"An organization concerned with the study and scientific research of epigraphy, ancient history, and archaeology, particularly as it applies to precolumbian visits to the Americas by members of high cultures." Monthly Breakfast Meetings, first Saturday of the month, 8:30 a.m.; Bob Evans Restaurant, Georgesville Square Shopping Center, Columbus, OH. For further information, e-mail: wdc@iwaynet.net
Earth
Mother Sacred Language
This site: Stonework From Ohio's
Lost City?
Related site: America's
Mysterious Furnaces
Dr. Kenneth L. Feder, on left; and (grouped on right, L-R) Dr. J. Huston McCulloch, Suzanne O. Carlson, and Dr. Bradley T. Lepper, pass judgement on the 'Newark Holy Stones," here enclosed in a display case at the Johnson-Humrickhouse Museum, at Roscoe Historic Village, Coshocton, Ohio. Second from left is Dr. Robert Fox, moderator of the debate, who, of course, didn't vote. Photo by Bill Barr of the MES.
By William D. Conner
(This the text of a report read at the Society's quarterly meeting, Saturday, November 20, 1999.)
Prehistoric societies betray their otherwise unrecorded presence by leaving their "stuff" around. This was a compelling argument against the authenticity of the so-called "Newark Holy Stones" offered by professional archaeologist Kenneth L. Feder at a Saturday, November 6, 1999 symposium in Coshocton, Ohio.
The Holy Stones controversy began when David Wyrick allegedly found two stones with Hebrew inscriptions in 1860 in Hopewell Indian mounds at Newark, Ohio.
Dr. Feder said if there had been a pre-Columbian settlement of Old World people in Ohio, the archaeological record should show much more evidence of this. The professor of archaeology at Central Connecticut State University scored some points with the audience using this line of attack in the debate entitled "Newark 'Holy Stones': Context for Controversy" at Coshocton's historic Roscoe Village.
As isolated anomalies, he said the "Holy Stones" are most likely fakes, according to the principle of "Occam's Razor" which holds that the simplest explanation is by far the most likely.
However, Feder's "isolated anomaly" rationale was somewhat deflated when avocational archaeologist William Conner, a fellow of the Midwestern Epigraphic Society, complained that he is currently stuck with about 30 archaeological sites in central Ohio where pit iron furnaces are found or are strongly indicated by unique diagnostic artifacts.
These sites seem to exist stubbornly outside the context of local history and archaeology. They represent a 2000-year-old technology Conner said, and their use in America is unrecorded by its industrial history.
The "Holy Stones" debate audience filled a meeting room inside the Johnson-Humrickhouse Museum in the historic village basked in the mild rays of golden autumn sunshine. Sixty persons paid to attend the meeting.
Joining Feder in disputing the origin of the "Holy Stones" was Dr. Bradley T. Lepper, archaeologist and coordinator of archaeology education at the Ohio Historical Society Museum in Columbus.
Lepper's line of attack included his usual references to 19th century investigations of the three Newark Stones which concluded they were fakes, and which convinced the leading archaeological scholars of the time. Then he steered a more entertaining tack for his next broadside.
The museum archaeologist supplied a motivation for the creation of the stones in the mid-1800s. Opponents of the slavery of black people in America's Southland sought support for the theory of Biblical monogensis, which held that all people were descendants of Adam and Eve, the original ancestors of the Book of Genesis.
Those in favor of slavery argued the mounds were much older than the Biblical chronology going back to the creation of Adam and Eve and thus supported the theory of polygensis, or the separate origin of the races. Therefore, they said, the mounds must have been built by a species of man unrelated and older than Adam. This supported their contention that black race was separate and inferior and could properly be enslaved.
By proving that the Mounds were built by a Jewish colony, however, the monogensis adherents could show the mounds couldn't be older than Moses or the Ten Commandments. Thus all races would be descended from Adam, Lepper said.
Such a Biblical-based argument over human origins until recently may have seemed quaint this late 20th century audience awash in impending triumphs of bio-engineering science based upon the foundation laid by Charles Darwin's "On The Origin of Species." As Lepper pointed out, the publication of Darwin's volume on evolution in 1859 soon quashed the polygensis-mongensis controversy.
However, it seems to this writer we today do well not to be too smug in light of the current attack on the teaching of evolution by Christian fundamentalists.
Dr. J. Huston McCulloch, professor of economics and finance at the Ohio State University, took up the task of defending the authenticity of the two Newark Stones, the Keystone and the Decalogue Stone.
McCulloch is an avocational archaeologist and epigrapher of long standing. He summarized his usual and persuasive epigraphic and circumstantial evidence for the authenticity of the stones to counterbalance Lepper's claims.
The highlight of McCulloch's presentation, however, seemed to me to be his contentions about a stone bowl found along with Decalogue Stone. Such a bowl was used by Jews in Israel during the Second Temple period lasting up to 70 AD. It had been decreed that only stone containers were pure enough for washing hands before eating, McCulloch said, so a stone bowl and jug industry was created to supply the Jews with pure water.
The fourth and concluding speaker, New England architect Suzanne O. Carlson, supplied the background of cultural diffusion evidence so well studied and investigated by the New England Antiquities Research Association, better known by most as simply "NEARA." Carlson is a member the NEARA board of directors and frequent lecturer on New England archaeological finds and evidence of Norse and other pre-Columbian transits of the Atlantic Ocean by Old World seafarers.
Carlson's talk, entitled "North Atlantic Rim, Barrier or Bridge" emerged heavily weighted in favor of the rim as a bridge, beginning with the prehistoric red paint people the remains of whose seafaring culture spans the rim from Maine to Norway. Then she discussed the Kensington runestone of Minnesota, the Spirit Pond runestones of Maine and Rhode Island's famous and controversial Newport Tower, and such ancient Atlantic mariners as Lief Erickson, Henry Sinclair of the Orkney Islands and the fugitive Knights Templars escaping extermination in Europe.
This all seemed to me to echo the title of an old paperback book which has long resided in my bookshelf "They All Discovered America" by Charles Michael Boland, published in 1963. This book must be on the required reading list of all who would wish to be recognized by Carlson and rest of the folks at NEARA as serious scholars.
Did the Newark Holy Stones gain or lose a measure of authenticity with this debate? The answer of course depends upon the individuals who attended, and no poll was taken to determine anything of this nature. But I came away with the feeling that professional archaeologists Feder and Lepper at least gained the favorable impression that the amateurs with whom they debated were worthy of respect as serious scholars. Also, the members of the audience who spoke during the question and answer period for the most part also were worthy of their respect.
In summing things up for the day, archaeologist Feder seemed pleased that at least all present were committed the study of the past and preservation of its artifacts and historic and archaeological sites. It seemed a feeling easy to entertain as the golden sunset reflected off the red brick buildings of the old canal port.
The "Holy Stones" on Display
Display copies of the Newark "Holy Stones' are shown in the bottom of this case at the Johnson-Humkerick House Muesum at Roscoe Historic Village, Coshocton, Ohio. The two stones are 1, in center, the Decalogue Stone and 2, on left, the Keystone. Left and right on both sides of the Decalogue Stone are the two haves of its stone container. On right, 5, is the stone bowl. Photo by Bill Barr.
Field Trip...
Members of an MES expedition of October 25, 1997 visited Vern Spratt's farm near Frenchburg, Kentucky to view a mysterious serpent mound on a nearby hillside. They observed a winding formation of a large pieces of natural stones joined by smaller stones collected and laid in place by unknown persons in ancient times.
The Midwestern Epigraphic Society (MES) has a membership heavily centered in Columbus, Ohio. It is a chapter of the national Epigraphic Society founded by the late Barry Fell. He believed many inscriptions carved on rocks in North America and certain mysterious structures and monuments in New England were the work of pre-Columbian visitors from the Old World.
Fell and others like him, mostly amateur archaeologists, investigators and scholars, believed that the culture of ancient Old World peoples was spread by contacts between them and Native Americans prior to 1492. This belief is called "cultural diffusion." I myself have long believed that such contacts took place, and that these meetings had an impact on both the cultures of the natives and the visitors. And, I am on record in this belief dating back to the early 1970's, even though solid proof of cultural diffusion, the kind of proof which would convince the professional archaeological community of America, was lacking.
Just recently, at the February, 1998 annual meeting of the American Assocaition for the Advancement of Science in Philadelphia, the American archaeological community arrived at a paradigm shift. According to a news story written by David Lore, science reporter for the March 17, 1998 edition of the Columbus Dispatch, "Scientific support is reportedly growing for a controversial proposal that the first Americans came here by both land and sea thousands of tens of thousands of years before the opening of the Bering Strait land bridge some 12,000 years ago."
To an avocational archaeologist like this writer, it seemed quite amazing to read in Lore's story that the curator of archaeology of the Smithsonian Institution, Dennis Stanford, seems now open to fair consideration of the merits of many artifacts, inscriptions and entire archaeological sites that have long been "taboo" and summarily dismissed by the archaeological community as fakes, forgeries, or mistaken scholarship. Lore reported that Stanford "...agrees there were probably several, possibly many, waves of prehistoric human immigation into the Americas across the Arctic, Pacific and possibly the Atlantic Oceans."
The MES is not limited to its Columbus, Ohio membership. It also has members in other states and nations. It is a chapter of the national Epigraphic Society founded by the late Barry Fell, author of "America B. C." Fell believed that many inscriptions on American rocks and mysterious structures and monuments in New England were the work of ancient visitors from the Old World.
MES members, mostly amateur epigraphers, linguists, art historians and archaeologists, and other scholars, believe that the culture of ancient Old World peoples was spread by contacts with Native Americans prior to 1492. This belief is called "cultural diffusion." America's professional archaeologists have shunned evidence of diffusion in the past, except for that of the Norse settlement on Newfoundland Island dating to back to 1,000 A.D. Now some of them, including Stanford of Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, have accepted "new" evidence of such pre-Columbian Old World visitors.
In Ohio the so-called "Newark Holy Stones" are accepted by many cultural diffusionists as genuine and they also see significance in a menorah-shaped (Hannukkiah candelabrum) enclosure of a southwestern Ohio mound group as Buckeye state examples of traces of the pre-Columbian visitors from the Old World.
These Ohio examples are discussed in detail in the web site of Hugh McCulloch, a professor of economics of the Ohio State University: Some Archaeological Outliers. Web pages containing information about the controversial Burrows Cave and its artifacts can be found on the Internet by using the search words "Burrows Cave."
Monthly informal breakfast meetings are conducted at 8:30 a.m. the first Saturday of the month at Bob Evans Restaurant at Georgesville Square Shopping Center, just off the intersection of Georgesville Road with I-270, Columbus, Ohio. Regular meetings are conducted quartlery, usually at the Jackson Township Hall, Grove City, Ohio.
Also, a research symposium is conducted annaully, usually during the month of April. Regular quarterly meetings begin at 8:30 a.m. and are scheduled to 12 noon. The research symposiums begin at 8:30 a.m., continue throughout the day. A banquet at a local restaurant completes the annual event.
Interested in joining the MES? Just send $50 to:
Michael E. Murray, MES treasurer,
197 Binns Bl., Columbus, Ohio 43204
Benefits of membership include a suscription to the quarterly MES Newsletter and the annual MES Journal.
Victor and Beverley Moseley, both experienced workers in art and design, combined their talents in 1983 when Victor returned to the Columbus area after a long absence. Beverley, a long-time display artist for the Ohio Historical Society Museum, had just obtained a big freelance assignment: to create a new museum in Moundsville, West Virginia, at the site of the famous Grave Creek Mound.
They discovered that an inscribed stone, the Mound Creek Tablet, was found buried in the mound when it was excavated, but that professional archaeologists had dismissed this stone as an obvious fake. This prompted Victor to write to Barry Fell in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Following the visit, Victor decided there was a need for scientific investigation of epigraphic sites in the Midwest. The result was the MES, organized in 1984, with Victor Moseley as its first president.
William Conner, a speaker at the annual Symposium of the Midwesern Epigraphic Society, points to a portion of the Piri Re'is Map of 1513 which contains map data probably obtained by Amerigo Vespucci during his voyage along the north Carribbean coast of South America. Holding the map on left is Dr. Ralph Lausa, and on right, Hugh McCulloch, both members of the MES. Mr. Conner, a Fellow of the MES, once worked with Arlington Mallery, a scholar who believed this map showed at its bottom edge accurate mapping of Antarctica conducted some time during the distant past before the modern exploration occurred. The day-long symposium was conducted April 24, 1999 at Grove City, Ohio. Conner's talk was entitled, "Commentary on Cyclone Covey's Book Admiral Piri, Amerigo Vespucci & Utopia."
Many hundreds of inscribed stone artifacts said to be from the Burrows Cave in southern Illinois, such as this mask, have provided occasion for many hours of study by MES researchers. The very existence of the cave is controversial among cultural diffusionists, including some MES members, but many of the Burrows artifacts such as this one are interesting works of art regardless of their origin.
Link to Burrows Cave Site: Burrows Cave Home Page
From the Newsletter...
Polly, Zena and John
This photo is from the cover page of the latest newsletter (dated 10-31-99). Members (L-R) Polly Midgley, Zena Halper and John White searched September 14, 1999 for the site of the finding of the famous Orient Point Stone in northeastern Long Island, NY. Photo by Patricia White.
Visit the MES official web site again soon! There's much more to come, so come back!
This site was created by webmaster William D. Conner, Secretary and Fellow of the MES.
William D. Conner, wdc@Iwaynet.net
Visit my other web sites. Archaeology: America's Mysterious Furnaces and Philosophy/cosmology: New Analysis of Time
meshome.htm; posted 12-10-00, rev. 11-19-02