The bed of the lake on the island of Eysturoy contains a layer of silt from 500 AD that shows the first arrival of sheep and humans. Raymond Bradley is from UMass.
The bottom of a lake in the remote North Atlantic Faroe Islands shows evidence of an unknown group of humans around 500 AD, 350 years before the Vikings were thought to have been the first humans. Celts may have crossed rough, unexplored seas from what are now Scotland or Ireland. The findings are in the journal.
The archipelago of the Faroes is a small, rugged archipelago about halfway between Norway and Iceland. The rocky landscape is mostly tundra, buffeted by strong winds and cloudy weather. It is one of the few lands on the planet that has not been occupied by a tribe. Vikings first reached them around 850 AD, after they developed long-distance sailing technology. The settlement may have been used as a stepping stone for the Viking settlement of Iceland in 874.
The new study was led by scientists at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, and was based on signs in the lake that domestic sheep appeared around 500 years ago. The sheep could only have arrived with people, as the islands did not host any mammals. The researchers say that the study proves that someone else got there first.
In the 1980s, researchers determined that plantago lanceolata, a weed associated with disturbed areas and pastures and often used as an indicator of early human presence in Europe, showed up in the Faroes around 2200 B.C. The plant doesn't need human presence to establish itself, as the seeds could have arrived on the wind. Studies of pollen taken from lake beds show that some time before the Norse period, the vegetation was mostly gone.
The sheep of the Faroese are a staple of the culture for centuries. The Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory is a credit.
Irish monks are thought to have reached the islands around 500 years ago. St. Brendan, an early Irish navigator, is said to have set out across the Atlantic with his friends from 512 to 530 and found the Isle of the Blessed. Maps and speculations say that this was the Canary Islands, or the far southerly Azores, or that Brendan actually reached North America. There is no proof for this. In 825, the Irish monk and geographer Dicuil wrote that he had learned that some people had been living in the northern islands for 100 years. There was never any proof that the speculations were true.
The first physical evidence of early occupation was found in a study published in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews, which documented two patches of burnt peat underneath the floor of a Viking longhouse. The grains were dated to between 300 and 500 years before the Norse, so someone must have brought them. This was a firm evidence of pre-Viking habitation for many archaeologists. Others wanted to see some kind of corroboration before declaring the case closed.
The researchers used a non-archaeological approach. They sailed out onto the lake in a small boat, which was moored in the village of Eii. Here, they dropped weighted open-ended tubes to the bottom to collect muck and build a long-term environmental record. 10,000 years of environmental history were recorded by the cores that penetrated down to 9 feet. The scientists were hoping to better understand the climate around the time of the Viking occupation, but came up with a surprise.
They found signs that large numbers of sheep had arrived, most likely some time between 512 and 499, but possibly as early as 370. The telltale signs are fragments of sheep DNA and two types of lipids in the sheep's gut. The researchers found bits of human DNA in the same layers, but they suspect modern contamination during handling of the samples. A layer of ash deposited from a volcano helped them date it.
William D'Andrea and Gregory de Wet are working on a project. The College of William & Mary has a credit.
"We see this as putting the nail in the coffin that people were there before the Vikings," said lead author Lorelei Curtin, who did the research as a graduate student at Lamont-Doherty. She said that the Faroes look rugged and wild today, but that they have a staple of their diet that is found almost everywhere.
The researchers say this is unsurprising, as no one has yet found the remains of pre-Norse people. Flat areas at the heads of protected bays are the only places in the Faroes that are suitable for settlement. On the other hand, you can see the sheep's genes start at once. "It's like an off-on switch," said William D'Andrea, who co-led the study. The markers correspond well with the Irish monks' accounts. He said that the early writings were all circumstantial.
Who were the early settlers? They think they could have been Celts, though not necessarily monks. Celtic grave markings dot the islands, and many Faroese place names derive from Celtic words. The modern Faroese's paternal and maternal lines are mostly Celtic. The Vikings are thought to have brought Celtic brides with them, but the Faroes have the highest level of maternal Celtic ancestry, suggesting an existing Celtic population that preceded the Vikings.
The new study has produced convincing and exciting evidence from another island within the archipelago, according to Kevin Edwards, an archaeologist and environment researcher at Scotland's University of Aberdeen. He asked if there was similar evidence to be found in Iceland, where similar arguments are made for a pre-Norse presence.
The other authors of the study are Nicholas Balascio of the College of William & Mary, Gregory de Wet and Raymond Bradley of the University of Massachusetts, and Jostein Bakke of the University of Bergen.
There is more information about the evidence for the early human occupation of the Faroe Islands. www.nature.com/articles/s43247-021-00318-0
Humans reached remote North Atlantic islands centuries earlier than thought.
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