bat creek stone translation bat creek stone translation
", McKusick, Marshall. The two vertical strokes above Gordon, whose scholarly credentials are certainly impressive, is an archetypical example of what Williams (1988a) has referred to as "rogue professors." Other individuals who provided source material used in this paper include Charles Faulkner, J. Houston McCulloch, Joseph B. Mahan, Michael Moore, and Stephen Williams. 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). 118. Nov./Dec. any competent student of antiquities. Although the authors have no formal training in the Cherokee syllabary (nor do cult archaeology writers such as Gordon and McCulloch), it seems necessary to 1981 Radiocarbon Dating in Eastern Arctic Archaeology: a Flexible Approach. Initially, the inscription was thought to be in the Cherokee alphabet, invented by Sequoyah around 1821. "Did Judean Refugees Escape to Tennessee? 1894 Report on the Mound Explorations of the Bureau of Ethnology. The Little Tennessee River enters Tennessee from the Appalachian Mountains to the south and flows northward for just over 50 miles (80km) before emptying into the Tennessee River near Lenoir City. [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. vi: We agree with the assessment by Gordon (Mahan 1971:43) that this sign is "not in the Canaanite system." 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. or "dh ' 7NESb" in Thomas's orientation. is not unlikely that Mound #3's trees were of the same type. Craddock, Paul T. He noted that the broken letter on the far left is consistent When viewed with the straighter edge on the bottom, seven characters are in a single row, with the eighth located below the main inscription. University of Pennsylvania Press. Gordon's dating of the letters. ancient times, were clearly engraved in Coelbren letters, Yet he does not mention the author of the publication he was criticizing, undoubtedly because he himself was the author. Rebuilding it would require only about 38 cubic yards of Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin No. Smithsonian Institution, Bureauof American Ethnology, Bulletin No. with details of their analysis, which I have not yet had time to critique. Mound 2 had a diameter of 44 feet (13m) and height of 10 feet (3.0m), and Mound 3 had a diameter of 28 feet (8.5m) and height of 5 feet (1.5m). Schroedl, Gerald F. "Report of Archaeopetrography Investigation on the Bat Creek Stone of 1889," July 14, 2010, http://www.ampetrographic.com/files/BatCreekStone.pdf. 30.Washington. ), Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico, p. 610. 1-16, rejoinder by M&K, TA Fall Thomas did not excavate the mounds himself, but delegated field work to assistants. 35 . Mound 2 was a burial mound approximately 3 m tall and 13 m in diameter. New York Graphic Society, Greenwich. 32 no. In the case of the former, the primitive excavation and recording techniques employed render the certainty of association between the wood fragments, the inscribed stone, and the skeletal remains indeterminant (or at best very tenuous). "The Bat Creek Stone: Judeans in Tennessee?". In: Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin No. R. Stieglitz and Marshall McKusick, in the It also seems worth mentioning that Cyrus Thomas was neither the first nor the last archaeologist to be taken in by a questionable artifact. Anonymous 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). 46-53 ff. : Ancient Settlers in the New World. is known. Antiquity 58(223):137-138. 137.Washington. 14-16, and numerous [5] Mainfort and Kwas have identified the source of the inscription. The lone letter below the main line is problematic, but could even if the copyist threw in a few random changes to Robert Clarke, Cincinnati. Thomas, Cyrus. From August 2002 to November 2013, it was on loan to the Frank H. McClung Museum at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. "belonging to Yehucal" (Mazar 2006: 26). I own no rights to the film.Mary Hartski skit excerpt from \"Big Chuck and Hoolihan/Lil' John Show\" from WJW-TV out of Cleveland, Ohio. in the locality could recollect. The sample returned a calibrated radiocarbon age of A.D. 32 (427) 769 (McCulloch 1988; the age range was reported at two sigma), which is claimed to "rule out the possibility of modern origin" for the inscription (McCulloch 1988:116). Thomas's original Cherokee interpretation, Gordon, Cyrus, "Stone Inscription Found in Tennessee Proves that America was Discovered 1500 Years before Columbus," Argosy Magazine, Jan. 1971a. In: Thirteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution 1890-'91, pp. Reprinted in Ancient American Vol. trees and grapevines as long ago as the oldest settler 1993, pp. Accessed 12/28/05. 1988). conceivably be either an aleph or a waw, Hebrew scholar and archaeologist been copied from Macoy. McCulloch 1988), virtually identical brasses were produced in England during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (Day 1973; Shaw and Craddock 1984). 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. 1972 The Bat Creek Inscription. the Bat Creek inscription works much better than Biblical Archaeologist 42:137-140. orientation, and although several of the letters are not perfect as Paleo-Hebrew, 1964 The Mine Dark Sea. Second edition. 1938 An Archaeological Survey of the Norris Basin in Eastern Tennessee. McCulloch, J. Huston, "The Bat Creek Inscription: Did Judean detail could have been copied from Macoy's illustration, Thames & Hudson, London, 1968. The director of the project, Cyrus Thomas, initially declared that the curious inscription on the stone were "beyond question letters of the Cherokee alphabet." (Thomas 1894: 391:4) Robert C. Mainfort, Jr. and Mary L. Kwas, TA 1991(1), pp. W.H. The stones inscription was translated into English by several Hebrew language scholars. Two of these are Thomas's (1890, 1894) own publications, as cited earlier. 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. Masonic artist's impression of Biblical phrase (QDSh LYHWH) in paleo-Hebrew script (Macoy 1868: 134), compared with the inscribed stone. report. publish the details 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. [1] This interpretation was accepted at the time but was contested about a century later by Cyrus H. Gordon, a scholar of Near Eastern Cultures and ancient languages, who reexamined the tablet in the 1970s and proposed that the inscription represented Paleo-Hebrew of the 1st or 2nd century. 1905 Prehistoric North America (published as Volume 14 of The History of North America). 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). Up Bat Creek (Without a Paddle): Mormon Assessment of the Bat Creek Stone. You must have a Gab account and be logged in to comment. 1-19, It was from the smaller Mound 3 that the inscribed stone was allegedly recovered. the fit as Hebrew is by no means perfect (McCarter 1993). Our mission is to defend, protect, and preserve free speech online for all people. Mainfort, Robert C., and Mary L. Kwas, "The Bat Creek Stone Revisited: A Fraud Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin No. Griffin, James B., David J. Meltzer, Bruce D. Smith, and William C. Sturtevant1988 A Mammoth Fraud in Science. (e.g. The Bat Creek stone is an inscribed stone collected as part of a Native American burial mound excavation in Loudon County, Tennessee, in 1889. As to the specific signs on the Bat Creek stone, several are passable Cherokee, and the inspiration for the remainder could have been any number of published sources, including illustrations of the Grave Creek stone and the Davenport tablets. 1914 The American Indian in the United States, Period 1850-1914. reply by JHM BAR Nov./Dec. For example, Frederic W. Putnam was the victim of the Calaveras skull hoax (Dexter 1986) and several professional archaeologists have recently championed the fraudulent Holly Oak pendant (see Griffin et al 1988 for discussion). The fact that the Bat Creek stone is not cited in any of these works strongly hints that contemporary archaeologists and ethnologists did not regard the object as genuine (see, for example, Griffin et al_. Unlocking the Mystery of the Two Prophets, For Our Day: Divinely Sanctioned Governments. Thomas (1894:642) rightly challenged the authenticity of the Davenport tablets in part. Hodge (ed. noticed that the inscription, when J. Huston MuCulloch, an Ohio State University economics professor . In the illustration orientation, this sign resembles the Cherokee "tlun:; inverted, it is somewhat similar to a reversed "si.". ). Does Arnold Murray understand Hebrew? earth. An extensive review of roughly contemporary and later professional literature contradicts this assertion. Anthropologist 13(2) :79-123. even among Celtic enthusiasts, Note that we do not contend that these signs are Cherokee - only that there are some formal similarities (McKussick [1979] incorrectly asserts that the signs actually are a form of Cherokee). In Paleo-Hebrew, Judah (Judea) is spelled yhwdh, not yhwd. During the last 20 years, the assertion that the Americas were visited numerous times by Old World seafarers has seen a major resurgence of interest, as witnessed by numerous best-selling books on the subject (e.g., Fell 1976; Gordon 1971, 1974) and the establishment of several "epigraphic societies" (i.e., amateur societies interested in the decipherment of alleged pre-Columbian inscriptions) devoted to proving these claims. In fact it is not surprising that two Hebrew inscriptions would In early 1889, Emmert resumed his excavations under Thomas' direction; by February 15 he had "found" the Bat Creek stone (Emmert to Thomas, 15 February 1889). It may require cleanup to comply with Wikipedia's content policies, particularly. Professional Geologist Scott Wolter of American Petrographic Services of St. Paul, MN explains the petrographic analysis of the Bat Creek stone. The Tellico Plains Mountain Press, undated. of Hebrew University archaeologist Eilat Mazar. The 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. (1747-1826), known also as Iolo Morgannwg. Mahan, Joseph B. Jr. abilities per se. "Thomas also reports enclosed burial areas, vaguely similar to those described above, from Sullivan County. online theory of the Bat Creek inscription. 1941 Peachtree Mound and Village Site, Cherokee County, North Carolina. main line would then read RQ , LYHWD[M], i.e. 1907 Inscribed Tablets. Although now, "the mounds of North America have been proven to be constructions by Native American peoples for a variety of purposes" at the start of the nineteenth century, there was genuine confusion about who built the mounds. assumed that the words should be separated by a space, The late Semitic languages In: F.W. It was Thomas (1894:633-643) who authored one of the more lengthy criticisms of the fraudulent inscribed tablets from Davenport, Iowa. In Paleo-Hebrew, words are required to be [12] Neither the University of Tennessee's excavation of the Bat Creek Site nor any other excavations in the Little Tennessee Valley uncovered any evidence that would indicate Pre-Columbian contact with Old World civilizations.[13]. Concluding Remarks a little like the second letter (Q) on Bat Creek, but in Please feel free to contact us with any questions or comments you have about our organization. Academic Press, Inc., New York. do have essentially the same form, but are in fact different: The stone has some crude carvings that some interpret as "paleo-Hebrew" but have previously been considered an early form of Cherokee or completely fake. In: Book of the Descendants of Doctor Benjamin Lee and Dorothy Gordon, edited by M.B. Ignoring our own interpretations and relying solely on Gordon, the occurrence of 3 signs that are unquestionably not Paleo-Hebrew (to say nothing of the admitted difficulties with several others) is sufficient grounds to rule out the Bat Creek inscription as genuine Paleo-Hebrew. Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin No. Perhaps more important, we hope that our efforts here will influence some of our colleagues to take an active role in countering claims made by cult archaeologists and particularly in providing the general public with accessible information about the remarkable discoveries made by mainstream archaeology (see Williams 1987, 1988a, 1988b). Gordon claimed that by inverting the orientation of the stone relative to the published illustrations (i.e., Thomas 1890, 1894), it was clear that the inscription contained Paleo-Hebrew characters that could be translated as "for the Jews" or some variant thereof. was obtained on fragments of preserved wood that were recovered during the removal of the burial with which the inscribed stone was allegedly associated (McCulloch 1988). 131. scholar Cyrus Gordon (1971a, 1971b, 1972) confirmed that it is Semitic, There may be a broken sign on the left edge of the stone. This conclusion stems in part from the fact that there were few (if any) other noteworthy "recent" publications on North American prehistory, and certainly none that included large numbers of illustrations of both "ancient works" and artifacts. Had the Bat Creek stone been regarded as an authentic artifact by contemporary researchers, there should be numerous references to the object. Nothing resembling the mass bundle burials which he found on Long Island in Roane County and on the McGhee Farm in Monroe County has been recovered in more recent work. [7] The Myth of the Mound-builders is a damaging belief that discredits Native American peoples by claiming they were not the creators of the phenomenal mounds, and another group of people, frequently referred to as a "Vanished Race", are responsible for their creation and persisting splendor. [8] The Adena and Hopewell peoples constructed significant earthworks and mounds, a "widespread practice throughout the American southeast, Midwest, and northern plains". While few archaeologists would deny a priori the possibility of early voyages to the New World, the simple fact is that, with the exception inscription, in Old Hebrew letters closely related to those in words are separated. Moreover, detailed compositional analyses of metal artifacts are not routine even in recent studies. "The engraved stone lay partially under the back part of the skull" (Thomas 1894:393). 1922 Cherokee and Earlier Remains on Upper Tennessee. a plausible spot. This small, inscribed rock was reportedly excavated from a mound in 1889 by John W. Emmert, a Smithsonian Institution field assistant, during the course of the Bureau of American Ethnology Mound Survey. Mertz, Henriette More conclusive evidence regarding the stone's authenticity comes from two additional sources. centra health pay schedule, sample deposition outline, village of gowanda code enforcement,