My interest in present politics, international relations and military affairs is waning. There is such a terrible sameness about it all. The differences in technology are really fun for the feeble minded. War remains what it always has been, a process of human social interaction. Someone asked me once what Bonaparte would have done if confronted by; the telegraph, canned food and railroads. Clearly he would have integrated these things into his way of war and then would have moved on.
More interesting to me are such subjects as pre-Columbian European penetration of North America.
The Oak Island phenomenon is fascinating. The government of Nova Scotia is heavily invested in the present digging and significant evidence has been found that indicates several medieval and pre-medieval periods on the island, What kept people coming to this little island in Mahone Bay?
In the linked program below, two archaeologists, explore the possibility that the Viking settlement at Anse aux Meadows was not intended to be a true settlement. Rather they think that this place devoid of agricultural potential was a re-fit center for ships transiting to Vinland from Iceland and Greenland, a center where ships could be repaired, salted fish taken on as stores and a chance was available to sleep ashore in the long houses. The inhabitants of Anse aux Meadows had; fish in abundance, then prolific forests in Newfoundland and bog ore. This was, and is, iron ore present in large quantities in the bogs of northern Newfoundland. From these ores smelted into iron a very large number of nails were made, nails for the hulls of ships?
If Anse aux Meadows was a truck stop, then the case for further Norse penetration to the south and even to the mid-west is strengthened. pl
Interesting Article