Ring proves Netanyahu's Scandinavian Islamic conspiracy correct.
More than a century after its discovery in a ninth century woman’s grave, an engraved ring has revealed evidence of close contacts between Viking Age Scandinavians and the Islamic world.
Excavators of a Viking trading center in Sweden called Birka recovered the silver ring in the late 1800s. Until now, it was thought that it featured a violet amethyst engraved with Arabic-looking characters. But closer inspection with a scanning electron microscope revealed that the presumed amethyst is colored glass (an exotic material at the time), say biophysicist Sebastian Wärmländer of Stockholm University and his colleagues.
An inscription on the glass inset reads either “for Allah” or “to Allah” in an ancient Arabic script, the researchers report February 23 in Scanning.
Scandinavians traded for fancy glass objects from Egypt and Mesopotamia as early as 3,400 years ago (SN: 1/24/15, p. 8). Thus, seagoing Scandinavians could have acquired glass items from Islamic traders in the same part of the world more than 2,000 years later rather than waiting for such desirable pieces to move north through trade networks.
Ancient texts mention encounters around 1,000 years ago between Scandinavians and members of the Islamic civilization, which stretched from West Asia to Mediterranean lands. Archaeological evidence supporting those accounts, though, is rare.
The inner surface of the Birka ring’s silver body shows virtually no signs of wear. Filing marks made in the final stage of its production are still visible. That suggests that the ring made by an Arabic silversmith had few or no owners before it reached the Viking woman, the researchers say.
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/ring-brings-ancient-viking-islamic-civilizations-closer-together
posted in anthropology forum also...........
= new reply since forum marked as read
- Another case of things being where they shouldn't or couldn't, or oughtn't because they mess-up a mighty good yarn, not to mention careers, book deals and professorships......
K&R
"We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology." ~Carl Sagan
... links between the vikings and Islam are not news. Ahmad ibn Fadlan described a Norse funeral rite in the Kiev area which is one of the standard pieces of our understanding of viking funerals. That Arabs and Norsemen would meet up on the Dnieper is no big shock.
Kind of interesting, though, in light of Mr Putin's rants about the Kieven Rus. It's really all one big conspiracy, you know.
-- Mal
