Did you know that a cow changed the course of American history and you can thank the Vikings for a lot of animals living in the America today?

[Anonymous]

The Vikings introduced Horses, donkeys, mules, pigs, sheep, goats, chickens, large dogs, cats, and bees to America 500 years before Columbus set sail. And according to the old sagas the vikings that had lived for a few years in America and had mostly friendly encounters with the native Americans went to war over a cow 🐮😂 The cow that had recently been brought to America attacked one of the natives and the natives than drove the Viking of the lands. Just imagine how different both North and South America might have looked if it wasn't for a stupid cow lol

[Anonymous]

The vikings were in America no doubt but very few. They tried setting up colonies there from Greenland and Iceland but the numbers were too few, their boats too small, climate too cold, distances too great. If the vikings brought animals to America theh probably ate them. In truth the risk/reward for going to America was already too high and the Greenland colony was struggling to survive as it was, they had to go to America for wood and other stuff.

Sheep are native to America as are dogs cats and bees. Horses are actually native to America too, horses in fact originate from America and crossed the bering straight into the steppes of east Asia and went extinct in America after the ice age ended 12-10 thousand years ago. The spainish and Portuguese brought them back were some escaped and became wild horses and were able to multiple as America is so suited to horses. Wild pigs in America are not native, they are pigs that escaped and multiple becoming feral.

Little known fact that Norman's who were vikings living in france introduced rabbits and hares to Britain and England. Before 1066 there were no rabbits.

[Oliverlogan263]

whoa dude, that's a crazy story about how one dumb cow changed history! Makes you think how different everything could've been if it didn't start that Viking-native war. Like imagine if the Vikings stuck around longer and had more influence over here before Columbus showed up.

We'd probably all be drinking mead and pillaging villages instead of football games and beer lol. Or America might be more like Scandinavia, with blonder hair and names like Olaf running around. We could've had Viking longhouses instead of log cabins as our first shelters.

And man, think how much further along we might be with animals if they kept introducing new ones over centuries instead of just a few years. Cows, horses, pigs established way before and changing how the natives lived too. Who knows, we could have had Ikea 500 years ago if the Swedes colonized instead of England!

Just goes to show you how even one little animal fight way back can totally redirect the future. Crazy stuff history teacher never told us about that cow. Nice find dude!