Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, December 1899: Vol. LVI, November, 1899 to April, 1900 — John Shaqi
Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, December 1899: Vol. LVI, November, 1899 to April, 1900Various
Science
Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, December 1899: Vol. LVI, November, 1899 to April, 1900
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
The construction and situation of this house are _quite_
Scandinavian, built in the same way as houses in Iceland and
Greenland. I would therefore not have had the least hesitation to
declare it to be a ruin of a house built by Scandinavians in the
pre-Columbian period if between and under the stones which
covered the bottom we had not found some pieces of glazed pottery
and bricks, of which some small pieces were found trodden down
even into the floor itself. This seems to indicate that the house
must be post-Columbian, or at least have been occupied by the
first English or French colonists. As in the meantime several
American scholars, with whom I have had an opportunity to discuss
this matter, positively declare that the post-Columbian colonists
never would have built such walls of stones without mortar, and
it must be regarded as _quite_ certain that Indian people could
not have built it, there seems to be no other explanation
possible than that this ruin must be Scandinavian, and, having
been found by some of the first post-Columbian colonists (e. g.,
some fishermen), had been repaired and occupied by them for a
shorter or longer time. If it can be proved that such a building
as this could not have been built by the post-Columbian colonists
nor by Indians, it can hardly be anything else than Scandinavian.
This, however, must be left to American scholars, who have
sufficient knowledge in these matters. But so long as this is not
proved, the pieces of pottery and bricks which were found in it
rather seem to speak for its post-Columbian origin, as those
pieces must have been there when the house fell down, and such a
house as this built in the beginning of the eleventh century
could not have stood five hundred years before its roof and the
upper parts of the walls fell down.
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