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Yale: Vinland Map and New Math
Posted:
Feb 25, 2005 11:44 AM
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It is interesting to note that the New Math and the Vinland Map
deception were developed almost simultaneously at Yale University.
E.G. Begle's School Mathematics Study Group (SMSG) was established
there in 1958. By 1970, the SMSG strand of new math had demolished the
traditional college preparatory mathematics curriculum and had become
completely institutionalized. This was accomplished through the
Houghton Mifflin series of books, which were copied by other
publishers, co-authored by Mary P. Dolciani. A priceless article
describing how this occurred is posted at:
http://mathforum.org/epigone/math-teach/blerdzhiclon/
On 8 Feb 2005 on PBS, Nova presented an excellent program on the
Vinland map deception. The Program Transcript is available at:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/3205_vinland.html
I was particularly fascinated by the cast of characters involved in
this deception:
1. The consummate charmer and con man Enzo Ferrajoli, who was
subsequently convicted of stealing many old manuscripts from the
library at the Cathedral of La Seo in Saragossa.
2. The manuscript dealer Laurence Witten who, in 1957, paid Ferrajoli
$3,500 for the Vinland map bound with the authentic "Tartar
Relations."
3. The billionaire Yale alumnus Paul Mellon who bought the manuscript
from Witten for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
It is not surprising that this fraud was perpetrated by money-grubbers
and by a billionaire with some type of agenda, with the willing
participation of incompetents at Yale University.
When I first saw this map over a decade ago, I was amazed by the fact
that it depicts Greenland and Baffin Island as _islands_. Leaving
aside the subsequent tests indicating that the ink was produced in the
20th century, how could anyone have possibly accepted the fact that
Greenland and Baffin Island could have been circumnavigated in the
15th century, and that their coastlines could have been drawn in such
a relatively accurate manner compared to the rest of the map? This
possibility would appear to be quite preposterous, in view of the way
these regions are depicted in Martin Behaim's Globe and in Orontius
Fine's Globe of 1531.
According to the Nova program, Greenland was not circumnavigated until
the end of the 19th century. The program also disclosed that, in
addition to the 20th-century ink, the parchment is coated with 30%
foreign matter, carbon dated to 1950, on which the map is drawn.
The Vinland map forgery is also in sharp contrast with the Icelandic
Skalholt Map, which dates from about 1590.
http://www.civilization.ca/archeo/helluland/images/stsag02b.jpg
In this map, Groenlandia is depicted as a long peninsula on the
western end of a land corridor connected to Biarmaland above Norvegia.
West of Groenlandia, Helleland, Markland and Skralingae Land are
depicted as parts of the mainland. Promontorium Winlandiae is depicted
as a long narrow peninsula east of a fjord, corresponding accurately
to the northern peninsula of Newfoundland at the tip of which the
Norse settlement of L'Anse aux Meadows is located.
It is unfortunate that the billionaire Paul Mellon, instead of funding
sound research, chose to use his money to promote the Vinland map
forgery in a misguided attempt to discredit the epic crossing of the
Atlantic Ocean by Christopher Columbus and his crew. Columbus did not
formulate his Enterprise of the Indies (La Empresa de las Indias) in a
vacuum. He had collected and presented all the evidence and knowledge
that was available to him.
Dom Rosa
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