Interesting read, there are a lot of possibilities brought up here.
Does anyone have any idea how many of these rune stones exist? I wonder why they would take the time to carve such a stone with such a basic story,
especially it the story of the dead men indicates they were killed by native Americans. I would think they would be in too much of a hurry to leave
the area before the attackers returned to carve a story into a stone. It hardly seems reasonable that the guy who found this stone would go to such
an elaborate extent to create such a hoax.
As far as the carbon dating of the Newport tower, it is pretty solid evidence that the tower's mortar hardened in 1680, but that doesn't necessarily
prove that is is when the tower was actually built, has has been shown. Here is an interesting article on how this carbon dating process for mortar
was developed.
www.americanscientist.org...
However, on the first page, there is a picture of the Newport tower, and when you click on it to get a better view, the link clearly states:
www.americanscientist.org...
To help settle the question, samples from deep within the walls of the tower were subjected to carbon-14 dating, which revealed that the mortar
hardened (a process that captures carbon dioxide from the atmosphere) around 1680.
It has been noted that mortar deep inside a structure can take a very long time to harden.
This was an extremely new process when the Newport tower was tested, and the people who did the testing are not the people who took the sample, so
there is considerable room for debate as to how accurate the testing was, and so old the tower really is. It seems that a far larger sample would be
needed to get a scientifically accurate date, which would be very destructive to the small structure.
Hanslune keeps saying 95% certainty, but from what peer reviewed journal does this number come from?
Blackmarketeer does a very good job of providing credible evidence to demonstrate possible problems with the carbon dating referencing credible
sources. Isn't anything published by someone with a reputation at stake peer reviewed?
It seems to me that there is still quite the mystery here.