Yale University says the decades-old debate over the authenticity of its controversial Vinland Map has been settled: It's a fake. The map was donated to the school in 1965, presented as a purported 15th-century depiction of the New World, which would have made it the earliest. At the time, scholars at Yale and other institutions considered it evidence of Viking voyages to America long before Christopher Columbus' trip.
But the map faced almost immediate speculation that it was a fraud from others in academia. Turns out they were right, and it all comes down to the ink. A recent analysis conducted by Yale's own researchers found that ink used in the map's lines and text contain a titanium compound that wasn't made until the 1920s, so it most certainly was not made in 1440, as some folks previously believed.
