It is such a rich irony that at the first great meeting of humanity moving east and west up out of Africa did first meet, as we know, in east Canada. On the northern tip of the island portion of the province of Newfoundland and Labrador is the place of legend, proven in 1960 as the place where the Vikings did actually land and build mud houses and survey the area and try to make new lives for themselves. That this was a natural western exploration and continuation of Viking outcasts from Norway, often expelled for some murder or crime.

These outcasts could always find other common outcasts to man a crew. I have seen those Viking ships in Oslo museums and they are not that large, yet so beautifully crafted. These have been excavated from mudflats in nearby fjords, almost perfectly preserved after one thousand years. And it is this irony, that when the Vikings arrived on the coasts of the new world, they found their Roman era swords and battle axes were no match for the bows and arrows of the local peoples who had worked their way over from Asia during the land connection bridge during the ice ages of 30,000 years ago.

And when you think of it, the defeat of the Vikings in the New World happened in a manner not unlike how three hundred years later, at the mighty battle of Agincourt in France, English arrows rained down on French with swords, shields, laden with battle gear, all to their doom from these arrows from the sky. Yet that mighty battle was over in the afternoon. The Viking outcasts from Iceland put up with these "skralings" as they called the native peoples for two or three years. The locals would harass and jump up from hiding places and soon arrows in Vikings in fields in this milder land than Iceland, forced them to retreat home.

Back in Iceland, they had to plead for acceptance. One of the women born at this site, truly the first European child born in the new world, went on to become a Christian nun, and moved back from the New World, to Iceland, and eventually to serve her life out at the Vatican in Rome. So it was known in Rome by 1020-1040 that there was a new world, and yet in all the annals of history that fact has been obscured. So, it may have taken another five hundred years, but it was a curious few adventurers in ships who waited to go west again.

But now they had that great gift from the east that the Asians did not bring 30,000 year ago, gun powder. Now, they could show the difference between tribal jewelry and civilization, with a bang. And that is how the west was won. And those Skralings that beat back the Vikings? The last one died, an old woman, about 1900; they had been shot for sport for centuries, since 1497.