Vikings landed in North America more than 470 years before Christopher Columbus, new research shows

An ancient solar storm and some wooden remains from old Nordic buildings prove that Christopher Columbus was not the first non-Indigenous person in North America, scientists say. New findings show that Vikings landed on the continent 1,000 years ago, and hundreds of years before Columbus. 

Researchers, who published their findings in the journal Nature, were able to determine the date Vikings were present by analyzing three pieces of wood from three different trees that had been chopped by Vikings at L'Anse aux Meadows, a national historic site in Newfoundland, Canada. The site has long been revered for being the first known evidence of European presence in the U.S., according to Parks Canada, but the exact date Vikings were present was not known. 

Researchers used radiocarbon dating — a way to estimate age based on the amount of carbon in a living thing — on the wood to determine the Vikings' arrival. The method allows for a rough estimate, but what really narrowed it down for researchers was a massive solar storm that occurred in 992 AD. The huge bursts of energy emitted from the sun put additional carbon in the atmosphere, thus spiking the amount of carbon in living things for that period of time.