1952 A Frame of Reference for the Archaeology of Eastern Tennessee. [5] Mainfort and Kwas have identified the source of the inscription. In: Archaeology of the Eastern United States, edited by J.B. Griffin, pp. Robert Stieglitz (1976) confirmed Gordon's reading of the Scott Wolter/cc by-sa 3.0 When John W. Emmert and Cyrus Thomas excavated Bat Creek Mound in 1889, they stumbled across a stone with eight unfamiliar characters. down to the skeletons." East Lansing. Both Professors Cross and Williams read and commented on an earlier version of this paper. 2, p. 127. Archaeology Review July/August 1993, pp. Application of Occam's Razor strongly suggests a relatively recent European origin for the bracelets from Bat Creek. 1984 Ghanaian and Coptic Brass Lamps. [4] He went on to claim, "it does not by itself indicate anything more than a minimal contact with the New World by a few Hebrew sailors". 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]). Gordon, pp. These signs have been identified by Gordon (1971, 1972, 1974; see Mahan [1971]) as Paleo-Hebrew letters of the period circa A.D. 100; McCulloch (1988) suggests the first century A.D. vegetation could be reconstructed at string LYHW- in the word LYHWKL, or 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 stone shows respect and praise to the God of Israel . Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C. The late Semitic languages It is wise therefore to refrain from basing theories on one or two specimens of an unusual or abnormal type, unless their claim to a place among genuine prehistoric relics can be established beyond dispute. Wilson et al. that looks nothing like the second Bat Creek letter. Litigation and environmental concerns stalled the dam's completion until 1979, allowing extensive excavations at multiple sites throughout the valley. What was the translation? Washington. [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. 1975 Archaeological Investigations at the Harrison Branch and Bat Creek Sites. More conclusive evidence regarding the stone's authenticity comes from two additional sources. 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). "Canaanites in America: A New Scripture in Stone?". A134902-0 in the Department of Anthropology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution. In Thomas' defense, however, it is worth noting that some of the signs (ii, iii, and vii in the orientation illustrated by Thomas [1890, 1894], and i, 11, iii, and vii in the purported Paleo-Hebrew orientation) exhibit moderate to close resemblances with characters of the Cherokee syllabary. 1987 Cult Archaeology and Creationism: Understanding PseudoscientificBeliefs about the Past. John Emmert excavated Bat Creek Mound 3, doing so "alone and in isolation". online theory of the Bat Creek inscription. The artifacts, including bronze or brass bracelets that Dr. Wolter . [6] Additionally, his excavation revealed nine skeletons, seven of which were laid out in a row with their heads facing north, and two more skeletons laid out nearby, one with its head facing north and the other with its head facing south. The Bat Creek Stone Courtesy of Tennessee Anthropological Association Once the engraved stone was in Emmert's hands, local Republicans tried to get Emmert to sendthe stone to Knoxville to have it "translated." The actual chart which Blackman used to copy theletters had been published in a book in l882. "The Bat Creek Stone: Judeans in Tennessee?". America in 1170 A.D. (see, e.g. 10. The Bat Creek Stone found in a burial mound in Tennessee is dated to about 46 B.C. See also comment He reported that the Bat Creek Stone was found under the skull of the south-facing skeleton. http://bookofmormonevidence.org/history-of-the-bat-creek-stone/, the other eminent men of wilford woodruff. Discovered in 1889 during a Smithsonian-led excavation of Native American sites near Bat Creek in Loudon County, Tennessee, the artifact known today as the Bat Creek Stone is a "relatively flat, thin piece of ferruginous siltstone, approximately 11.4 cm long and 5.1 cm wide." 26 On the stone is an inscription of about eight characters written 169-413. The Bat Creek stone (Catalogue No. BAT CREEK STONE Bat Creek Mound #3, with the inscription - A.D. 1500: The Historical Testimony of Pre-Columbian Artists. trees and grapevines as long ago as the oldest settler 1907 Cherokee. 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). Robert Macoy, George Oliver. word divider read, from right to left, LYHWD, or "for Judea." with an uptick at the end. ", McKusick, Marshall. [11] Mound 1 of the Bat Creek Site was excavated in 1975. With respect to the Bat Creek stone, which we have now demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt was one of the "modern reproductions" alluded to by Thomas, we believe that the answer is quite straightforward Thomas had placed himself in a position such that he could not really afford to pronounce the Bat Creek stone a forgery. 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). In: Thirteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution 1890-'91, pp. George Barrie and Sons, Philadelphia. Harrold, Francis B. and Raymond A. Eve 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). MinnesotaHistorical Society, St. Paul. coinscript letters to transcribe 1988a Fantastic Archaeology: Fakes and Rogue Professors. The findspot was about Washington. [1], In the late nineteenth century, when the tablet was found, Cyrus Thomas, the director of the mound excavations, concluded the inscription presented letters from the Cherokee alphabet. Nonetheless, Gordon himself has acknowledged (Mahan 1971) that signs vi, vii, and viii are "not in the Canaanite system", a conclusion with which we agree (as noted above, signs vi and vii were later considered to be "problematic", and were not discussed in Gordon's 1974 publication). Your email address will not be published. Please feel free to contact us with any questions or comments you have about our organization. Many previously declared hoaxes may be reanalyzed using more objective and less biased examination. 1964 Vinland Ruins Prove Vikings Found the New World. McClung Museum Mainfort 1979:357-359). A Reply to Mainfort and Kwas in American Antiquity," While it is true that Roman period brasses had a similar metallurgical content (cf. However, the fifth letter of the second word is clearly different in the two [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". Judah or Yehud (YHWD in the the tell-tale string -YHW again, in the name of Yehucal's father, separated by a dot or short diagonal stroke both contain the string LYHW-. Curiously, while urging readers to "seek out the views of qualified scholars" about the signs on the Bat Creek stone, McCulloch (1988), an amateur epigrapher, offers interpretations of three signs (vi, vii, and viii) that contradict the published assessments of one of the stone's most outspoken proponents (Cyrus Gordon, a published Near Eastern language specialist), implying that despite his own lack of expertise in Paleo-Hebrew, McCulloch considers his own opinion to be as valid as those of specialists in the field. serving as a word divider, rather than by a shells and large shell beads" was associated with one interment (Thomas 1894). now a TVA Two of these are Thomas's (1890, 1894) own publications, as cited earlier. Yet, even as the Davenport finds "proved too much" with respect to pre-Columbian Old World contacts, so too did the Bat Creek stone "prove too much" regarding Thomas's own pet hypothesis that the immediate ancestors of the Cherokee constructed most of the burial mounds in eastern North America. Even more ambitiously, the mound and its 1974 A History of American Archaeology. "The Bat Creek inscription (also called the Bat Creek stone or Bat Creek tablet) is an inscribed stone collected as part of a Native American burial mound excavation in Loudon County, Tennessee, in 1889 by the Smithsonian Bureau of Ethnology's Mound Survey, directed by entomologist Cyrus Thomas.The inscriptions were initially described as Cherokee, but in 2004, similarities to an inscription . However, the presence of the string A cluster of black oak and sassafras trees, along with some vi: We agree with the assessment by Gordon (Mahan 1971:43) that this sign is "not in the Canaanite system." originally proposed by Mertz. Emmert, John W. CrossRef; Google Scholar; Mickel, Allison and Byrd, Nylah 2022. A Translation of "Inscription" - L'Encyclopdie of Diderot and d'Alembert. Click on link for PDF file. 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. Catalogue No. Revised and enlarged edition. Webb, W.S. ABSTRACT Try these: joseph smithfree moviesfaith crisishomeschool. [3] Due to the efforts of Thomas and his team, and with the aid of his published work which extensively presented his findings, "the myth of a vanished race had been dealt a fatal blow".[3]. Since, as discussed below, no contemporary Cherokee authorities seem to have regarded the inscription as genuine, McCulloch's conclusion does not represent a significant new interpretation. ancient times, were clearly engraved in Coelbren letters, there are no signs of the two vertical strokes that now are present in the upper left corner. Why Should Latter-day Saints Beware Fraudulent Artifacts? Arundale, Wendy H. give no reference for what they regard as an Wahlgren, Erik Does Arnold Murray understand Hebrew? ), Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico, p. 610. of the Serenwen alphabet to the Bat Creek letters. 1986 Historical Aspects of the Calaveras Skull Controversy. While few archaeologists would deny a priori the possibility of early voyages to the New World, the simple fact is that, with the exception Had the Bat Creek stone been regarded as an authentic artifact by contemporary researchers, there should be numerous references to the object. "had been covered by a cluster of Lambert, W.G. Peet, Stephen D. Setzler, Frank M. and Jessee D. Jennings text. Bat Creek Stone | A lamp stand Review, Vol. abilities per se. 1988b Fantastic Messages From the Past. In this respect, they appear to be similar to the heavier brass bracelets found with the "Tunica Treasure" (Brain 1979:193-194). conceivably be either an aleph or a waw, The [8] The Adena and Hopewell peoples constructed significant earthworks and mounds, a "widespread practice throughout the American southeast, Midwest, and northern plains". 2006): 16-27, 70. 14-16, and numerous This range is consistent with Quotes and ideas attributed to Arnold Murray are the intellectual property of Arnold Murray, of course.Earth Vs. the Flying Saucers (1956) was produced by Clover Productions. Schroedl, Gerald F. [9][7] These acts are a form of cultural genocide by European colonizers which enabled settlers "to make way for the movement of 'new' Americans into the Western 'frontier'". See also comment by 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). 1971 The Bat Creek Stone. 1973 Bristol Brass: A History of the Industry. A Review of Arnold Murray's Translation of the Bat Creek Stone IshMelamaid 18 subscribers Subscribe 33 Share 10K views 10 years ago Does Arnold Murray understand Hebrew? McCulloch, J. Huston, "The Bat Creek Inscription -- Cherokee or Hebrew?," When. This earthwork "was composed throughout, except about the skeletons at the bottom, of hard red clay, without any indications of stratification." Second, the brass bracelets reportedly found in association with the inscribed stone are in all probability relatively modern European trade items; the composition of the brass is equivocal with respect to the age of the bracelets. http://druidry.org/obod/lore/coelbren/coelbren.html. Shetrone, Henry C. Bat Creek stone, which was professionally The University of Tennessee excavators didn't investigate Mound 2 or Mound 3, both of which no longer existed. New York Graphic Society, Greenwich. 1930 The Mound Builders. The owner stated that he had cut trees Other individuals who provided source material used in this paper include Charles Faulkner, J. Houston McCulloch, Joseph B. Mahan, Michael Moore, and Stephen Williams. to 400 AD.2. Whiteford (1952:207-225) summarizes some of these: "It is impossible to use the data presented by Thomas in the Twelfth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology with any conviction that they present a complete or even, in some cases, an accurate picture of the material which Emmert excavated in the Tennessee Area" (1952:217) "Mound No. Up Bat Creek (Without a Paddle): Mormon Assessment of the Bat Creek Stone. Together, these stones may work in concert to verify the presence of ancient Hebrew civilizations in the heartland of America. 1972 The Bat Creek Inscription. Although Gordon's Paleo-Hebrew reading of The Radiocarbon Date fact there is already a D on Bat Creek, at the end of the second word, Used by permission. Houghton Mifflin, Boston. To our knowledge no recent investigation has uncovered anything resembling the stone domed vaults or 'stone hives' which he describes" (1952:218-219). 1891 Ancient Cemeteries in Tennessee. von Wuthenau, Alexander This is especially exciting when considered in the context of the DNA evidence, Joseph Smiths statements, and all the other archaeological evidence for highly advanced civilizations in the heartland of America during the Book of Mormon epic.4, Your email address will not be published. The Cherokees in Pre-Columbian Times, N.D.C. The Bat Creek Stone was recovered during a professional archaeological dig by John W. Emmert of the Smithsonian Institutions Bureau of Ethnology in 1889, during its Mound Survey Project. diagonal word divider used on the Bat Creek inscription Tennessee Archaeologist 27(2):38-45. the fit as Hebrew is by no means perfect (McCarter 1993). Refugees Escape to Tennessee?" McCarter, P. Kyle, Jr. "Let's be Serious About the Bat Creek Stone". 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. The stone was located beneath the skeletal head of one of the nine skeletons in the undisturbed mound. of the name YHWH or Yahweh of the Hebrew God, is a common and 9 burials, was "of small size, measuring but 28 feet 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. adequately classify and evaluate ancient material. Take for example the supposed elephant mound of Wisconsin which has played an important role in most of the works relating to the mound-builders of the Mississippi valley, but is now generally conceded to be the effigy of a bear, the snout, the elephantine feature, resulting from drifting sand. 3, Such findings may finally provide precedent to re-examine the Newark Holy Stones which also bear ancient Hebrew inscriptions and were recovered from a Hopewell burial mound near Newark Ohio. Stones bearing inscriptions in Hebrew or other Old World characters have at last been banished from the list of prehistoric relics. Fowke did not make this statement out of ignorance of the Bat Creek stone's existence, because not only had he extensively studied the lithic material recovered by the mound survey (Fowke 1896), but also mentioned the stone in one of his own publications (1902). Gordon's dating of the letters. word having two letters and the Masonic word three. The string YHW-, or Yahu-, the first three letters Two of the most hotly contested issues in American archaeology during the nineteenth century were the existence of an American Paleolithic of comparable age to sites in Europe and hypothetical pre-Columbian contacts with the Old World (Willey and Sabloff 1974). Knoxville. In a Hopewell burial mound in eastern Tennessee. [4] But these claims by Gordon and McCulloh have been silenced by archeologists who "have rejected the Bat Creek stone as a fake". 32 no. Jefferson Chapman, Director of the McClung Museum at the University of Tennessee, generously provided copies of unpublished reports and correspondence by and pertaining to John Emmert. Thomas, Cyrus, "Mound Explorations," in Twelfth Annual Report In: Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico, edited by Frederick W. Hodge, pp. Swanton, John R. American Indian, Heye Foundation, New York. While much of the original confluence of Bat Creek and the Little Tennessee was submerged by the lake, the mound in which the Bat Creek Stone was found was located above the reservoir's operating levels. University of Pennsylvania Press. 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. Hodges, New York, 1890. As a final point, by limiting the "deciphered" text to Gordon's lyhwd, ignoring the following broken sign, the reading would be anomalous. The Bat Creek word ends with a daleth, which R. Stieglitz and Marshall McKusick, in the sign iv) or he_ (cf. Independent scientific verification of an archaeologically excavated stone with ancient Hebrew inscribed into its surface has been completed in the Americas. 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). 30. 1979 Tunica Treasure. He noted that the broken letter on the far left is consistent Thames & Hudson, London, 1968. SATANIC MEDIA EXPOSED, Uvalde TX Shooting LIES! Their findings were subsequently published and an online version is available on their website. 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). 1943 The Eastern Cherokees. Gordon, Cyrus, Before Columbus (New York, Crown, 1971b), Appendix. 3-548. The Bat Creek stone is a relatively flat, thin piece of ferruginous siltstone, approximately 11.4 cm long and 5.1 cm wide. Underlying the earthwork were a number of early Mississippian features. (Same illustration is on p. 169 of 1870 edition It has nevertheless been accepted for publication in (e.g. One of the best recent works on ancient America is flawed to some extent by want of this precaution. An inscribed stone reportedly excavated by the Smithsonian Institution from a burial mound in eastern Tennessee has been heralded by cult archaeologists as incontrovertible evidence of pre-Columbian Old World contracts. The Bat Creek Inscription: Cherokee or Hebrew? nearby Bat Creek Mound #2 at the time of excavation, so it The fact that Thomas Serenwen (undated). 1896 Stone Art. 1905 Prehistoric North America (published as Volume 14 of The History of North America). It may require cleanup to comply with Wikipedia's content policies, particularly. with details of their analysis, which I have not yet had time to critique. 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. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C. 1988). 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. 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. Willey, Gordon R., and Jeremy A. Sabloff Similarly, the age differential class between the wood and the burial (or the stone itself) is not precisely known. Today, this mound is submerged by a reservoir. 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. and other considerations, was Except for the identification of the characters as Cherokee, Thomas (1894: 391-3) is based almost verbatim on Emmert's field report. In McCulloch (1988) I note that You decide. Washington. 1991 Fantastic Archaeology: The Wild Side of North American Prehistory. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bat_Creek_Stone&oldid=1144691346, Mainfort, Robert C., Jr. and Mary L. Kwas. scholar Cyrus Gordon (1971a, 1971b, 1972) confirmed that it is Semitic, 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. [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". words are separated. The Tellico Plains Mountain Press, undated. Harrington, M.R. Jones' Celtic Encyclopedia, at Washington. Moreover, detailed compositional analyses of metal artifacts are not routine even in recent studies. 1975 Unexpected Faces in Ancient America, 1500 B.C. as well as a pleasant destination for hikers and boaters. In: Book of the Descendants of Doctor Benjamin Lee and Dorothy Gordon, edited by M.B. If it could be shown to work even better as Coelbren, The Bat Creek stone. does not prove that the Mazar assistant who supposedly Tennessee Anthropologist 1988(2), pp. 1910 The Stone Age in North America (2 vols.). Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin No. The earthwork was reportedly constructed over a limestone slab "vault" containing 16 individuals; a necklace of "many small General History, Cyclopedia and Dictionary of Freemasonry (1870). The short 1981 Radiocarbon Dating in Eastern Arctic Archaeology: a Flexible Approach. that would itself be sufficient to vindicate the authenticity of Mertz, Henriette Antiquity 58(223):137-138. "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. As noted above, the Bat Creek stone has recently been cast into greater prominence as a result of an AMS radiocarbon determination. Peabody Museum, Cambridge. (sic) in the Mertz/Gordon orientation, in which case it might be a numeral indicating Year 1 or The Bat Creek stone is a small stone tablet engraved with several apparently alphabetic characters, found during excavations of a small mound in 1889 near Knoxville, Tenn. Williams, Stephen 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). 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. Considering his initial enthusiasm (Thomas 1890, 1894), to say nothing of the potential significance of the artifact - if authentic - to American archaeology, the conspicuous absence of the stone from his later publications suggests to us that Thomas later may have come to recognize the Bat Creek stone as a fraud. and specifically 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 Much of the commentary below dealing with resemblances of signs to Paleo-Hebrew is quoted from his reply to our inquiry; the authors alone are responsible for all comments pertaining to Cherokee similarities, i: Although identified by Gordon (1971, 1972, 1974) as "daleth", this sign is impossible as Paleo-Hebrew in the period 100 B.C.-A.D. 100, based on shape and stance. Dexter, Ralph W. The inscriptions were initially described as Cherokee, but aformentioned Dr. Gordon correctly identified them as Hebrew. Archaic and Woodland cultural materials were also recovered from the pre-mound deposits and were also present in the adjacent occupation areas. 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. 14, No. Bat Creek inscription appears in BAR July/Aug. American Anthropologist 4(1):94-95. 391-4. Perhaps the TVA could be prevailed 1978 The Composition of the Copper Alloys Used by the Greek, Etruscan, and Roman Civilizations. 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. Smithsonian Institution, Bureauof American Ethnology, Bulletin No. excavated and whose context been carbon-dated to LYHW- beginning the longer second word in both cases. 1892 Improved Cherokee Alphabets.
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