Another Memorial Day in honor of workers who lost their lives on the job | Opinion


Kurt A. Petermeyer

Florida Today
Thu, April 28, 2022
On Workers’ Memorial Day, remember Florida workers who lost their lives on the job

In June 2021, Abelino Rivera-Olvera and Daniel Leon-Tomas headed to work like they did many times before. The two carpenters were installing siding on a residential building when a makeshift scaffold on which they stood detached from the building, causing them to fall about 25 feet.

The 49-year-old Rivera-Olvera died on site, Leon-Tomas suffered severe injuries and was taken to a hospital. An investigation later found that, had their Bradenton employer ensured required safety precautions were in place, Olvera and Leon-Tomas would have returned home at the end of their workday.

Each year, thousands of workers of all ages die needlessly — leaving families, friends and communities to grieve — when required safety and health standards are ignored. In 2020, about 5,000 workers died in the U.S. in work-related deaths, including many who fell victim to workplace exposure to COVID-19. Tens of thousands more die of work-related diseases.

On average, 13 workers die each day in the U.S. In Florida alone, 275 workers lost their lives in 2020.

The USDA and OSHA should have collaborated to ensure workers were safe from COVID-19 by leveraging USDA's employees in plants to provide better oversight of the industry, the DOL's Office of Inspector General concluded in a new report.

The wounds suffered by those left behind are deepened by the reality that most, if not all, of these workplace deaths were avoidable — if only employers had established and ensured that appropriate safety precautions were followed.

Each year, on April 28 on Workers Memorial Day, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration and workplace safety advocates across the nation remember those whose lives ended because of the work they did.

This day allows us to mourn the loss of these workers and how their absence affects those who shared their lives. They were our family members, our friends, our co-workers and our neighbors. We are diminished by their deaths.

Workers Memorial Day reminds us that, like life, workplace safety and health must never be taken for granted. These tragedies and the causes should inspire us all to demand that workplace safety is a fundamental right and must never be an afterthought.

We must strive to ensure safety and health standards are in place and that they are understood and followed by employers and workers alike. Workers have the right to safe and healthful workplaces, and employers have the legal obligation to ensure that they provide them.

OSHA professionals work every day to assist employers across the nation in their efforts to provide a safe and healthful workplace. Our compliance assistance outreach helps businesses employing more than 1.3 million U.S. workers nationwide to prevent workplace injuries and illnesses. Through strategic alliances with large employers, trade associations, organized labor and our Voluntary Protection Programs, we help to empower businesses to employ customized safety and health approaches and make meaningful and substantial improvements.

As of March 22, 2022, there were 55 Voluntary Protection Program participants in Florida. Injury and illness data collected at VPP sites shows that — on average — injury and illness rates at these locations are about 50 percent or lower than the national averages for their industries.

At the national level, OSHA maintains federal standards for workplace safety, including specific regulations based upon common industry risks and workplace hazards. In response to the pandemic, the agency implemented temporary standards to protect the most vulnerable workers and worked with specific industries to combat the spread of the virus.

Currently, OSHA is developing an infectious disease standard that will protect workers from airborne infectious diseases, as well other viruses that exist today and those we may face.

Workers are the backbone of our national economy. In the last two years, we learned how America’s society and culture depend on people who go to work and how we should never take for granted those willing to work at difficult and, sometimes dangerous, jobs. We at OSHA know we must do more to ensure we help protect every worker and listen to their concerns for safety, regardless of skin color, language spoken, citizenship status, gender or age.

We must do more to compel our nation’s employers to commit themselves to protect their workers’ safety and health, no matter the cost. And we must hold those employers who choose profit over people’s safety accountable for their inactions to the fullest extent the law allows.

As we mark another Workers Memorial Day, remember that no worker should ever have to risk their life in exchange for their paycheck. Also remember that each of us has a role to play in making the workplace safe. We owe Daniel Leon-Tomas and Abelino Rivera-Olvera, and the tens of thousands of others we honor today, at least that much.

Kurt A. Petermeyer is the Regional Administrator for the Southeast Region of the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration. He has been supporting the advancement of worker safety and health and worker rights in OSHA since 1996.

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This article originally appeared on Florida Today: nother Memorial Day in honor of workers who lost their lives on the job

APRIL 28 WORKERS MEMORIAL DAY
Multiple Suicide Attempts Reported at Chinese Factory in the Same Week

BY JOHN FENG ON 4/28/22

A worker at a car plant in central China said four fellow employees had attempted suicide in the space of one week, with local authorities on Wednesday confirming the death of at least one man.

An anonymous whistleblower at the BYD Auto factory in the Yuhua district of Changsha told Chinese news outlet Baixing Guanzhu that all four workers were young new hires. The latest incident happened on April 26, while the previous attempts were on April 19 and 25, she said.

In all the incidents—first a man and a woman, followed by separate cases each involving a man—the employees jumped or tried to leap from the rooftop of their staff dormitory, the whistleblower told the channel affiliated with Guizhou Radio and Television in southwest China.

"Everyone working in the plant knows, including the one at 10 p.m. on [April] 25 and another one on [April] 26 after 12 p.m., nearly 1 p.m.," she said in the report that aired Wednesday. "There have been three cases within the past week."

A BYD Auto booth at the Wuhan Motor Show in Hubei, China is seen in this stock image. Police in the central Chinese city of Changsha are investigating a string of attempted suicides involving workers at a local BYD Auto plant authorities said on April 27, 2022.GETTY IMAGES

Local law enforcement told Baixing Guanzhu that it could publicly verify the cases on April 25 and 26. The man who jumped on Monday passed away before the police arrived on the scene, while the man on Tuesday was successfully talked down, an unnamed spokesperson told the channel.

An investigation is ongoing, she noted, but said she couldn't comment on the April 19 case. The condition of the two individuals said to have been involved was unclear.

BYD Auto, which is owned by Shenzhen-headquartered BYD Co. Ltd., is yet to comment on the matter. BYD's head office didn't respond to Newsweek's request for comment before publication.

Publicly listed BYD has a presence in Europe and the United States. It produces electric vehicles including trucks and buses. It also owns BYD Electronics, an assembler and phone parts maker.

According to reports, the company has been involved in nearly three dozen labor disputes. Last November, Shanghai-based website The Paper reported the sudden death of a 36-year-old male employee of 12 years who was found in his apartment in Xi'an, northwest China.

The man's family linked his death to overwork. His October work logs showed 26 days in which he worked around 12 hours, exceeding the limits stipulated by China's labor laws, the report said. China officially mandates an eight-hour workday, with overtime capped at 11 hours per shift, and no more than such 12 days a month.

BYD Auto offered the worker's family compensation of 200,000 yuan ($30,260).

On Wednesday, BYD—short for "Build Your Dreams"—reported first-quarter net earnings of 808 million Chinese yuan ($122.27 million), up 240.59 percent from the same period last year, thanks to the sales of electric vehicles.

Image: aflcionc.org

April 28

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Workers' Memorial Day, also known as International Workers' Memorial Day or International Commemoration Day for Dead and Injured, takes place annually around the world on April 28, an international day of remembrance and action for workers killed, disabled, injured, or made unwell by their work.

Anti-China militancy sharpens in Pakistan

ANI
28 April, 2022 


Islamabad [Pakistan], April 28 (ANI): The April 26 terror attack in the heart of the University of Karachi indicates that militancy in Pakistan, of both religious and ethnic variety, while not sparing traditional adversaries – minorities and the state — is increasingly getting a distinct anti-China edge, and it should worry self-touted “iron and all-weather friends”.

On paper, an impoverished but friendly Pakistan has welcomed China, mainly through the multi-million China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), allowing the latter’s expansion and access into the Indian Ocean region.

In reality, however, it has proved to be an expensive venture on several counts, not the least in terms of lives lost. Twenty-four Chinese nationals have died and many more injured in targeted attacks in the last year alone, according to Pakistan’s Samaa news and TV network.

Besides, many – unaccounted or kept secret – died during the making of the Gwadar port and naval base and other projects in the pre-CPEC era.

With CPEC, the governments of Nawaz Sharif and Imran Khan have battled unsuccessfully, unable to deal with coordinated surprise attacks, despite oppression by the state and hundreds of youths having ‘disappeared’, ending up dead or in jail indefinitely. Forming an elite division of the Army exclusively for CPEC’s security has not helped.

Founded in 1851 and among the oldest in South Asia, the Karachi University has a past tradition of strong student politics of different hues, but is also a hotbed of sectarian violence fuelled by mosques and mullahs who work the labyrinthine poverty-stricken youth in the country’s largest city and port town.

Yet, suicide attack by an organised group is not part of its record. The attack in which four persons, including three Chinese, died, has spawned many unwelcome ‘firsts’.

One was that a university campus and not an industrial or infrastructure project with a significant Chinese presence was chosen for the act. Secondly, the target was not a CPEC project that attracts opposition from the locals, but Confucius Institute, China’s cultural hub, one of the many set up worldwide. Begun in 2004 to impart free education in the Chinese language and culture, it has been rejected in many Western countries as a purveyor of propaganda.

Thirdly and more worrying, it was a “suicide attack” and four, it was by a woman. There is yet another ‘first’ in that she had made a prior announcement on social media.

Shari Baloch’s photograph with a smile and a ‘V’ for victory sign, was available on social media. She belonged to the Balochistan Liberation Army’s Majeed Brigade that has claimed responsibility for the attack.

As per her profile drawn by the Express Tribune, she was a post-graduate, a teacher by training and profession and a mother of two children. This indicates another disturbing aspect of growing militancy.

It confirms the views of Pakistan’s noted security analyst, Amir Husain Rana of the Institute of Conflict Studies, that militancy’s face in Balochistan has radically changed. It is not from the impoverished tribal youths alone but also draws from the urban and educated classes of the province that feel exploited as a result of the CPEC.

Karachi metropolis has been the target of the Balochs earlier. Back in November 2018, there was an attack on the Chinese consulate in Karachi, which was also claimed by the BLA. In 2020, the BLA claimed responsibility for the attack on the Karachi stock exchange. Baloch militants were also said to be behind a 2021 attack in Dasu, targeting a bus carrying Chinese nationals — the attack killed nine Chinese nationals. That too was said to be a suicide attack.

While the Balochs have a political and economic agenda, that of the Tehreek-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) is sectarian. It has spread its wings across the country and in the areas bordering Afghanistan, allegedly using the Afghan territory.

This led the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) to cross the border earlier this month and strafing and killing not only the TTP cadres but also Afghan civilians. Kabul has since notified to the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), as a major act of diplomatic hostility, the first since Pakistan helped the Taliban to regain power in Afghanistan.

“Pakistan has already seen the TTP brand of terrorism making a comeback in the country. And now attacks targeting the Chinese are an added security concern,” the News International newspaper noted in its editorial.

Regarding the targeting of the Chinese (the Confucius Institute Director and two faculty), Dawn newspaper noted in its editorial: “The Chinese are no stranger to attacks in other parts of the country either, where the development projects they have initiated are viewed with suspicion by many of the locals as well as militants.”

It also noted that “For years, the Baloch insurgency had been regarded as a low-intensity conflict. But this is no longer the case. The attacks are growing more audacious — as seen earlier this year when 10 soldiers lost their lives in an attack on an FC post in Kech. The militants’ reach is also growing as an earlier attack in Lahore demonstrated.”

The new government of Shehbaz Sharif has announced its resolve to address the militants, particularly those in Balochistan. But security in the provinces is managed by a mishmash of intelligence agencies, both civil and military, and there remain militants who are nursed as ‘assets’, to be played one against the others, till they turn rogue. Thus, it has a tough task on hand.

 (ANI)

 

The Taliban's takeover triggered a refugee exodus – but where will they go?

• Written by  Jacob Dykes 
• Published in Refugees

Afghan women in India call on governments to offer them sanctuaryPradeepgaurs/Shutterstock

28Apr
2022

The Taliban’s recent takeover of Afghanistan prompted a new refugee crisis, highlighting how nations differ in the numbers of people they’re willing to re-home

A humanitarian crisis and economic collapse has brewed since the fall of Kabul to the Taliban in August 2021. By the end of the year, more than 710,000 people were displaced internally within Afghanistan, 500,000 more crossed into Iran; thousands more are seeking asylum and resettled status abroad.

‘Many regional countries have closed their doors to Afghans by restricting visa issuance or shutting their borders. Afghanistan’s neighbours have made asylum claims nearly impossible by imposing strict border controls,’ says Shuja Ahmad, an Afghan refugee now working for the Australian Refugee Council. ‘This speaks of the need for a coordinated international effort to resettle Afghans.’

The exodus has raised alarms that a repeat of the 2015 migrant crisis – the fallout from which continues today – could occur. Then, more than a million people sought asylum in Europe when the conflict in Syria peaked; and from January 2015 to March 2016, around 250,000 refugees from Afghanistan arrived in Greece. On seeing the Taliban seize Afghanistan, Greece warned the world that the EU was ‘not ready’ for a replay of events six years ago. Determined to support and contain migrants within the region, the EU pledged more than US$1 billion in humanitarian aid for Afghanistan and neighbouring countries hosting those who had already fled.

The number of Afghans seeking resettlement abroad is expected to rise as the economic crisis continues. EU commissioner Ylva Johansson announced in December that 15 EU states had agreed to admit 38,000 Afghan refugees, additional to the 28,000 already evacuated. Some 25,000 will go to Germany, 3,100 to the Netherlands, and 2,500 to both Spain and France. The US government has requested funding for the arrival of 95,000 by the end of September this year. Canada intends to resettle 20,000. As part of its Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme, the UK government has said that it will resettle more than 5,000 people in 2022 and up to 20,000 over the coming years.

Then there’s Australia. Since Kabul fell, 150,000 Afghans have submitted applications for refugee and humanitarian visas for Australia. But the Refugee Council of Australia says that 140,000 of them will be rejected. In January 2022, the nation’s minister for immigration, Alex Hawke, announced that Australia will offer 10,000 places to Afghans and another 5,000 to those reuniting with family already settled in Australia. But some people think it’s not enough. Claire Higgins, an immigration expert from the University of New South Wales, points out that once places are granted to Afghan nationals evacuated to Australia in 2021, it leaves just 4,500 places over four years. ‘Second, the minister’s announcement pales in comparison to the resettlement efforts of countries such as Canada and the USA.’

Australia has drawn criticism for its hardline policies on asylum seekers. Earlier this year, reports emerged that Australia is currently holding people in immigration detention for an average of 689 days, the highest on record and more than 12 times longer than the USA. ‘For many years, the Australian government has taken a harsh approach to refugees who sought asylum directly by boat, as compared to those who are resettled from abroad through the annual planned humanitarian programme,’ explains Higgins. ‘This includes mandatory detention with no time limit, offshore processing and short-term temporary visas.’ There are an estimated 5,000 Afghan refugees living in Australia on such temporary visas. Until the end of 2021, some were housed offshore in Papua New Guinea; some are still sent to the tiny island nation of Nauru.

Members of the Afghan community in Australia met with Hawke in February this year, urging him to recognise Australia’s ‘moral obligation’ to Afghans by issuing at least 20,000 more humanitarian resettlement places. If the figure was to increase, ‘it could help to ease pressure on front-line states such as Pakistan and Iran, which are hosting hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees,’ says Higgins. The need for international solidarity in times of crisis, she believes, is paramount.

‘Not afraid’: Ukraine women learn to demine in Kosovo


By AFP
Published April 28, 2022

After learning their craft from the experts, the women plan to return to Ukraine and put it into practice in areas where Russian troops have withdrawn - Copyright AFP Dimitar DILKOFF

Ismet HAJDARI

Kateryna Grybinichenko chose to sign up after rockets fell on her home city of Sloviansk, in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region.

The 36-year-old wanted to help — so she joined a band of Ukrainian women taking part in an intensive demining course in Kosovo, a place all too familiar with clearing deadly explosives.

The trainees have travelled hundreds of miles, hoping to protect their homeland for decades to come.

After learning their craft from the experts, the women plan to return to Ukraine and put it into practice in areas where Russian troops have withdrawn.

“There are various ways to fight,” said Anastasiia Minchukova, one of the eight women who applied for the scheme.

The 20-year-old English teacher, who dons a blue protective apron and a visor for the training, said there is a “huge demand for people who know (about) demining” in Ukraine.

“The only reason I’m here is to help my country,” she said.

The trainees are being taught how to detect, identify and disable explosives on the course organised by the Mines Awareness Trust (MAT) Kosovo NGO.

Six women started the three-week programme in the western town of Peja, known as Pec to Serbs, on Monday, with two others set to arrive soon. The organisers plan to take on more trainees in the future.

The course has been specifically set up in response to the invasion of Ukraine, and focuses on Russian and former Soviet arms, including guided weapons, mines and rockets.

It is open to men too, but Ukrainian males aged 18 to 60 are banned from leaving the country. And the women here want to take part in the defence of Ukraine.

The MAT said this course is the first of its kind outside Ukraine since the Russian invasion began in February.

– ‘First-hand experience’ –

Kosovo was chosen to host the scheme because of its “first-hand experience”, chief instructor Artur Tigani said.

“We have gone through quite a similar situation, especially when it comes to contamination with unexploded devices.”

An estimated 13,000 people lost their lives in the war between Serbian forces and ethnic Albanian guerrillas in the late 1990s.

The conflict ended after a NATO air campaign forced Serbian troops to withdraw from the territory, paving the way for independence in 2008.

But the war left the former Serbian province with 4,500 minefields, according to US estimates after the war.

The devices were scattered mainly in the mountainous Peja region, close to the Albanian border, where Tirana shipped arms and supplies to Albanian guerrillas.

With international help, most of the mines have been cleared, and the risk is now officially assessed as “light”.

The Kosovo instructors have also delivered training in Syria, Iraq and Libya.

“It is our life’s mission to save lives and help others save lives,” said Tigani.

– Huge challenge –

The Ukrainian trainees are aware of the huge challenge they face when they get back home.

They expect to join emergency services and get to work when they return on May 13.

“I’ve seen, while travelling in (Ukraine), the huge amount of the abandoned ammunition and unexploded ordnance laying on the ground,” Grybinichenko said.

It is thought it could take decades to rid Ukraine of mines. Perrine Benoist, of the Handicap International NGO, has said it will likely “take 50 years to clear everything.”

Minchukova knows that she and her fellow trainees have taken on a perilous task.

But she said: “It’s dangerous all over Ukraine, even if you are in a relatively safe region”.

“I’m ready for it. I’m a Ukrainian. I’m not afraid of anything.

“I know we will have a chance to prove (we are) worthy of doing the same as men.”

The Truth Behind the Macabre Discovery of “Viking Skin” on Church Doors

UPDATED 24 APRIL, 2022 -  SAHIR

For centuries, it has been believed that the large piece of skin nailed to the door of St Botolph’s church in Hadstock near Cambridge in England was human skin that belonged to a Viking raider who tried to plunder the church, but new research reveals this is not the true story.

Turns out, there is little substance to the Viking skin myth as most doors were actually covered with animal hide according to Cambridge scholar Ruairidh Macleod and his colleagues in their presentation at the UK Archaeological Sciences Conference 2022 (UKAS).

The renovation of Hadstock’s St Botolph’s church in the late 19th century revealed that the door had a large piece of skin under its metal bands. A local myth accounted for it as being from a would-be Viking pillager of the church in the 11th century AD. He had been flayed alive and a piece of his Viking skin nailed to the door to serve as a grim warning to other looters according to the legend, reports IFLScience.

What’s more, St Botolph’s isn’t the only church that sports this bizarre deterrent. According to New Scientist there are at least four known instances of medieval churches in England that display these so-called Viking skins or daneskins. Although St Botolph’s is the most well-known example, St Michael and All Angels Church in Copford, near Colchester, and Westminster Abbey are also similarly embellished.

The interior vertical gaps of the church door at Hadstock where the Viking skin once covered the door’s exterior according to myths that date back nearly 1,000 years. Now we know that the skins were actually animal skins, but even that’s bizarre on a church door! ( Sir Gawain's World )

Viking Skin or Animal Hide? A Scientific Problem Now Solved!

For some time, the debate about these patches of skin, long believed to be Viking skin or human skin at the very least, has been growing among scientists. Scientific tests on samples have given inconclusive results.

In the 1970s, for example, Ron Reed, an expert on leather from the University of Leeds in the UK, examined the St Botolph’s skin. Not only did he endorse the human skin legend, but Reed also specified that it likely came from a person with fair or greying hair.

• Spontaneous Human Combustion: A Burning Mystery
• Books Bound in Human Skin – The Practice Isn’t As Rare As You Might Think!

A subsequent DNA analysis during the BBC program Blood of the Vikings in 2001, pointed to the skin being that of a cow. However, there was a question mark on the accuracy of the results.

Macleod and his colleagues analyzed the skin fragments from all four church doors using a non-destructive technique called "Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry" or ZooMS. Notably, the technique has helped scientists pick a single Neanderthal bone from among 2,300 bone fragments belonging to animals like mammoths, woolly rhinos, wolves, and reindeer in Russia’s Denisova Cave .

The technique reveals the collagen peptide sequence in bone fragments, allowing scientists to identify to which species a bone once belonged. Macleod and his team rubbed the skins with rubber erasers and then extracted the trypsin-digesting peptides that adhered to the eraser waste.

They found that none of the four skin samples belonged to a human. While the St Botolph’s and Westminster Abbey ones came from bovines, the St Michael and All Angels Church skins belonged to a horse or donkey. Because both these species have very similar collagen fingerprints , any further pinpointing wasn’t possible.

The over 800-year-old south door with decorative ironwork in St Nicholas' Church at Castle Hedingham in Essex, England. The door is known locally as the Skin Door, as it is supposed that a caught church robber had his skin nailed to it. Historically there is a custom, dating to the Dane wars, of nailing a Daneskin to doors according to the St Nicholas Church guide. (Acabashi / CC BY-SA 4.0 )

Ancient Myths About Viking Skin or Human Skin in England

The Viking skin or daneskin myths predate the discovery of the skin at St Botolph’s during its 19th-century renovation by centuries. It isn’t a case of fitting it to the fact of the skin being discovered. Macleod told IFLScience, “So, it's interesting that very convergent myths seem to have arisen for all the churches that we analysed that the skins originated from Danish (Viking) raiders . Specifically, this is first attested by Samuel Pepys in his diary in 1661, so the idea that these are flayed human skins from Danes has been around for a long time.”

“In the absence of any samples actually proving to be human, it looks like this story might have originated for one of the churches as a local myth first (the accounts for Hadstock and Westminster are among the oldest), and then spread to others quickly where traces of desiccated skin were also found nailed to the door,” he added.

The 12th-century artist, Theophilus, writes that the practice of nailing treated animal hide to church doors had an aesthetic purpose. “Nonetheless, the morbid fascination associated with this myth likely explains its persistence, as well as serving as deterrent to would be church-desecrators!” Macleod told IFLScience.

• Necropants: Did Icelandic Sorcerers Really Make Magic Pants Out Of Human Skin?
• Britain’s Oldest Door is Westminster Abbey Relic that May Have Been Covered in Human Skin

The study by Macleod and his team seems to have settled the rather gruesome church-door-skin debate once and for all. The bizarre medieval practice of using skin on church doors in England was nothing more than a clever way to prevent church looting, and Viking skin worked best to warn off villains at these four notable ancient English churches.

Top image: Viking skin or Daneskin and a hinge taken from the door of St. Botolph’s church in Hadstock, near Cambridge, in the UK. A recent study has revealed that all the famous Viking skin doors in England did not use human skin at all, but the myths were too powerful and the science too primitive to prove otherwise. Source: Saffron Walden Museum

By Sahir Pandey

 

Vikings Shipped Walrus Ivory to Medieval Islamic Merchants 4000km Away!

UPDATED 23 APRIL, 2022 - SAHIR

With the accelerated pace of climate change and global warming wreaking havoc on the ice sheets of the world, particularly Greenland, new evidence emerges from the ice-capped country. Greenland was a Viking colony from the 10th-15th century. They suddenly abandoned it and scholars are still debating why the Vikings left, with new evidence emerging just last month . Now, a study published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B reveals Vikings shipped walrus ivory from their settlement in the icy colony all the way to Kyiv, over 4,000 kms away!

“Based on the [walrus] rostra finds reported here, it is reasonable to hypothesize that a Dnieper route may have augmented or replaced pre-existing practices,” write the authors of the study.

The Site in Kyiv: A Medieval Trading Waterfront

Evidence was collected from excavations carried out by archaeologist Natalio Khamaiko of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, who’s been persistently digging at a vacant lot at 35 Spaska Street in Kyiv, Ukraine since 2007. This site had notoriously disappointed all of Khamaiko’s predecessors, who had conducted detailed archaeological surveys here in the hope of uncovering gold – after all, Norse merchants used to trade furs for silver minted in the medieval Islamic world, and this waterfront had witnessed an all-around boom in economic activity.

Was it treasured Walrus Ivory that drove Vikings to sail thousands of kilometers to Greenland?

• The Icelandic Viking Settlement Challenging the History Books

Thanks to the periodic flooding provided by the Dniepr river, Ukraine’s longest river, layer after layer of settlement had been protected and preserved. One of the layers, dated to the 12th century, revealed a gold wire, glass fragments, carved ivory, an iron sword from Germany, and thousands of animal bones - of which nine huge pieces turned out to be walrus snouts.

The animal carvings and the walrus ivory came from a genetic group of walruses that were only found in the Western Atlantic Ocean as per ancient DNA (aDNA), suggesting the very real possibility that a 4,000 kilometer (2485 miles) long trade route covering Greenland and Canada finally made its way to Kyiv across the Dniepr. An Ancient Origins news report from 2015 had focused on how ivory was a major trade item for the Greenland Norsemen.

Walrus rostra from medieval Kyiv. ( Barrett et al. 2022/Royal Society/CC BY 4.0 )

The Allure of Walrus Ivory

Previous studies have also examined the consequences of medieval economic globalization and human settlements on animal populations, like the one published in Quaternary Science Reviews in 2020, led by Professor James Barrett of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (Barrett is a lead author on the current study as well). This study revealed two vital pieces of information – firstly, that walrus ivory for medieval art was traded as tusks in modified walrus skulls, and secondly, that Greenland supplied most European walrus skulls.

Barrett’s study also revealed that walrus skulls in Europe got progressively smaller over 400 years between 1000 and 1400 AD, alluding to a switch to female walruses and smaller animals. This is because, clearly, the overhunted walrus population steadily dwindled, to the point of no return, prompting the abandonment of the Greenland settlement due to overhunting and a subsequent decline in trade. “The poor walruses in Greenland … are not just supplying Western Europe. It was Eastern Europe, too, and also Byzantium via Kyiv, and possibly demand in the Islamic world,” added Barrett.

“It’s an extraordinary example of human exploitation,” adds Søren Sindbæk, who was quoted in the same report published on Science. The archaeologist from Aarhus University termed the finds “very important and unexpected” in the larger history of trade in the Viking age and the early medieval period. “We’ve known walrus ivory was an important commodity, but it was difficult to see what scale we were talking about,” he added.

When Khamaiko and her colleagues analyzed chemical traces in the walrus bone, they discovered that cut marks on the skull fragments resembled the marks on Scandinavian finds. Additionally, near the snouts, a handful of gaming pieces from a hnefatafl set were uncovered, which is a chess-like board game from medieval northern Europe – this was also made from walrus ivory!

Knight chess piece made of walrus ivory, circa 1250 AD. ( Public domain )

A Trade Network and Ecological Disharmony

The study was able to effectively offer two vital pieces of historical analysis – the presence of a vibrant medieval trading route that stretched from North America to Northern Europe all the way to the Islamic world that was emerging in the post-Byzantine era.

• Lost Norse of Greenland Fueled the Medieval Ivory Trade, Ancient Walrus DNA Suggests
• Viking Colonies Collapsed Through Over Hunting Walruses

Distribution of medieval European finds of walrus rostra. ( Barrett et al. 2022/Royal Society/CC BY 4.0 )

Secondly, these same trading networks are one of the earlier examples of human desecration of the environment and the threats that rampant globalization and wanton greed present in a history of disharmonious living with existing ecological balances. This statement particularly rings true in today’s climate and context.

“The Kyiv rostra pre-date this evidence for serial depletion and the sex ratio (five males, two females) is consistent with the preference for large male walruses prior to the thirteenth to fourteenth centuries. Yet the finds are evidence of an expanding demand for Greenland's walruses that drove a wildlife trade with widespread consequences.”

“These consequences (e.g. the viability of the Norse colony of Greenland) were felt by hunted and hunters, traders and townspeople, artisans and patrons, along extensive networks stretching from the High Arctic to the banks of the Dnieper and beyond,” conclude the authors of the study.

Top image: Vikings shipped walrus ivory from Greenland all the way to Kyiv. Source: Nejron Photo /Adobe Stock

By Sahir Pandey