When archaeologist Natalia Khamaiko first started digging in a vacant lot at 35 Spaska Street in Kyiv, Ukraine, in 2007, her expectations were low. Previous archaeological surveys had yielded little, despite the site’s location along what had once been a thriving medieval waterfront, where Norse merchants from Scandinavia traded furs for silver minted in the Islamic world. Khamaiko and her colleagues had better luck. They unearthed layer after layer of new finds, preserved by periodic flooding from the Dniepr River. A layer dating to the 1100s C.E. yielded gold wire, glass fragments, bits of carved ivory, an iron sword from Germany, and thousands of animal bones, including nine massive fragments that turned out to be walrus snouts. Those snouts and carvings, ancient DNA reveals, came from a genetic group of walruses found only in the western Atlantic Ocean. They suggest a thriving 4000-kilometer trade route stretched from Greenland and Canada to the muddy banks of the Dniepr. - [Author]

Language: English

DOI: 10.1126/science.abq6688