Mystery Group of Humans May Have Populated the Faroe Islands Before the Vikings

Centuries-old DNA collected from the underside of a lake on the Faroe Islands is popping again the clock on human occupation of the archipelago. Vikings arrived there round 850 CE, however a staff of researchers has deduced that some unknown group of people should have arrived at these North Atlantic islands a number of hundred years earlier, round 500 CE. The staff’s analysis is published at the moment in Communications Earth & Environment.

“Our findings provide evidence that people had occupied the Faroe Islands and introduced livestock at least 300 years prior to the accepted settlement timing for the Norse,” mentioned William D’Andrea, a paleoclimatologist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, in an electronic mail to Gizmodo. “Of course, it is also possible that people were there even earlier.”

“There is still quite a bit of uncertainty concerning the history of exploration in the North Atlantic, due in part to the fragmentary nature of archaeological sites,” D’Andrea added. “Our study shows that for the Faroes, that history extends at least three centuries before the Norse lándnam, or colonization period.”

The Faroe Islands are a distant archipelago about 200 miles northwest of Scotland. They are rocky and windswept, which means that little in the way in which of archaeology has stayed intact on the floor. So the researchers turned to a less-altered a part of the islands: the relict sediments on the backside of a lake, on the big island of Eysturoy.

Getting to the Faroes isn’t simple, particularly with Sixth-century know-how. But some group—the staff isn’t certain precisely who, as they haven’t analyzed the human DNA discovered of their samples—made it there earlier than the Vikings with a complete lot of sheep in tow. They know sheep arrived alongside these people due to the copious sheep DNA and fecal biomarkers within the sediments.

The lakebed has acted as as a catchment space for hundreds of years, as surrounding materials like soil has washed into the water. Everything in that soil—together with the DNA of the island’s inhabitants and issues like lipids from their guts—ended up preserved on the lake backside.

The sheep DNA and biomarkers indicated a possible arrival date between 492 CE and 512 CE, but it surely might have been as early as 370 CE. (For reference, that’s solely 50 years after Constantine cut up up the Roman empire.) These dates had been decided primarily based on the depth of the sediment layers—a layer of ash from a volcanic eruption recognized to have occurred in 877 CE offered a distinctive timestamp.

Past analysis has turned up different clues to humanity’s historical past on the islands. In the Eighties, researchers discovered {that a} weed generally related to human actions appeared within the Faroes round 2200 BCE. But that weed might’ve been dispersed by the wind, as so many plant seeds do. But in 2013, a examine discovered charred barley grains beneath a Viking longhouse on the island of Sandoy. That indicated pre-Norse arrivals to the islands however was just one piece of proof. Lorelei Curtin, a co-author of the brand new paper and an earth scientist on the University of Wyoming, mentioned that the brand new research certifies that the Vikings weren’t the primary folks there.

As to who these early explorers had been, the staff mentioned they might have been Celts, but it surely’s not sure. They did discover human DNA within the sediment, however it might have been trendy contamination and was not investigated additional.

“We are still in the process of developing records of past climate and human activities from additional sites around the Faroe Islands,” D’Andrea mentioned. “The great thing about lake sediments is that they hold information not only about human activities, but also about natural changes in the past climate and environment.” 

D’Andrea and his colleagues have ongoing initiatives across the North Atlantic and the Arctic, he mentioned, so extra discoveries about long-ago human travels could also be but to return. 

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