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James
Robert Enterline.
Erikson, Eskimos, and
Columbus: Medieval European Knowledge of America.
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004.
368pp.
Paperback.
ISBN 0801878950.
Publisher's
recommended price $26.95
Previously issued in
hardback, 2002.
How did medieval Europeans
have such specific geographic knowledge of North America, a land even
their most daring adventurers had not yet discovered? In Erikson,
Eskimos, and Columbus, James Robert Enterline presents new evidence
that traces this knowledge to the cartographic skills of indigenous
people of the high Arctic, who, he contends, provided the basis for
medieval maps of large parts of North America. Drawing on an exhaustive
chronological survey of pre-Columbian maps, including the controversial
Yale Vinland Map, this book boldly challenges conventional accounts of
Europe's discovery of the New World.
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