The Vinland Map, once believed to be the earliest cartographic depiction of the New World, has been proven to be a modern forgery, confirming long-held suspicions. A team of conservators and scientists at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, conducted an in-depth analysis of the purported 15th-century map, determining that it was drawn with 20th-century inks.

“The Vinland Map is a fake,” Raymond Clemens, curator of early books and manuscripts at Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, said in a statement. “There is no reasonable doubt here. This new analysis should put the matter to rest.”

Yale acquired the parchment map for the library as a gift from Paul Mellon in mid-1960s and unveiled it to great fanfare in 1965, publishing a scholarly book on this view of the North American coastline southwest of Greenland, labeled as “Vinlanda Insula.” Making the front page of the New York Times, it was hailed as support for archaeological evidence that the Vikings had visited North America long before Christopher Columbus. //

For the first time, they used X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy (XRF), a non-destructive technique, to scan the entire map, not just studying specific areas. The titanium was found to pervade the entire map, and the ink contained little to no iron, sulfur, or copper—the elements that make up the iron gall ink typically used by medieval scribes. //

All in all, the map’s anachronistic anatase was a close match to ink produced in Norway in 1923, making it unlikely that the compound had somehow occurred naturally. //

But even though the Vinland Map is fake, Yale plans to keep it.

“The map has become an historical object in and of itself. It’s a great example of a forgery that had an international impact,” Clemens said. But, he added, he hopes that experts can focus further research on authentic works. “Objects like the Vinland Map soak up a lot of intellectual airspace. We don’t want this to continue to be a controversy. There are so many fun and fascinating things that we ought to be examining that can actually tell us something about exploration and travel in the medieval world.”