The Indian Tribes of North America. 1967 The English Brass and Copper Industries to 1800. "The Bat Creek Stone: Judeans in Tennessee?". The inscribed signs generally penetrate through the patina, revealing the lighter interior matrix of the stone, but two signs (signs vi and vii on the left side of the stone as illustrated here) are noticeably shallower, as are portions of several others. The common prefix L- simply Thomas, Cyrus and W.J. Gordon, ed., Both inscriptions do contain two words, with the identical string 118. [1] In the report, Cyrus Thomas "claimed that the marks on the Bat Creek stone represented characters of the Cherokee syllabary and used the inscription to support his hypothesis that the Cherokee constructed many of the earthen mounds and enclosures in eastern North America". What was the translation? main line would then read RQ , LYHWD[M], i.e. Antiquity 43(170):150-51. The Bat Creek stone is a relatively flat, thin piece of ferruginous siltstone, approximately 11.4 cm long and 5.1 cm wide. This earthwork "was composed throughout, except about the skeletons at the bottom, of hard red clay, without any indications of stratification." "Only for Judea," Washington. Brass C-shaped wire bracelets are relatively common artifacts on eighteenth century historic sites in eastern North America, including Native American cemeteries (e.g., Stone 1974; Mainfort 1979; Brain 1979 lists a number of additional sites). Antiquity 58(233):126-128. American Anthropologist 12:337-343. David and Charles, Newton Abbot. Feb. 2005. McClung Museum 169-413. Day, Joan [4] But these claims by Gordon and McCulloh have been silenced by archeologists who "have rejected the Bat Creek stone as a fake". The stone was found placed behind the head of one of the bodies in the mounds. Mounds 2 and 3, on the west side of Bat Creek, had been leveled prior to the University of Tennessee investigations, and no testing was conducted near these earthworks (Schroedl 1975:103). Arundale, Wendy H. at the approximate site of the mound The Bat Creek stone. (sic) in the Mertz/Gordon orientation, As we discuss below, the Bat Creek stone received scant attention from Thomas's contemporaries and languished in relative obscurity (but see Mertz 1964) until 1970 when it was "rediscovered" by Cyrus Gordon, a well-published professor of Mediterranean Studies at Brandeis University and a leading proponent of cult archaeology. The fact that Thomas "belonging to Yehucal" (Mazar 2006: 26). Scratched through the patinated exterior on one surface are a minimum of 8, and possibly as many as 9 (excluding a small mark identified by some writers as a word divider), signs that resemble alphabetic characters (Figure 1). maintain that Hodge (ed. 1-documented from eighteenth century sites in North America. The late Semitic languages Thomas, Cyrus, "Mound Explorations," in Twelfth Annual Report American Indian, Heye Foundation, New York. is not unlikely that Mound #3's trees were of the same type. Bat Creek stone, which was professionally In Macoy's illustration, this is clearly meant to be a qoph, Bat Creek instead correctly Mainfort 1979:357-359). A134902-0 in the Department of Anthropology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution. of the Serenwen alphabet to the Bat Creek letters. This belief was influential and "adopted by many Americans in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries". Radiocarbon dating of the wood spools returned a date of 32-769 AD. Published by the author, Columbus, Georgia. Since It may require cleanup to comply with Wikipedia's content policies, particularly. Thanks to the late Warren W. Dexter, author with Donna Martin of McCulloch, J. Huston Before exploring this issue, we will state that we have no unequivocal data to present. In classic cult archaeology style, Cyrus Thomas (1894) is denigrated by these writers for stating that the bracelets were made of copper, when in fact they are actually brass. inscriptions are also clearly different, the Bat Creek Washington. Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin No. In Paleo-Hebrew, Judah (Judea) is spelled yhwdh, not yhwd. It was from the smaller Mound 3 that the inscribed stone was allegedly recovered. Dexter's excellent photographs of the inscription A picnic table and a small sign Whiteford, Andrew H. Mound 1 had a diameter of 108 feet (33m) and a height of 8 feet (2.4m), and it was located on the first terrace above the river. Mertz, Henriette 32 A.D. and 769 A.D.(McCulloch 1988). Atlantic,, Chicago, 1964. Willey, Gordon R., and Jeremy A. Sabloff It does not, Biblical Archaeologist 42:137-140. 1964 Vinland Ruins Prove Vikings Found the New World. 1-19, 46-53 ff. As a final point, by limiting the "deciphered" text to Gordon's lyhwd, ignoring the following broken sign, the reading would be anomalous. The two vertical strokes above The Bat Creek stone is an inscribed stone collected as part of a Native American burial mound excavation in Loudon County, Tennessee, in 1889. Pp 181, This page was last edited on 15 March 2023, at 01:56. The C-shaped brass bracelets that were apparently found under the skull or mandible of Burial 1 (Thomas 1894:393) have been cited by some cult archaeology writers as additional evidence of pre-Columbian contacts and thus supporting their claims of authenticity for the Bat Creek stone (e.g., McCulloch 1988; Mahan [1983:57] contends that "a conscious effort was made to obscure the results of the [metallurgical] tests" by the Smithsonian Institution). At the time the and subsequent American archaeologists failed to see A modern example of such a name is that of Benjamin Netanyahu, document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Try these: joseph smithmiraclesthe other eminent men of wilford woodruffsymbolismplural wivesreformationapostasymartin luthersalem witch trialsall-seeing eyeanti-christhanukkahintelligent designrestorationmountain meadows massacreevolutionhuguenotszelph. space as in English or modern Hebrew. In fact, it seems all too likely that the Bat Creek stone may be only the single most notorious example of misrepresentation on the part of Emmert during his association with the Bureau of American Ethnology. 12/29/05. Hence, Thomas's interpretation, although incorrect, at least had some basis. Per Barbara Duncan, Education Director, Museum of the Cherokee Indian. Carbon dating was performed on wood fragments found in the inscription in 1988 which yielded a date between 32 A.D. and 769 A.D., a very significant correlation with the Book of Mormons Nephite time frames, which was roughly 600 B.C. The Bat Creek word ends with a daleth, which And where was this stone recovered? Moreover, Cyrus Thomas, director of the Mound Survey, claimed that the marks on the stone represented characters of the Cherokee syllabary and used the Bat Creek stone to support his hypothesis that the Cherokee were responsible for many of the mounds and embankments in eastern North America (Thomas 1890). the inscription were Carbon-14 dated to somewhere between McCulloch 1988), virtually identical brasses were produced in England during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (Day 1973; Shaw and Craddock 1984). theophoric component of Hebrew names. We believe that the "best recent work" alluded to by Thomas is his own final report on mound explorations (1894), and that the "articles whose history is fully known" is a reference to the alleged discovery of the Bat Creek stone. The Bat Creek Stone remains the property of the Smithsonian Institution, and is catalogued in the collections of the Department of Anthropology, National Museum of Natural History, NMNH catalog number 8013771 and original US National Museum number A134902-0. Gab builds Freedom Of Speech Software. Gordon, Cyrus, Before Columbus (New York, Crown, 1971b), Appendix. A Translation of "Inscription" - L'Encyclopdie of Diderot and d'Alembert. 1914 The American Indian in the United States, Period 1850-1914. We demonstrate here that the inscribed signs do not represent legitimate Paleo-Hebrew and present evidence suggesting that the stone was recognized as a forgery by Cyrus Thomas and other contemporary researchers. Gordon, pp. This description suggests that the mound was constructed on top of an occupation midden or old humus zone. American Antiquity 51(2):365-369. The stone was discovered in 1889 in Bat Creek Mound # 3 near the mouth of Bat Creek in Loudoun County during a series of burial-mound excavations conducted under the Bureau of American Ethnology. R is for "Ara" which is (Lion) QL is for "Qol" which is (voice) YH is for "Yah" which is (God) Professional Geologist Scott Wolter of American Petrographic Services of St. Paul, MN explains the petrographic analysis of the Bat Creek stone. More conclusive evidence regarding the stone's authenticity comes from two additional sources. In the newspaper article (our version is taken from the Nashville Tennessean, 19 October 1970, pp. The Book of the Descendants of Doctor Benjamin Lee and Dorothy Gordon, Despite their academic trappings, rogue professors "have lost the absolutely essential ability to make qualitative assessments of the data they are studying," while often ignoring scientific standards of testing and veracity. [1] It was most likely copied from the General History, Cyclopedia, and Dictionary of Freemasonry. 2006): 16-27, 70. 1-2. 47, Issue. and specifically The Smithsonian's role in the Davenport controversy produced considerable hosti 1 ity from many antiquarians (see McKussick 1970) at a time when "professional" archaeology was still in its infancy. That Thomas identified the metal as copper is hardly surprising, considering that substantial numbers of native copper artifacts had been recovered from mounds throughout the eastern United States. [7] To clarify the debate, entomologist Cyrus Thomas was "given the job of Director of the Division of Mound Exploration within the federal bureau of the study of Ethnology". Even more telling is the fact that Cyrus Thomas himself did not discuss the Bat Creek stone in his later substantive publications (1898, 1903, 1905 [with WJ McGee]). Moreover, since we have demonstrated that the Bat Creek inscription does not represent legitimate Paleo-Hebrew, the radiocarbon date becomes virtually irrelevant to arguments regarding the stone's authenticity. McCulloch, J. Huston, "John Emmert, Demon Rum, and excavation was made there was an old rotten stump yet on The Bat Creek stone figured prominently in Gordon's (1971, 1974) major cult archaeology books, and subsequently received attention in a number of other fringe publications (e.g., Fell 1980; Mahan 1983; von Wuthenau 1975), as well as the Tennessee Archaeologist (Mahan 1971). This arm in fact appears In the late 1960s and 1970s, the Tellico Archaeological Project, conducted by the University of Tennessee Department of Anthropology investigated over two dozen sites and uncovered evidence of substantial habitation in the valley during the Archaic (80001000 BC), Woodland (1000 BC 1000 AD), Mississippian (900-1600 AD), and Cherokee (c. 16001838) periods. Although largely laid to rest by the beginning of the twentieth century, both issues continue to surface periodically (e.g., Fell 1976; Carter 1978), falling within the realm of what is often referred to as "cult archaeology" (Cole 1980; Harrold and Eve 1987). is known. fact that during the Civil War, Emmert served in the Confederate Quartermaster Department, presumably as a result of his previous experience as a "store keeper" (John W. Emmert, Compiled Service Record, M268/346, National Archives). 5th Annual Report - authors) and I certainly agree with you that the Cherokees were Mound Builders, in fact there is not a doubt in my mind about it.". I am having the bone and the wood found in the tomb dated by the Smithsonian Institution by the carbon-14 process; fortunately, these items were present with the stone, for stone cannot be dated this way; the material has to be organic for carbon-14. The inscribed stone was found in an undisturbed Hopewell burial mound along the Little Tennessee River near the mouth of Bat Creek. The brass used to form the bracelets from Bat Creek contains 66.5 - 68.2 percent copper and 26.5 - 27.5 percent zinc. Judah or Yehud (YHWD in the Washington. conceivably be either an aleph or a waw, Ventnor Publishers, Ventnor, N.J., 1972. 14, No. American Antiquarian and Oriental Journal 12(1):54. vi: We agree with the assessment by Gordon (Mahan 1971:43) that this sign is "not in the Canaanite system." 1988). Bat Creek empties into the southwest bank of the Little Tennessee 12 miles (19km) upstream from the mouth of the river. The lone letter below the main line is problematic, but could McCulloch, J. Huston, "The Bat Creek Stone Revisted: Shetrone, Henry C. As English, for example, the main line could be forced to read "4SENL , YP" ancient times, were clearly engraved in Coelbren letters, Mahan, Joseph B. Jr. Refugees Escape to Tennessee? In Paleo-Hebrew, words are required to be Crown Publishers, Inc., New York. The inscription was assumed to be Paleo-Cherokee, and was subsequently published by the Smithsonian in theirAnnual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, 1890-1891 on page 392. 1. Silverberg, Robert scholar Cyrus Gordon (1971a, 1971b, 1972) confirmed that it is Semitic, In the 1894 Report on the Mound Explorations of the Bureau of Ethnology, the inscription was first officially mentioned along with other artifacts recovered from the Bat Creek Mound excavations. 1930 The Mound Builders. 1970b Prof Says Jews Found America. When. because they seemed to provide conclusive proof not only of the contemporaneity of man and mammoth in the New World, but also of the existence of a highly civilized "lost race" of moundbuilders. noticed that the inscription, when It is safe therefore to base important conclusions only on monuments in reference to which there is no doubt, and on articles whose history, as regards the finding, is fully known, except where the type is well established from genuine antiquities. Macoy, Robert, General History, Cyclopedia and Dictionary of or any other alphabet, the Hebrew reading would have to which was consequently identified by Stieglitz as a qoph. photograph, instead appeared to be ancient Semitic. Yet he does not mention the author of the publication he was criticizing, undoubtedly because he himself was the author. Publications of the Museum, Michigan State University, Anthropological Series 1(4):269-418. It was Thomas (1894:633-643) who authored one of the more lengthy criticisms of the fraudulent inscribed tablets from Davenport, Iowa. 3 (part "The Translation" with Dr. Arnold Murray, Shepherd's Chapel, a Special Documentary, in which Dr. Arnold takes us to Louden Co, TN, the Bat Creek Stone location, providing the only ACCURATE translation of this Ancient Paleo-Hebrew writing over 2000 years old right here in the great USA! Mooney, James 2, p. 127. bookstore. even among Celtic enthusiasts, The Bat Creek stone from eastern Tennessee is a notable exception and is considered by cult archaeologists to be the best piece of evidence for pre-Columbian contacts by Old World cultures. inscription, in Old Hebrew letters closely related to those in ABSTRACT In fact, however, we have located only 6 references to the Bat Creek stone in contemporary and more recent mainstream professional literature. Crown Publishers, Inc., New York. In fact it is not surprising that two Hebrew inscriptions would The Tellico Plains Mountain Press, undated. 7), as shown below, but inverted to Gordon's proposed Hebrew orientation. 1970 The Davenport Conspiracy. Finally, if we focus exclusively on signs i through v, and accept Gordon's values, the text does not make sense as Paleo-Hebrew. The Brass Bracelets 245-249. letters, esp. 2. The Bat Creek Stone was discovered in 1889, supposedly in a Native American burial mound. See also comment by ; For the Judeans, or For Judea, a clear reference to ancient Israel. Hamilton, Henry Hodges, New York. Because of the style of writing, Dr. Cyrus Thomas declared the inscription to be a form of Paleo-Hebrew thought to be in use during the first or second century A.D. Hebrew scholar Robert Stieglitz confirmed Gordons translation. While it is possible that the recent AMS determination accurately dates the burial, McCulloch s claim that the date "rules out the possibility of a modern origin for either the inscription or the bracelets" (1988:116) is not only erroneous, but also represents a characteristic, non-skeptical, cult archaeology assertion about a topic in which he has no expertise. Your email address will not be published. The stone shows respect and praise to the God of Israel . there are no signs of the two vertical strokes that now are present in the upper left corner. 207-225. nearby Bat Creek Mound #2 at the time of excavation, so it It has been suggested that Emmert lacked sufficient education to forge the Bat Creek inscription (McCulloch: 1988: 114), but as with similar arguments made in defense of the Kennsington runestone (e.g., Gordon 1974:30), this assertion is not valid. the first letter must be something different, and Both Professors Cross and Williams read and commented on an earlier version of this paper. The authors particularly thank Frank Moore Cross, Hancock Professor of Hebrew and Other Oriental Languages at Harvard University, for providing us with his professional assessment of the signs on the Bat Creek stone. Whiteford (1952:218), in a reference to the Bat Creek stone, mentions an "enigmatic engraved stone," while sharply criticizing the eastern Tennessee research conducted under Thomas' direction and questioning the authenticity of some of the archaeological features reported by John Emmert. in diameter and 5 feet in height," according to the offical Under the skull and mandible of Burial 1 "two copper bracelets, an engraved stone, a small drilled fossil, a copper bead, a bone implement, and some small pieces of polished wood soft and colored green by contact with the copper bracelets" were found. dictionary chart of Jewish War In: F.W. There has been a systematic denigrating on the part of the 'intellectuals' in the Smithsonian Museum of evidence of pre-Columbian migration from the Old World to the western hemisphere. from the mound 40 years before the excavation and that it down to the skeletons." The short the fit as Hebrew is by no means perfect (McCarter 1993). The Bat Creek stone, allegedly found in an undisturbed burial mound by an employee of the Smithsonian Institution, has been heralded by cult archaeologists as proof of pre-Columbian visitations to the New World by Mediterranean peoples. 1988b Fantastic Messages From the Past. The University of Wisconsin Press, Madison. the main line are test scratches made by an unknown party while [3] More specifically, Thomas focused on assessing the connection between the mound-builders and the Indigenous communities who lived in the area during European colonization. Testing by the Smithsonian (Thomas 1894) and the University of Tennessee (Schroedl 1975) suggests that this structure was a multi-stage Mississippi an platform mound (perhaps lacking associated structures on the mound surfaces). Unlike the Davenport frauds and the Kennsington runestone, the Bat Creek stone generated little interest, and consequently there is no "paper trail" to follow. Their findings were subsequently published and an online version is available on their website. 12/28/05. 1980 Cult Archaeology and Unscientific Method and Theory. 1972 The Bat Creek Inscription. America in 1170 A.D. (see, e.g. Stone translation reads: "For the Judeans" Background Information The Bat Creek Stone was discovered by Mr. John W. Emmert in an undisturbed grave mound, number 3 of three mounds found together along the Little Tennessee River near the mouth of Bat Creek in 1889. Pastor Murray is the scholar who finally translated the inscription. by P. Kyle McCarter, BAR July/August 1993, pp. In his Archaeological History of Ohio, Gerald Fowke (1902:458-459) cited the Bat Creek stone in the context of criticizing Cyrus Thomas for claiming a relatively recent age for various mounds, and Stephen Peet (1891:146) briefly mentioned the object. The University of Tennessee excavators didn't investigate Mound 2 or Mound 3, both of which no longer existed. The MinnesotaHistorical Society, St. Paul. An unknown party added two nearly parallel vertical strokes while the stone was stored in the National Museum of Natural History from 1894 and 1970. In: Archaeology of the Eastern United States, edited by J.B. Griffin, pp. in which case it might be a numeral indicating Year 1 or University of Iowa Press, Iowa City. [3] As Feder explains, "The Bat Creek Stone was an outlier, impossible to put into genuine historical context, and though few said it out loud, it was assumed by many that the artifact had been faked". diagonal word divider used on the Bat Creek inscription McGee the above photograph of the Bat Creek stone. The metallurgical evidence is, in itself, equivocal with respect to the age of the brass bracelets; their composition could place them within a period spanning nearly two millennia. "The Cherokee Solution to the Bat Creek Enigma". These inscriptions generally fail to stand up under close scrutiny by paleographers (i.e., they contain numerous errors, represent a jumble of several Old World scripts, or consist of random marks on stone that have the appearance of letters), while the circumstances surrounding their "discovery" are invariably dubious. Fowke, Gerard [5] Mainfort and Kwas have identified the source of the inscription. Gordon demonstrates their incompetence to Crown Publishers, Inc., New York. The Cherokees in Pre-Columbian Times, N.D.C. Ventnor Publishers, Ventnor, N.J. 47-178. Appleton and Co., New York. 30. Welsh Discover America," unsigned online press release at 133, pp. George Barrie and Sons, Philadelphia. Bat Creek: Excavations in the Smithsonian Archives,", "The Bat Creek Inscription: Did Judean 1-2), Gordon was quoted as saying that: "Various pieces of evidence point in the direction of migrations (to North America) from the Mediterranean in Roman times. The clay canoe-shaped coffin containing an extended burial and surrounded by four seated burials, which also came from Long Island, remains a unique occurrence. LYHWD[M], or "for the Judeans.". CrossRef; Google Scholar; Mickel, Allison and Byrd, Nylah 2022. His findings indicate the stone is authentic, meaning that it is ancient and the Hebrew inscription on its surface is also authentic. Washington. 1-33. [1] This interpretation began in the 1970s when the stone was examined by professor Dr. Cyrus Gordon, scholar of "Biblical and Near Eastern studies" and known "proponent of Precolumbian contacts between the old and new worlds". Carter, George LYHW- on both the Yehucal bulla and the Masonic illustration The artifacts, including bronze or brass bracelets that Dr. Wolter . Mainfort, Robert C., Jr. The inscription consists of at least eight distinct characters. From August 2002 to November 2013, it was on loan to the Frank H. McClung Museum at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. the tell-tale string -YHW again, in the name of Yehucal's father, www.maryjones.us/jce/iolo.html. recreational area on the shore of have published a book The Bat Creek stone (Catalogue No. McCulloch, J. Huston, "The Bat Creek Inscription: Did Judean 1946 The Indians of the Southeastern United States. 124-133. The largest of these, Mound 1, was located on the east side of the creek. excavated and whose context been carbon-dated to While McCulloch seems to imply that professional archaeologists would be horrified by such a prospect, the anomalous nature of some of Emmert's reported findings has long been recognized. The Bat Creek Stone: A Reply to Mainfort and Kwas, "Report on the Mound Explorations of the Bureau of Ethnology". makes most sense as an inverted (rho-wise) resh, as Cultivating trust, producing knowledge: The management of archaeological labour and the making of a discipline. Try these: joseph smithfree moviesfaith crisishomeschool. "Report of Archaeopetrography Investigation on the Bat Creek Stone of 1889," July 14, 2010, http://www.ampetrographic.com/files/BatCreekStone.pdf. [1], In 1967, the Tennessee Valley Authority announced plans to build Tellico Dam at the mouth of the Little Tennessee River and asked the University of Tennessee Department of Anthropology to conduct salvage excavations in the Little Tennessee Valley. [1] The use of the stone as evidence for Pre-Columbian transatlantic contact theories was exacerbated in 1988 by J. Huston McCulloch, Economics professor at Ohio State University. Click on link for PDF file. Although various stone structures are often presented as evidence of pre-Columbian contacts (e.g., Fell 1976), it is the considerable number of purported ancient Old World inscriptions from virtually all parts of the North America that are particularly heralded by proponents as "proof" of transatlantic voyages. 30.Washington. pp. adequately classify and evaluate ancient material. In 1988, wood fragments found with Thomas (1894:642) rightly challenged the authenticity of the Davenport tablets in part. To read lyhwdm is also impossible on two grounds. "The Translation" (Bat Creek Stone), Dr. Arnold Murray, Shepherd's Chapel, STONE OF DESTINY by E. Raymond Capt, Shepherd's Chapel Documentaries, "Great Conspiracy" by Pastor Arnold Murray, ShepherdsChapel.com, RED LINE by Pastor Dennis Murry, Shepherd's Chapel, Shepherd's Chapel: When Is The White Throne Judgement. in this alphabet, or what Welsh words they find there.

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