Vikings Possibly Carried Native American to Europe

Posted in Anthropology, Articles, Europe, History, Native Americans/First Nation, New Media on 2010-11-28 18:57Z by Steven

Vikings Possibly Carried Native American to Europe

Discovery News
2010-11-17

Medieval texts suggest the Vikings arrived in the New World more than 1,000 years ago.

THE GIST

  • DNA analysis reveals that four families in Iceland possess genes typically found in Native Americans or East Asians.
  • Genealogical evidence revealed that these families shared a distant ancestor from the same region.
  • The Vikings may have brought back a Native American woman with them after they arrived in the New World.

The first Native American to arrive in Europe may have been a woman brought to Iceland by the Vikings more than 1,000 years ago, a study by Spanish and Icelandic researchers suggests.

The findings boost widely-accepted theories, based on Icelandic medieval texts and a reputed Viking settlement in Newfoundland in Canada, that the Vikings reached the American continent several centuries before Christopher Columbus traveled to the “New World.”

Spain’s CSIC scientific research institute said genetic analysis of around 80 people from a total of four families in Iceland showed they possess a type of DNA normally only found in Native Americans or East Asians…

Read the entire article here.

Tags: , ,