COPENHAGEN, Nov 24: Danish experts will travel to the United States to study a controversial parchment said to be the oldest map of America and which, if authentic, would support the theory that Vikings discovered the New World five centuries before Columbus , officials said on Wednesday.

The map, which is said to date from 1434 and was found in 1957, is believed by some to be evidence that Vikings who departed from Greenland around the year 1,000 were the first to discover America.

The document is of Vinland, the part of North America which is believed to be what is today the Canadian province of Newfoundland, and was supposedly discovered by the Viking Leif Eriksen, the son of Erik the Red.

Three researchers from the Danish Royal Library and School of Conservation hope that modern techniques developed in Denmark will be able to "shed more light on this document whose authenticity is questioned worldwide," Rene Larsen, head of the School of Conservation in Copenhagen and the leader of the project, told AFP.

The trio will on Monday begin their work on the map, which is kept at Yale University's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library in Connecticut. The three have been "authorised to, for two to three days, photograph, analyse with microscope and undertake various studies of the document and its ink, but not alter it," Larsen said.

He said the results of the study would be presented early next year. The map was considered a sensation when it was found. Experts are largely in agreement that the parchment dates from the 1400s, but by the 1970s some experts had begun arguing that the ink used contained materials that were only developed in the 20th century.

British chemist Robin Clark has meanwhile said that he believes the document is a fake. He based his conclusion on the work of another researcher, Walter McCrone, who in the 1970s found that the ink contained a derivate of titanium dioxide, which did not exist until the 1920s, according to the Analytical Chemistry journal. -AFP