Did a Native American travel with the Vikings and arrive in Iceland centuries before Columbus set sail?

Ancient Origins

Scientists have been searching for answers on the puzzles of history by sifting through the genetic code of certain Icelanders. They have been looking to see if a Native American woman from the New World accompanied the Vikings back to Europe, five centuries before Columbus arrived back in Spain with indigenous Native Americans.

It is well established through historical accounts and archaeological findings that Vikings set up initial colonies on the shores of North America just before 1000 A.D. But what is not known for certain is how a family of Icelanders came to have a genetic makeup which includes a surprising marker dating to 1000 A.D. — one which is found mostly in Native Americans.

In 2010, it was reported that the first Native Americans arrived on the continent of Europe sometime around the 11th century. The study, led by deCODE Genetics, a world-leading genome research lab in Iceland, discovered a unique gene that was present in only four distinct family lines. The DNA lineage, which was named C1e, is mitochondrial, meaning that the genes were introduced by and passed down through a female. Based on the evidence of the DNA, it has been suggested that a Native American, (voluntarily or involuntarily) accompanied the Vikings when they returned back to Iceland. The woman survived the voyage across the sea, and subsequently had children in her new home. As of today, there are 80 Icelanders who have the distinct gene passed down by this woman.

Nevertheless, there is another explanation for the presence of the C1e in these 80 Icelanders. It is possible that the Native American genes appeared in Iceland after the discovery of the New World by Columbus. It has been suggested that a Native American woman might have been brought back to mainland Europe by European explorers, who then found her way to Iceland. Researchers believe that this scenario is unlikely, however, given the fact that Iceland was pretty isolated at that point of time.

Nevertheless, the only way to effectively eliminate this possibility is for scientists to find the remains of a pre-Columbian Icelander whose genes can be analyzed and shown to contain the C1e lineage.

The Skálholt Map made by the Icelandic teacher Sigurd Stefansson in the year 1570. Helleland ('Stone Land' = Baffin island), Markland ('forest land' = Labrador), Skrælinge Land ('land of the foreigners’ = Labrador), Promontorium Vinlandiæ (the of Vinland = Newfoundland). Public Domain

Another problem facing the researchers is that the C1e genes might not have come from Native Americans, but from some other part of the world. For instance, no living Native American group has the exact DNA lineage as the one found in the 80 Icelanders. However, it may be that the Native American people who carried that lineage eventually went extinct.

One suggestion, which was proposed early in the research, was that the genes came from Asia. This was eventually ruled out, as the researchers managed to work out that the C1e lineage had been present in Iceland as early as the 18th century. This was long before the appearance of Asian genes in Icelanders.

Did a Native American travel to Iceland and leave behind a telltale genetic marker? A man helms replica Viking vessels. Wikimedia Commons

If the discovery does prove ultimately that the Vikings took a Native American woman back to Iceland, then history would indeed have to be rewritten. Although encounters with the Native Americans, known as Skraelings (or foreigners), were recorded by the Viking sagas, there is no mention whatsoever about the Vikings bringing a Native American woman home to Iceland with them. Furthermore, the available archaeological record does not show any presence of a Native American woman in Iceland.

 The more digging is done into the history of the Vikings, the more our perceptions are changing as to how they lived, travelled, and traded.

Hopefully more light will be shed on this mystery over time, and the goings-on of the historic world can be unequivocally established, giving us a clearer understanding of our ancient past.

Featured image: Replica of 9th century Viking ship docked in Norway. Juanjo Marin/Flickr

References
Firth, N., 2010. First American in Europe 'was native woman kidnapped by Vikings and hauled back to Iceland 1,000 years ago'.

Govan, F., 2010. First Americands 'reached Europe five centuries before Columbus voyages'.

Watson, T., 2010. American Indian Sailed to Europe With Vikings?.

Tremlett, G. 2010. First Americans 'reached Europe five centuries before Columbus discoveries'. [Online] Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/science/2010/nov/16/first-americans-europe-research

 By Ḏḥwty

Native Americans Had a Precolonial Baby Boom

By Tia Ghose

Sites like Pueblo Bonito in New Mexico had a major baby boom that lasted until the mid-1100s. After that time, a drought began to take its toll and the population collapsed around A.D. 1300. Credit: Nate Crabtree

For hundreds of years, Native Americans in the southwestern United States had a prolonged baby boom — which would average out to each woman giving birth to more than six children, a new study finds. That baby streak, however, ended a little before the Spanish colonized the Americas.
"Birthrates were as high, or even higher, than anything we know in the world today," said study co-author Tim Kohler, an archaeologist and anthropologist at Washington State University.
The precolonial baby boom was likely fueled by Native Americans in the region switching from a nomadic, hunter-gathering lifestyle to a settled farming way of life, Kohler said

Skeletal analysis
The researchers analyzed thousands of skeletal remains from hundreds of sites across the Four Corners region of the Southwest (the area that now makes up Utah, Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado) dating from 900 B.C. until the beginning of the colonial period in the early 1500s. (Most sites were excavated decades ago, and most of the remains have been returned to their tribes, Kohler said.)
By estimating the fraction of the population between ages 5 and 19 (young children's remains are too poorly preserved to include in the calculation), the researchers could get a rough estimate of the birthrate, or the number of babies born per year for every 1,000 people.
The birthrate slowly increased until about A.D. 500, and then rose more quickly and stayed high until A.D. 1300. The birthrate, about 0.049 in a year, was akin to that in modern-day Niger, where every woman has, on average, 6.89 children.
The rise in birthrate coincided with shifts in agricultural production. Though maize was first cultivated around Mexico City nearly 8,000 years ago and reached the Southwest by about 2000 B.C., most Native Americans in the region were nomadic, so they weren't farming it.
Then, in A.D. 500, selective breeding led to plumper maize seeds, and the crop also became more productive. This shift also coincided with a transition to a more settled way of life.
"We begin to see much more substantial dwellings, indicating that people are spending a much longer period of time in specific places," with shifts from wood to stone structures, Kohler told Live Science.
The number of dwellings also increased around this time period.
"We go from small hamlets to large villages in space of time from A.D. 600 to A.D. 800," Kohler said.
Birthrates leveled off around A.D. 1100 and declined precipitously after A.D. 1300. It's not clear exactly why that happened, but a severe drought in the 1100s may have fueled more conflict, eventually leading to a sudden collapse in the population, the researchers noted.
Nomad vs. agriculturalist
The shift to agriculture could have spurred a baby boom in multiple ways.
A nomadic lifestyle could mean picking up camp and trekking long distances every month — no easy feat for a woman if she had more than one child to carry. At the same time, hunter-gatherers tend to breastfeed their children longer because they have few appropriate "weaning foods." The high-caloric demand of the lifestyle, combined with prolonged breastfeeding, may have suppressed ovulation in women, leading to fewer children, Kohler said.
In contrast, a woman who had to walk only a small distance to tend the fields could take care of multiple dependent children, and could also wean her children sooner by feeding them a maize porridge, Kohler said.
http://www.livescience.com/46597-native-american-baby-boom.html