 
Thanks for the info. I’m not sure what I did wrong to miss that,
Here is an interesting version of the settlement from the early 20th century Catholic Encyclopedia that infers that the last Europeans were either conquered or assimilated by the native peoples.
Thanks for the info. I’m not sure what I did wrong to miss that,
Here is an interesting version of the settlement from the early 20th century Catholic Encyclopedia that infers that the last Europeans were either conquered or assimilated by the native peoples.
As has been said, the climate of Greenland got colder from the 1500’s on; so getting there got harder. It seems like the smartest thing to do (if you were living there) would be to move. Any evidence that they went to N America?
I wonder about the influence of religion. Since the main permanent, and last used building was the church, perhaps there was a feeling of “the other” resisting the missionary influences, and thus discrediting all their ways.
You mean you don’t watch Nova? That “cathedral” was pathetic–it fit maybe 50 people. But at least it wasn’t a soddy. THAT wuld’ve been embarassing.
My money’s on the mass of them packing off for Iceland, leaving the most stubborn, old Norskies behind. Whether they made it is a different question.