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Scalpaldr t1_iv6s47l wrote

>The language of the runes remains in question too. "The inscriptions are not a Viking script, but a combination of [runic languages] Elder Futhark and Younger Futhark, which predates when the Vikings would have been traveling," said Dennis Peterson, archaeologist and manager of the Spiro Mounds Archaeological Center, the source of America's largest collection of prehistoric Native American relics, not far from Heavener.

So some vikingaboo carved it and now the locals want to keep the belief that it was done by Norse traders going because it makes them money from tourism.

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frizzykid t1_iv7fuqd wrote

Most definitely. From my understanding people have been throwing runes on stones or trees and claiming the vikings did it for many decades now, and every time they are proven to be fake and made with modern equipment.

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Scalpaldr t1_iv7l6bb wrote

Not just decades, the Kensington Runestone was "found" in 1898. It was just pure coincidence that it was a Swedish immigrant who happened to find it in his field, during an era when people were romanticising the vikings and tying ancestral pride to their travels.

No real scholar has believed in its authenticity for over a hundred years, yet you still get the tourism spiel about "it totally could have happened tho and someone once heard a story about their grandpa seeing blue-eyed natives, come check out our stone". Peter Stormare even made a recent documentary about it where he really seemed to want to believe in it. It's weird how the obvious fakes seem to get more excitement than L'anse aux meadows gets.

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Rhodog1234 t1_iv8c3bm wrote

Sounds like almost every episode of Ancient Aliens

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Jjex22 t1_iv8mtwx wrote

Ah yes, these inconvenient coincidences, like how crop circles only pop up in communities previously aware of crop circles, or how despite its size and population, nearly all alien abductions on earth happen to Americans.

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[deleted] t1_iv9eefv wrote

America's Stonehenge.

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frizzykid t1_iv9uzus wrote

In defense of America's Stonehenge, I don't know of anyone calling it that before the 2020's, they were called the Georgia guide stones for most of their existence and no one claimed them to be ancient, we know when they were built, and we kind of know who built it.

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[deleted] t1_ive5g3z wrote

Different place. AS is in NH. All informed historians consider it a hoax, but they've sold tickets for maybe a century now.

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AlisonChrista t1_iwig7bn wrote

Not just tourism. Unfortunately these hoaxes often have ties to white supremacists wanting to validate their Nordic obsession. The history of academics purposely spreading myths about Norse visitors to the continental states (before the L’Anse aux Meadows discovery) is fairly dark.

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