From: kckluge@krusty.eecs.umich.edu (Karl Kluge) Newsgroups: sci.archaeology Subject: Bat Creek Stone in current _Biblical Archaeology Review_ Date: 04 Aug 1993 15:16:18 GMT The current issue has two articles, one pro-authenticity, one anti-authenticity. The anti-authenticity article raises a number of points, mainly 1) Paleographical problems. One prominent example being the _he_ which lacks the clear vertical stem below the bottom horizontal which always occurs in paleo-Hebrew. 2) The reading of the text. "lyhwdh", "to Judah", ruled out by the absence of anything remotely resembling a _he_ after the "lyhwd" sequence. "lyhwdm", "to the Jews", should be "lyhwdym", i.e. an omitted _yod_ has to be assumed to make the reading work. 3) "Yehud" as a regional name was in use in the Persian Period, would be horribly anacronistic in the First Jewish Revolt period. ------------------- Subject: Re: Bat Creek Stone in current _Biblical Archaeology Review_ From: brittobj@ucunix.san.uc.edu (Benjamin Jay Britton) Date: 4 Aug 1993 19:09:01 -0400 Lines: 42 >The current issue has two articles, one pro-authenticity, one >anti-authenticity. The anti-authenticity article raises a number >of points, mainly Is this based on one of the apparently two Cyrus Gordon translations, or is this an independent reading? >1) Paleographical problems. One prominent example being the _he_ which >lacks the clear vertical stem below the bottom horizontal which always >occurs in paleo-Hebrew. Could this be a Roman-influenced handwriting? Bad handwriting? >2) The reading of the text. "lyhwdh", "to Judah", ruled out by the absence >of anything remotely resembling a _he_ after the "lyhwd" sequence. "lyhwdm", >"to the Jews", should be "lyhwdym", i.e. an omitted _yod_ has to be assumed >to make the reading work. As we know, even with ascii terminals and spell checkers, sometimes spelling is atrocious. The stone is very rough also, unless it is a fragment from a larger piece, whoever made it didn't put much effort into framing their epigraphy. The stone is a nice, shiny blackish-brown. Obsidian? Chert? It is flat, a very nice surface for inscription. The edges are awful though. The stone rather looks like it might be a fragment of a larger inscribed stone. On the left side there looks like a partial letter that may have been broken off of the edge when the stone was detached from a larger inscribed piece. Would the text make any sense as a fragment of a sentence? >3) "Yehud" as a regional name was in use in the Persian Period, would be >horribly anacronistic in the First Jewish Revolt period. Does it feel, to anyone who might be epigraphically attuned, like it might have been written in Hebrew by someone not hebrew themselves, say an Iberian or Libyan? Could the reference have been meant ceremonially, rather than as an au courant tag for the locale? What are the points in the cited article indicating authenticity? -benb Benjamin.Britton@uc.edu (513)556-0283 ------------------- From: an535@yfn.ysu.edu (Mark A. McConaughy) Subject: Re: Bat Creek Stone in current _Biblical Archaeology Review_ Date: 5 Aug 1993 12:41:45 GMT Lines: 31 Benjamin, I should have checked by to read pile sooner. I have teh BAR issue but hadn't read it when I replied. It pretty much says what I said about the Bat Creek Tablet and also criticized several other letters as non-Canaanite/Hebrew. It also has the best photo of it I've come across in the last few days. The pro article mentions the C14 date (which I think is erroneous after seeing the wood in their photo). Its preservation is attributed to contact with the brass or copper items in the tomb. I've seen enough items preserved in that fashion to know the wood wasn't preserved by copper/brass. There still is a dessication from insect and drying factors not seen in this wood. The "E" is quite clear on the stone and is a Block E. There is no mistaking it for a "he." People do not write in mixed text unless the language (such as Cherokee -- but I am now convinced the tablet isn't Cherokee) makes up a mixed alphabet for writing it down. The Bat Creek Tablet doesn't look like some hastily scrawled item. AFter reading about additional problems with the writing, I have to agree that it is most likely a full-fledged fraud. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Mark A. McConaughy mmcconaughy@delphi.com Section of Archaeology an535@yfn.ysu.edu The State Museum of Pennsylvania m.mcconaughy on GEnie Box 1026 mmcconaugh on NVN Harrisburg, PA 17109 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ -- Mark A. McConaughy an535@yfn.ysu.edu ------------------- From: kckluge@eecs.umich.edu (Karl Kluge) Subject: Re: Bat Creek Stone in current _Biblical Archaeology Review_ Date: 5 Aug 93 21:17:33 Lines: 54 In article <23pfid$j42@ucunix.san.uc.edu> brittobj@ucunix.san.uc.edu (Benjamin J ay Britton) writes: Newsgroups: sci.archaeology From: brittobj@ucunix.san.uc.edu (Benjamin Jay Britton) Date: 4 Aug 1993 19:09:01 -0400 >The current issue has two articles, one pro-authenticity, one >anti-authenticity. The anti-authenticity article raises a number >of points, mainly Is this based on one of the apparently two Cyrus Gordon translations, or is this an independent reading? I believe that Cyrus Gordon wrote the pro-authenticity paper, although I don't have the issue in my office to check. >1) Paleographical problems. One prominent example being the _he_ which >lacks the clear vertical stem below the bottom horizontal which always >occurs in paleo-Hebrew. Could this be a Roman-influenced handwriting? Bad handwriting? Could it be a letter "E" that a forger rotated and reflected to make a plausible looking character, much like the reflected "P" on the right side of the stone? >2) The reading of the text. "lyhwdh", "to Judah", ruled out by the absence >of anything remotely resembling a _he_ after the "lyhwd" sequence. "lyhwdm", >"to the Jews", should be "lyhwdym", i.e. an omitted _yod_ has to be assumed >to make the reading work. As we know, even with ascii terminals and spell checkers, sometimes spelling is atrocious. >3) "Yehud" as a regional name was in use in the Persian Period, would be >horribly anacronistic in the First Jewish Revolt period. Does it feel, to anyone who might be epigraphically attuned, like it might have been written in Hebrew by someone not hebrew themselves, say an Iberian or Libyan? Could the reference have been meant ceremonially, rather than as an au courant tag for the locale? How many departures from normal variation are we expected to swollow in order to avoid rejecting it as bogus? Yeah, maybe it just had the bad luck to be written by a sloppy carver and sloppy speller who liked using out of date names. Then again, maybe it's a fraud. To the untrained eye, the letters look as much like rotated and reflected Latin characters as anything else. What are the points in the cited article indicating authenticity? The inscription, the C-14 dating of the spool, and the brass bracelet. The con- article didn't address the issue of the brass bracelet. ------------------- From: kckluge@glasnost.eecs.umich.edu (Karl Kluge) Newsgroups: sci.archaeology Subject: Re: Bat Creek Stone in current _Biblical Archaeology Review_ Date: 06 Aug 1993 19:53:20 GMT Lines: 7 A correction: the pro-authenticity paper was by Huston McCulloch (who, incidentally, is on the net, and posted on the topic in soc.culture.jewish when the subject came up last June -- his email is hmccullo@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu). Karl ------------------- From: hmccullo@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Huston McCulloch) Subject: Re: Bat Creek Stone in current _Biblical Archaeology Review_ Date: 18 Aug 1993 21:10:18 GMT Lines: 159 from Hu McCulloch re: Bat Creek Stone discussion since 28 July under subjects "Bat Creek Stone in Current _Biblical Archaeology Review_" and "bows and Mandans", mostly by Benjamin Britton and Mark McConaughy. for general background, see July/August Biblical Archaeology Review, article by myself and comment by P. Kyle McCarter of Johns Hopkins. If your local newstand is out, write BAR, 3000 Connecticut Ave NW, Suite 300, Washington DC 20008. Back issues available, or send $24 for 1 yr and ask to have it retroactive. Stay tuned to BAR for my reply to McCarter and other reactions to my article in the letters section of the Nov/Dec issue. My reply points out a major methodological flaw in McCarter's argument, and includes citations of examples of _he_ with no tail. McCarter claims that this tail is "always" present in paleo-Hebrew. For more detail, see my article in the Fall 1988 _Tennessee Anthropologist_, as well as the extensive comment by Robt Mainfort and Mary Kwas in the Spring, 1991 TA, and my reply, which has now appeared in the Spring 1993 issue of TA. Available from Dept. of Anthropology, Univ. of Tenn., 252 So. Stadium Hall, Knoxville, TN 37996-0720. See also the appendix to _Before Columbus_, by Cyrus Gordon (1971), which may be in your public library. Specifics: McConaughy (2 Aug) asks for the C-14 date reference. The sample was prepared by Beta Analytic of Coral Gables, Fla (Beta-24483), and the carbon was analyzed by the Eidgenossische Technische Hochschule in Zurich (ETH-3677). See my 1988 article (pp. 107-10) and 1993 TA article (pp. 7-14) for discussion and details. Briefly, the dendrocalibrated date was AD 427, with a 2 sigma band (95% confidence interval) running from AD 32 - AD 769. BAR ran a color photograph of the wood fragments, clearing showing the copper salts that preserved the wood for 15-odd centuries. Beta Analytic does a large volume of work for the Smithsonian, so I assume they know what they are doing. ETH did the recent tests on the Dead Sea Scrolls (see BAR, Nov/Dec 1991). McConaughy (10 August) is concerned that the wood may have been treated with a preservative that may have distorted the date. I was concerned about this as well. Petroleum products would, as McConaughy points out, make the wood appear too old. Conversely, wax or linseed oil products would make the wood appear too young. For this reason I asked to have the wood examined once when I was visiting the Smithsonian (circa 1981). A processing lab technician examined it with a stereomicroscope in the presence of Bruce Smith (he's the curator of New World materials there) and myself. The technician reported that it did not appear to have been treated. I don't know how conclusive this is, but McConaughy is welcome to take a look at it himself, I am sure. McCarter expressed concern about contamination from groundwater etc. However, the cover letter on the report from Beta Analytic, signed by Dr. Murry Tamers and dated May 2, 1988, certified that "Your wood was pretreated by first examining for rootlets. The sample was then given a hot acid wash to eliminate carbonates. It was repeated rinsed to neutrality and subsequently given a hot alkali soaking to take out humic acids. After rinsing to neutrality, another acid wash followed and another rinsing to neutrality." I asked them at the time about possible contamination by preservatives and finger oils, and they indicated that their pretreatments should have eliminated these. Again, I assume they know what they are doing, but McConaughy is welcome to ask them for a retest on the remaining 99%+ of the material, if he wishes. A retest with more material than was used last time would be a good idea, in any event, in view of the unusally large standard error on the existing date. This retest ought to use another lab (just as a check, not that there is anything wrong with Beta), and ought to test the sample for Cu, Zn, Pb, and Ag. According to the Smithsonian excavator, the copper salts in the wood fragments came from corrosion of the "copper" (now known to be brass) bracelets found under the same undisturbed skull as the wood and the inscription. It has also been suggested (by Cyrus Gordon, among others) that the wood fragments (which were surely earspools) had once been covered with copper sheeting which has entirely disintegrated. If the copper salts were really from the brass bracelets, some of the zinc and/or lead from the bracelets should be present, whereas if they were from native copper sheeting, silver may be present. The significance of this is not enormous, since the Smithsonian excavator's report is presumably reliable, but it could provide independent evidence of the intimate association of the bracelets with the C-14 dated wood. The bracelets plus the C-14 date provide independent evidence of a pre-Columbian old world contact with the new, even if there had been no inscription, since brass is not believed to have been made in the new world before 1492. I requested and found funding for the last C-14 date, so if McConaughy wants to have a retest, it is his turn to find the money and make the request. (In any event, I've exhausted my goodwill with the Smithsonian. The director of the processing laboratory has informed me that I've looked at the Bat Creek materials too much already, and will not have future access to them.) McConaughy (10 Aug) claims that "The Smithsonian had nothing to do with the production of the [so he alleges] fraud. The person actually doing the field work was apparently trying to acquire a full-time job with the Smithsonian according to the one hypothesis. If so, then you can't say the Smithsonian was responsible for producing it." In fact, the excavator was at the time on the Smithsonian's payroll, and excavated the Bat Creek mound as part of his job for the Smithsonian Bureau of Ethnology's Mound Survey project. The stone is one of the official finds of the Mound Survey, certified as authentic by the project's director, Cyrus Thomas, in the 12th annual report of the Bureau of Ethnology, pp. 392-4. It was not found by the Smithsonian's Board of Directors, to be sure, but if this is somehow a fraud, it was an inside job, and therefore a Smithsonian Fraud. The Smithsonian has never retracted it, not even in the prefatory materials to the recent reprint edition of Thomas's report. Although he now has abandoned "the end of days" part, Cyrus Gordon originally proposed the translation "For Judea, the end of days" for the inscription. McConaughy (29 July) attacks Gordon's credibility on the basis of this proposal, since the inscription "contains only 9 symbols, not enough to come up with the Hebrew inscription 'For Judea, the end of days.'" In fact, Gordon got this from only 7 symbols, which he was tentatively reading as QTs LYHWD. The LYHWD has a minor problem which does not concern us here, but if it means anything, it means "for Judea." The problem, then is with extracting "the end of days" from the two letters QTs (qoph-sadhe). In 1972, Gordon explained, "The reading QTs LYHWD[] would make sense if it were tenable paleogrpahically. QTs 'end' has had the technical meaning 'the end of days (inaugurating the Golden or Messianic Age) since at least the time when Daniel 12:4 was written; there the 'end' (QTs) marks the resurrection when 'many of those asleep in the land of dust will wake up (yaQiSu).' There is a conscious play on QTs 'end' and the verb YQYTs 'will wake.'" He added, in a footnote, "It [QTs] has this meaning in the _Manual of Discipline_ 4:25, in the Thirteen Principles of Maimonides ([Hebrew omitted here] 'those who hope for His End-of-Salvation'), and in the traditional Hanukkah Hymn known by its opening words [Hebrew omitted] (to wit, [Hebrew omitted] 'the end of Babylon; Zerubbabel! At the end of the seventy (years of captivity) I was saved.')" I don't know what McConaughy's credentials as a Hebrew scholar are, but Gordon has taught Hebrew and associated languages for decades at Brandeis, and then NYU. I know only a few words of Hebrew myself, so I am in no position to judge what Gordon says here, but I strongly suspect that McConaughy simply doesn't know what he is talking about. McConaughy also attacks Gordon for modifying his translation of the inscription. (Gordon abandoned "the end of days", not because of its length, but because the reading QTs for the first 2 letters (nos 1 and 2 in the BAR drawing) was based on the similarity of these letters to their square Hebrew forms, whereas the rest of the inscription is in paleo-Hebrew.) Because of this change in postion, McConaughy says, "So what am I to make of his work? I think it is pure speculation." This is the same man who on 29 July assured us that "All evidence indicates the burials in Bat Creek Mound and the Bat Creek Tablet are Historic Cherokee dating to the early 1820's or 1830's," yet on 5 August announced "I am now convinced the tablet isn't Cherokee". So what are we to make of _McConaughy's_ views? Ironically, Gordon is also criticized by many for his alleged "inflexibility." McConaughy goes on (5 Aug) that "The 'E' is quite clear on the stone and is a Block E. Thre is no mistaking it for a 'he'." In addition to the references I cite in my letter to BAR replying to McCarter, McConaughy should take a look at the _he_ in the last line of the obverse side of coin #20 in the Jewish Museum of New York catalogue, _Coins Reveal_. This is a coin of Alexander Jannaeus (ruled Judea 103-76 BC). The letter in question is essentially a "Block E", backwards, as on the Bat Creek stone, and has no tail at all. (The Bat Creek letter has a vestigial tail, in fact, making it slightly fancier than Alexander's, but still the same letter). J. Huston McCulloch Economics Dept., Ohio State Univ. (614) 292-0382 ------------------- From: hmccullo@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Huston McCulloch) Newsgroups: sci.archaeology Subject: Re: Bat Creek Stone in current _Biblical Archaeology Review_ Date: 19 Aug 1993 15:30:54 GMT Lines: 65 re: the Bat Creek stone, an apparently paleo-Hebrew inscription found by a Smithonian excavator in an undisburbed burial mound in eastern Tennessee in 1889. (NMNH catalog # 134902). In my posting of 8/18, I neglected to mention that a small bone implement (probably an awl) was found in the same burial as the inscribed Bat Creek stone, the brass bracelets, and the wood that has already been C-14 dated to AD 32 - AD 769. Perhaps the bone collagen in this implement could be C-14 dated, to give an independent reading on the age of the burial that would not be affected by the hypothetical preservatives that McConaughy (10 Aug) fears may have contaminated the existing date. The awl is NMNH catalogue # 134904, and for $5 or so the Smithsonian will send you a nice big glossy (or slide) of it. Negative # 89-13233. Smithsonian photo services, Smithsonian Inst., Washington DC 20560. (They also have color and/or B&W slides and/or prints of the stone, earspools, etc.) I don't know what the awl weighs, but it is about 5.4 cm long, and is a half section of a bone that was about 0.70 cm in diameter, hollow in the middle where the marrow was, and tapered to a point at one end. As I recall, it's pretty solid. I hear tell that the carbon in bone collagen is particularly immune to substitution from contaminants in groundwater, at least moreso than wood cellulose, so that if you go to the trouble of isolating the collagen you have a particularly pure date. I also hear tell (from establishment sources) that a Dr. Thomas Stafford at the Inst. for Arctic and Alpine Research at the Univ. of Colorado, 1560 30th St., Campus Box 450, Boulder Colo 80309, (303) 492-1196, does a particularly competent good, though the test is not cheap. (I think we're talking under $1000, but not by much. By comparison, an AMS test can be had for $550, and a conventional test for $225.) McConaughy (12/August) wonders whether "Thomas's description of polish on the wood in his 1894 description of the sample might, in fact, be his seeing residue from a treatment applied to it by the excavator. If it is simply a description of the final polishing of the wood, then I would expect the sheen to have been eaten away by humic acids in the soil over a period of 1000+ years." I checked the excavator's field report, dated 3/7/89, and found that it was he who first described the wood fragments as "polished" when found, so that this was not a treatment. Thomas's 1894 description was lifted almost word for word, with just a little editing, from this report, so Thomas may not have thought much about it. This word has always puzzled me, however, since in fact the fragments are entirely pithy (the excavator also reported that he could squeeze the (cupreous) green water out of them with his fingers). There is no evidence of polish in the photo on p. 52 of the July/Aug BAR. I think perhaps what the excavator meant was that the wood has been finely worked (into earspools), and looked as though it had originally been polished. I don't think there is much to be made of this. (The business about the inscription being Cherokee, on the other hand, was added by Thomas.) The mandible of the skull that was resting on the inscribed stone, brass bracelets, wood fragments, and bone implement was recovered and catalogued, but unfortunately appears to have been lost during the 100+ years since it was found. Felicia Pickering of the Smithsonian's staff recently did a through search for it. Sorry about the double transmission yesterday! I thought I was just listing my post the first time around, but apparently it went out. The two are identical. Hu McCulloch Ohio State Univ. Econ Dept. (614) 292-0382 taa a lat From: an535@yfn.ysu.edu (Mark A. McConaughy) Newsgroups: sci.archaeology Subject: Re: Bat Creek Stone in current _Biblical Archaeology Review_ Date: 19 Aug 1993 16:24:39 GMT Lines: 195 Hu, >for general background, see July/August Biblical Archaeology >Review, article by myself and comment by P. Kyle McCarter of >Johns Hopkins. If your local newstand is out, write BAR, 3000 >Connecticut Ave NW, Suite 300,Washington DC 20008. Back >issues available, or send $24 for 1 yr and ask to have it >retroactive. After they posted the note about the BAR article on Internet, I did see and read it. It was sitting in my "to read" pile and I am sorry I didn't get to it sooner. Obviously, I agree more with McCarter than you, and still do. Some of the things Cross and he spotted, I had also picked up on when I saw a picture of the Bat Creek Tablet. I now have a very hard time believing it is anything but a fake. >McConaughy (2 Aug) asks for the C-14 date reference. >The sample was prepared by Beta Analytic of Coral Gables, >Fla (Beta-24483), and the carbon was analyzed by the >Eidgenossische Technische Hochschule in Zurich (ETH-3677). >See my 1988 article (pp. 107-10) and 1993 TA article (pp. 7-14) >for discussion and details. Briefly, the dendrocalibrated date >was AD 427, with a 2 sigma band (95% confidence interval) >running from AD 32 - AD 769. Thank you for the references. I have also worked with Beta Analytic and they are a reputable firm. However, I am not convinced the sample adequately dates the Bat Creek Tablet, at any rate. I just called (8/19/93 @ ~9:30 am) Bruce Smith at the Smithsonian concerning the wood sample. He provided a lot of information to me concerning your visit and the Bat Creek materials. He confirmed that you had visited and looked at the tablet. However, the microscopic examination of the tablet and wood was not done by anyone with sufficient training or skill to determine whether or not the items were treated in any way. Specialists would be needed to do those examinations. The wood sample you dated came from a Hopewellian-style copper earspool. If so, your sample looks like it does adequately date the earspool. Conversely, it is not clear that the sample you dated is directly associated with the Bat Creek Tablet. The Bat Creek site is a series of mounds, not one single mound. The Hopewellian copper earspool wood you dated may not have come from the mound that "produced" the Bat Creek tablet. Smith said records aren't clear as to precisely where any of the materials currently in the Smithsonian collection were recovered, in spite of the descriptions in Thomas (i.e., Thomas may or may not be describing the objects you dated). Any discussion as to whether or not the wood sample was contaminated is moot at this point since we can't prove it came from the same place as the tablet. >McConaughy (10 Aug) claims that "The Smithsonian had >nothing to do with the production of the [so he alleges] fraud. >The person actually doing the field work was apparently trying >to acquire a full-time job with the Smithsonian according to the >one hypothesis. If so, then you can't say the Smithsonian was >responsible for producing it." In fact, the excavator was at the >time on the Smithsonian's payroll, and excavated the Bat Creek >mound as part of his job for the Smithsonian Bureau of Ethnology's >Mound Survey project. The stone is one of the official finds of the >Mound Survey, certified as authentic by the project's director, >Cyrus Thomas, in the 12th annual report of the Bureau of >Ethnology, pp. 392-4. It was not found by the Smithsonian's >Board of Directors, to be sure, but if this is somehow a fraud, >it was an inside job, and therefore a Smithsonian Fraud. The >Smithsonian has never retracted it, not even in the prefatory >materials to the recent reprint edition of Thomas's report. This is more an argument over responsibility than anything. The excavator, J. W. Emmert, was a cousin of Cyrus Thomas, project leader for the Smithsonian. Emmert was a part-time employee who bounced in an out of work due to a drinking problem. Thomas had threatened to fire him just before the Bat Creek "discovery" was made, according to Bruce Smith. Emmert was trying to preserve his job when the Bat Creek Tablet suddenly found. Thomas was trying to prove the mound builders were the ancestors of the historic Cherokee. Emmert conveniently provided the "proof" to Thomas, who obviously bought it hook, line, and sinker (see his description in his 1894 report on pg. 393). The block E would fit in with an attempt to fake a Cherokee inscription. Mixing it with other Cherokee and ancient alphabetic symbols from other places would give it an appearance of antiquity in the eyes of Thomas. It saved Emmert's part-time job with the Smithsonian. You may quibble about whether it is the responsibility of the Smithsonian, but this is because Thomas, the full-time Smithsonian employee bought it as genuine at the time. Bruce Smith will tell you that it is a fake made by Emmert, if you'd care to ask him. >Although he now has abandoned "the end of days" part, >Cyrus Gordon originally proposed the translation "For Judea, >the end of days" for the inscription. McConaughy (29 July) >attacks Gordon's credibility on the basis of this proposal, since >the inscription "contains only 9 symbols, not enough to come >up with the Hebrew inscription 'For Judea, the end of days.'" >In fact, Gordon got this from only 7 symbols, which he was >tentatively reading as QTs LYHWD. The LYHWD has a minor >problem which does not concern us here, [much cut out]. >McConaughy also attacks Gordon for modifying his translation >of the inscription. (Gordon abandoned "the end of days", not >because of its length, but because the reading QTs for the >first 2 letters (nos 1 and 2 in the BAR drawing) was based >on the similarity of these letters to their square Hebrew forms, >whereas the rest of the inscription is in paleo-Hebrew.) Because >of this change in postion, McConaughy says, "So what am I >to make of his work? I think it is pure speculation." This is the >same man who on 29 July assured us that "All evidence >indicates the burials in Bat Creek Mound and the Bat Creek >Tablet are Historic Cherokee dating to the early 1820's or 1830's," >yet on 5 August announced "I am now convinced the tablet >isn't Cherokee". So what are we to make of _McConaughy's_ >views? Ironically, Gordon is also criticized by many for his >alleged "inflexibility." I will admit to making some foolish statements when I first checked on the tablet, and will even grant Gordon the same benefit. However, Frank Cross, currently one of the formost Hebrew scholars, also criticizes both of Gordon's translations. Gordon has consistantly translated mixed alphabetic inscriptions as if they represent a single writting style (e.g., Pairaba stone and others). This is not something that lends one to put any "faith" in his translations. The nine symbols I mentioned represent what are on the tablet. Gordon had all of them available to him for his translations, whether he used them or not. Gordon has been criticized, and with good cause, for his translations. >I know only a few words of Hebrew myself, so I am in no >position to judge what Gordon says here, but I strongly suspect >that McConaughy simply doesn't know what he is talking about. You are right in one respect, one of us doesn't know what he is talking about. My expertise is admittedly in Early Bronze Age artifacts, but I have at least worked with materials from that region of the world, know the alphabets, and a little of the languages from the periods we are discussing. However, I am primarily an archaeologist, not a linguist. If YOU haven't any background in the subject, why are you trying to defend it and describe it in print as if you do? In fact, it is likely that the Bat Creek inscription is a mixture of alphabets, including Cherokee, and that is why Thomas thought it was an early Cherokee inscription. However, the mixture of alphabets just indicates it is a fraud. >McConaughy goes on (5 Aug) that "The 'E' is quite clear on the >stone and is a Block E. Thre is no mistaking it for a 'he'." In >aaddition to the references cite in my letter to BAR replying to >McCarter, McConaughy should take a look at the _he_ in the last >line of the obverse side of coin #20 in the Jewish Museum of New >York catalogue, _Coins Reveal_. This is a coin of Alexander Jannaeus >(ruled Judea 103-76 BC). The letter in question is essentially a "Block >E", backwards, as on the Bat Creek stone, and has no tail at all. (The >Bat Creek letter has a vestigial tail, in fact, making it slightly fancier >than Alexander's, but still the same letter). I would suggest you examine a lot of hand written inscriptions and not rely on coinage for your analysis of the Bat Creek stone. After all, it is a hand inscribed stone. The "he" does have a tail in hand inscriptions from the Levant. Also, I fail to see the "tail" on the Bat Creek inscription that you describe. There is a little mark to the side of the block "E", a little comma like symbol. If that is what you are referring to, it isn't a tail. The "E" is clearly blocked out with nothing extending below the vertical element of the letter, however you hold it. It doesn't resemble any hand written "he" I've seen from the Levant. ___ ___\ ___\ This is the closest I can show you to what an "he" \ should look like. The horizontal bars should slope down to the left. The block "E" on the Bat Creek Tablet hardly resembles a real "he." Looking forward to your letter in BAR. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Mark A. McConaughy mmcconaughy@delphi.com Section of Archaeology an535@yfn.ysu.edu The State Museum of Pennsylvania m.mcconaughy on GEnie Box 1026 mmcconaugh on NVN Harrisburg, PA 17109 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ -- Mark A. McConaughy an535@yfn.ysu.edu From: brittobj@ucunix.san.uc.edu (Benjamin Jay Britton) Subject: Re: Bat Creek Stone in current _Biblical Archaeology Review_ Date: 20 Aug 1993 18:23:17 -0400 Lines: 129 >from Hu McCulloch >re: Bat Creek Stone discussion since 28 July under subjects "Bat Creek Stone in >Current _Biblical Archaeology Review_" and "bows and Mandans" > >for general background, see July/August Biblical Archaeology Review, article >by myself and comment by P. Kyle McCarter of Johns Hopkins. If your >local newstand is out, write BAR, 3000 Connecticut Ave NW, Suite 300, >Washington DC 20008. Back issues available, or send $24 for 1 yr and ask to >have it retroactive. > >Stay tuned to BAR for my reply to McCarter and other reactions to my article in >the letters section of the Nov/Dec issue. My reply points out a major >methodological flaw in McCarter's argument, and includes citations of >examples of _he_ with no tail. > >[material deleted for space] > >Briefly, the dendrocalibrated date was AD 427, with a 2 sigma band (95% >confidence interval) running from AD 32 - AD 769. BAR ran a color photograph >of the wood fragments, clearing showing the copper salts that preserved the >wood for 15-odd centuries. Beta Analytic does a large volume of work for the >Smithsonian, so I assume they know what they are doing. ETH did the recent >tests on the Dead Sea Scrolls (see BAR, Nov/Dec 1991). > >[material deleted for space] > >take a look at >the _he_ in the last line of the obverse side of coin #20 in the Jewish Museum >of New York catalogue, _Coins Reveal_. This is a coin of Alexander Jannaeus >(ruled Judea 103-76 BC). The letter in question is essentially a "Block E", >backwards, as on the Bat Creek stone, and has no tail at all. (The Bat Creek >letter has a vestigial tail, in fact, making it slightly fancier than >Alexander's, but still the same letter). >J. Huston McCulloch >Economics Dept., Ohio State Univ. >(614) 292-0382 one of the pleasures of the net is its interactivity. it isn't just a video game! it's a nice surprise to find firsthand information coming to us from interested parties. May I ask, also, what were the circumstances and conclusions of the recent c14 test on the dead sea scrolls? I was only aware that one had been done quite awhile ago. What scrolls were tested, and what dates were determined? i found this sensible and compelling. Etruscan and Greek also sometimes use that backwards block E if i'm not mistaken... The style of writing is useful perhaps also to explore possible contexts or mileus from which the tablet may have originated. If we put aside our sceptic's hats for a split second, we may be amused and interested to note that the tablet seems to confirm ancient statements about the lands over the western ocean (I am suggesting the maker or bringer of the stone came from the mediterranean) that it was a refuge and a haven, kept secret by ibero- and lybio-phoenicians for their personal use. By the purported time of the tablet, of course, Carthage would have been fully Romanized. The tablet has been described as perhaps reflecting the events of the Bar Kochba or Jewish national revolts which were crushed by the Romans. But the Romans apparently had friends in the Temple leadership, and it suited them to encourage local governance when they could. Two hypotheses may be considered here (still doffing our sceptic's hat): a.) the romans brought over whoever made or carried the stone, or b.) they didn't. In other words, if the stone is real, does it reflect a flight from Roman authority, or does it represent an extension of it? whose ship might they have used? The brass may be a clue. The earspools sound 100% American. Did the Iberians wear earspools at that time? The stone may have been aquired by the grave resident through trade or as a war trophy. It may have just been found somewhere. Are there any other cultural indicators like the brass implements that might steer one's search for the source. For those who still wish to wear their hats, may I ask if you have been able to disprove the authenticity of the Roman wrecks in Venezuela, Guatemala and Brazil? When you can, I'd be interested to hear from you. The burden of proof has shifted back from hercules' shoulders to atlas'. For 100 years, we have carried this story, this myth of columbus. Proof exists that the story is far from true. We might wish to ease the burden onto those who wish us to believe it, but there is a vast institutional investment in the story. I have no illusions that the public will be heralded with the news of Columbus' precession, and there is undeniable benefit to be derived from this rigorous scepticism. If one is to tell one's children, one's students, one's neighbor that this is true, one should be properly convinced it is true, and the fertile mind of sceptics is a weasel in a rat's nest when it comes to ferreting out truth. If we are to change our curricula, adapt our cultural cosmology, we must know that what we are doing is right, that our information is correct. But can we now, in good conscience, still say that no evidence exists of significant pre-Columbian contact? Can we blandly and squarely state that "Columbus was first (except for a ragged settlement in l'Anse aux Meadows, and the "natives" who trotted across the Bering land bridge)"? Some circumspection, at least, may be in order, on the parts of those who have been vehemently isolationist in their dogma. The story of significant trans-oceanic pre-Columbian contact is the Golden Apple of the Hesperides. It either does, or it does not exist in reality. For now, I'd say it exists until proven otherwise. There are a thousand other archaeological elements indicating contact; botanical, skeletal, architectural, astronomical, historical, etc. The controversy surrounding the Bat Creek Stone is a a microcosm of the larger universe of those who see and those who refuse to see trans-oceanic contacts. It is a significant controversy because despite the best efforts of sceptics to debunk its authenticity, the stone quietly testifies to significant trans-oceanic cultural contact in pre-Columbian times, against the weight of contemporary dogma. If it cannot be proved that this tablet is fake, then isolationists must carry the weight of faith, the burden of proof, and the heavens on their shoulders. I hope we haven't lost Prof. McConaughy... Hopefully he's just organizing a response. Meanwhile, anyone care to conjecture on the reason why people stopped mining copper on Isle Royal in Michigan? I mean the BIG mines, not the little ones. These people knew how to mine copper; underground tunnels, connected, drained... I mean the one with the 6 ton fragment cut and ready to carry away, abandoned... I mean the ones on Keweenaw Peninsula with excavations 60 feet in depth, the ones dug through nine feet of solid rock to reach copper veins 18 inches thick. I mean the mines used between 3000 and 1000 bc by people who made copper axes and hafted copper spear points in Neolithic style... Isolationists say that it's just not known why, they refuse to consider long-distance trade as a factor. But the design of the axes and the spears is impossible to ignore. I personally have little information about these mines, but does anyone have any reasons for disbelieving that the copper was used in trans-oceanic trade, other than that they're not used to believing it was possible? Might the copper have gone south or east? Who mined it, why? Why did they stop? all in good fun... -benb Benjamin.Britton@uc.edu (513)556-0283 From: srr@udorn.Eng.Sun.COM (Steve Reid) Newsgroups: sci.archaeology Subject: Re: Bat Creek Stone in current _Biblical Ar Date: 23 Aug 1993 20:08:21 GMT Lines: 12 >From brittobj@ucunix.san.uc.edu (Benjamin Jay Britton) >...is correct. But can we now, in good conscience, still say that no evidence >exists of significant pre-Columbian contact? Can we blandly and squarely >state that "Columbus was first (except for a ragged settlement in l'Anse aux >Meadows, and the "natives" who trotted across the Bering land bridge)"? Some >circumspection, at least, may be in order, on the parts of those who have been >vehemently isolationist in their dogma. The story of significant trans-oceanic >pre-Columbian contact is the Golden Apple of the Hesperides... "Methinks, he doth protest too much." From: hmccullo@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Huston McCulloch) Newsgroups: sci.archaeology Subject: Re: Bat Creek Stone in current _Biblical Archaeology Review_ Date: 24 Aug 1993 01:20:12 GMT Lines: 298 In article <2509g7$re1@news.ysu.edu> an535@yfn.ysu.edu (Mark A. McConaughy) writes: > > I just called (8/19/93 @ ~9:30 am) Bruce Smith at the >Smithsonian concerning the wood sample. He provided >a lot of information to me concerning your visit and the >Bat Creek materials. He confirmed that you had visited >and looked at the tablet. However, the microscopic >examination of the tablet and wood was not done by >anyone with sufficient training or skill to determine >whether or not the items were treated in any way. Specialists >would be needed to do those examinations. The wood >sample you dated came from a Hopewellian-style copper >earspool. If so, your sample looks like it does adequately date >the earspool. If the prior examination was not adequate to determine whether or not there were contaminating treatments on the earspools, or if Beta Analytic's pretreatments were not adequate to remove any inconspicuous ones that may have escaped the technician's expertise, why don't you and/or Smith have them reexamined by an appropriate specialist, and/or have them retested? You're supposed to be the archaeologists, not me! It's been 23 years now since Gordon called attention to the Bat Creek stone. Why do amateurs like myself have to get these tests run? > Conversely, it is not clear that the sample you dated is directly >associated with the Bat Creek Tablet. The Bat Creek site is >a series of mounds, not one single mound. The Hopewellian >copper earspool wood you dated may not have come from the >mound that "produced" the Bat Creek tablet. Smith said records >aren't clear as to precisely where any of the materials currently >in the Smithsonian collection were recovered, in spite of >the descriptions in Thomas (i.e., Thomas may or may not be >describing the objects you dated). Any discussion as to whether >or not the wood sample was contaminated is moot at this point >since we can't prove it came from the same place as the tablet.> Not so. The Naational Anthropological Archives, down in the basement of the NMNH, has the extant records of the Mound Survey. The original of the excavator's report on the three Bat Creek mounds is in MS 2400, in a long letter dated 3/7/1889. Cyrus Thomas's 1894 description of the excavation in the _12th Annual Report_ was lifted almost verbatim from this report. Smith to the contrary notwithstanding, Thomas's description, published 5 years later by a man who was not there, is therefore not the primary source; this letter, written about a month after the dig by John Emmert, the man who actually soiled his boots finding the stone, is. (There's even documentation in the archives that Emmert's boots actually had mud on them! More on this below.) The description of the three Bat Creek mounds, and which artifacts came from which mound, is all right there in Emmert's letter, just as it appears in Thomas's tome, with only minor omissions and editing. (I have quoted all the omissions in my two Tennessee Anthropologist articles, just so they will be available to the interested.) Emmert concluded, "I have packed the specimens carefully and put the engraved stone in a box separate as you directed [he had allerted Thomas to the unusual stone in an earlier letter] and have made two catalogues, one to you and one to Maj. Powell [the director of the Bureau of Ethnology and Thomas's supervisor]." The "Catalogue of Specimens shiped [sic] Mch 7th 89" with his letter lists 14 items, #6-11 of which are identified as being from skeleton no. 1, mound no. 3, Tipton group. (In his report, Emmert had identified the Bat Creek Group as having been on the land of a farmer named MM Tipton, and it was the Bureau's custom to name mounds and artifacts after the landowners.) Item #6 is "two copper bracelets." In a bound catalogue Smith showed me in the Processing Laboratory, Emmert's #6 was assigned NMNH # 134898 upon receipt. (These are the brass bracelets shown on p. 51 of my BAR article. Emmert called them "copper", and Thomas repeated this without analysis. They area really brass, containing about 27% zinc.) Emmert identified #7 as the "pieces copper stained wood," that he had described in his report. These were assigned NMNH # 13899, which is visible 5 times over in the photo on p. 52 of my BAR article, along with the copper staining that preserved them. (There are 6 more pieces the size of the 5 in the BAR photo. These are portions of at least 2 more ear spool disks, but don't fit together as nicely as the 5 shown do. One spool would have two disks, one inside the ear and one outside.) Emmert's #8 included 2 items, a "drilled stone," actually a naturally open crinoid fossil (-:the inhumee was America's first paleontologist:-), and a piece of "Red paint" (paint stone is a common burial item). These two were assigned NMNH nos. 134900 and 134901, resp. #9 was the "engraved stone", # 134902. #10 was the "Jaw bones of skeleton no. 1 mound no. 3 Tipton Group", NMNH # 134903, but unfortunately now lost, and # 11 was a "bone instrument", the probable awl I mentioned in my 8/19 follow-up posting, aka NMNH 134904. Nos. 2-5 were clearly identified as being the items described in the letter and in Thomas's report as being from Bat Creek Mound #2, and #1 and #12-14 were identified as being from the Lane, Blankenship, Charles Tipton, and Wear mounds. Other artifacts collected by the Mound Survey may have fuzzy proveniences, but Emmert was a particularly experienced and careful excavator. Smith is simply mistaken. >The excavator, J. W. Emmert, was a cousin of Cyrus Thomas, >project leader for the Smithsonian. The implication of this information is presumably that Emmert was a nepotistic appointee of dubious competence. Cyrus Thomas did indeed hire a cousin (of his wife's, I believe) of dubious competence, but this was John Rogan, not John Emmert. Rogan did some well-known work at the Etowah group, but was relatively unproductive during 1886, and resigned ignominiously in October of 1886, after complaining in one of his "Dear Cousin," letters to Thomas that Thomas had been comparing him unfavorably to Emmert. Smith is mistaken again. > .... Emmert was a part-time >employee who bounced in an out of work due to a drinking >problem. Thomas had threatened to fire him just before >the Bat Creek "discovery" was made, according to Bruce Smith. >Emmert was trying to preserve his job when the Bat Creek >Tablet suddenly found. There is some truth to this, but Smith has the chronology and details garbled. Emmert was part-time during 1883 and 1884, but full-time from 1/1885 to 2/28/1887. Early in 1887, when the project's funds were drying up, Thomas wrote to Powell that if he didn't get more money, he would have to lay Emmert off, despite the good work he and others were doing "day and night." Emmert was laid off indefinitely effective the end of February. In March of 1887, while Emmert was already out of a job, Thomas somewhat redundantly fired him on the basis of a report he had received out of the blue from a local postmaster, to the effect that Emmert had been seen drinking when he was supposedly working (the letter didn't mention whether this was on Emmert's day shift or night shift), and that his boarding house proprietor comlained that he often threw himself into bed with his muddy boots still on. Emmert indeed drank often (too often, as he had already confessed to Thomas in an October 1885 letter) as an antidote for chronic "chills" that plagued him after an 1885 bout with "ague," a malaria-like fever with chills and shooting pains, that he had contracted in Jan-March of 1885 while excavating the Citico mound in freezing rain and snow on his first assignment as a full-time Bureau employee. Emmert badgered Thomas to rehire him throughout 1887 and 1888, and even tried to pull political strings to this end. Thomas finally rehired him in Feb. 1889 to do some mop-up work, and he found the Bat Creek stone within 2 weeks. Thomas did not _threaten_ to fire him just before the discovery, as Smith and McConaughy would have it; he _actually_ fired him _long_ before the discovery, and _rehired_ him just before the discovery. Emmert wasn't trying to preserve his job when the stone was found; he had just gotten it back. > .... Thomas was trying to prove the mound >builders were the ancestors of the historic Cherokee. Emmert >conveniently provided the "proof" to Thomas, who obviously >bought it hook, line, and sinker (see his description in his >1894 report on pg. 393). The block E would fit in with an >attempt to fake a Cherokee inscription. Mixing it with other >Cherokee and ancient alphabetic symbols from other places >would give it an appearance of antiquity in the eyes of Thomas. >It saved Emmert's part-time job with the Smithsonian. If Emmert had wanted to give Thomas a Cherokee inscription, why did he give him one that says "for Judea" in paleo-Hebrew letters instead? Emmert had just spent the summer of 1888, on his own initiative, with the Eastern Band of Cherokee in North Carolina to pump them for information about their burial sites. Even if he did not know how to write Cherokee himself, he could easily have asked someone to write out a plausible name or epitaph, which he could have legibly copied onto the stone. Yet according to McConaughy (vintage 5 August), "the tablet isn't Cherokee." It's true that the "block E" looks like a Cherokee "gun" (the un being nasal, as in French), and the elongated "S" could be a "ga", but overall it is no more Cherokee than English. As English, it can be forced to read "4SE?L,YP T" when held one way, and "i dh'7?ESb" when held the other way, where "?" indicates a letter that looks like nothing in English or Cherokee, but is a striking Jewish War _yod_. It apparently makes no more sense as Cherokee, or so I am told by Duane King, a Cherokee grammarian who works for the Museum of the American Indian in New York. The best Cherokee letters, the "ga" and "gun," also work nicely as paleo-Hebrew _waw_ and _he_, respectively. And if Emmert was trying to give Thomas evidence that the Cherokee had built the mounds, why would he have thrown in Old World letters as McConaughy claims? >Bruce Smith will tell you that it is a fake made by Emmert, >if you'd care to ask him. Apparently he'd also tell me, with equal confidence, that Emmert was Thomas's cousin, that NMNH 134899 (the wood fragments) may have come from Wisconsin for all anyone knows, and that NMNH 134902 (the engraved stone) may really be an Apollo Project moonrock. If he can prove the inscription is a fake made by Emmert, why didn't he mention this in his Introduction to the 1985 reprint edition of Thomas's 1894 report? > .... However, Frank Cross, currently one of the formost >Hebrew scholars, also criticizes both of Gordon's translations. I wasn't aware that Cross had ever spoken out about Gordon's early "For Judea, the End of Days" translation. On 29 July, McConaughy attacked Gordon's credibility as a Hebrew scholar, on the grounds that the inscription "contains only 9 symbols, not enough to come up with the Hebrew inscription "For Judea, the end of days." Could McConaughy please give a reference to where Cross's criticism of this particular translation appeared? >>I know only a few words of Hebrew myself, so I am in no >>position to judge what Gordon says here, but I strongly suspect >>that McConaughy simply doesn't know what he is talking about. > > You are right in one respect, one of us doesn't know what >he is talking about. My expertise is admittedly in Early Bronze >Age artifacts, but I have at least worked with materials from >that region of the world, know the alphabets, and a little of the >languages from the periods we are discussing. However, I am >primarily an archaeologist, not a linguist. The issue at hand was not whether McConaughy or I knows more Hebrew (if he knows even a little of the language, that is admittedly more than I do), but whether McConaughy or _Cyrus Gordon_ knows what he is talking about. McConaughy had attacked Gordon's competence on the specific grounds that his extraction of "the end of days" from the merely 2 letters QTs (using Ts for sadhe, aka tsadhe) shows that his alleged translations of Hebrew are not to be taken seriously. Personally, I am not competent to say whether, in Jewish eschatology, there is a concept called the "End of Days," or whether the word "QTs" that appears in Daniel 12:4 and was cited by Gordon can be taken as a reference to this concept. This summer the French Academy conferred upon Gordon, on the occasion of his 85th birthday, the unprecedented title _Doyen d'ougaritique_ for his many contributions to the study of the Ugaritic language, a 12th century BC precursor of biblical Hebrew. I still suspect that M. le Doyen knows what he is talking about here, and that McConaughy does not. > .... If YOU haven't any >background in the subject, why are you trying to defend it >and describe it in print as if you do? The archaeologists hadn't investigated the interesting claims that had been made for this artifact, so I figured that if I was going to find out how valid they were, I would have to investigate them myself. If I hadn't intruded, the inscription would still be Cherokee, and the wood fragments would still indicate "recent interment," as per McConaughy, 29 July. >>McConaughy goes on (5 Aug) that "The 'E' is quite clear on the >>stone and is a Block E. Thre is no mistaking it for a 'he'." In >>aaddition to the references cite in my letter to BAR replying to >>McCarter, McConaughy should take a look at the _he_ in the last >>line of the obverse side of coin #20 in the Jewish Museum of New >>York catalogue, _Coins Reveal_. This is a coin of Alexander Jannaeus >>(ruled Judea 103-76 BC). The letter in question is essentially a "Block >>E", backwards, as on the Bat Creek stone, and has no tail at all. (The >>Bat Creek letter has a vestigial tail, in fact, making it slightly fancier >>than Alexander's, but still the same letter). > > I would suggest you examine a lot of hand written inscriptions >and not rely on coinage for your analysis of the Bat Creek stone. >After all, it is a hand inscribed stone. The "he" does have a tail >in hand inscriptions from the Levant. McConaughy has this backwards. The Bat Creek inscription, being cut with a hard instrument into a stone, is ipso facto _lapidary_. _Manuscript_ inscriptions, on the other hand, that are made with pen and ink, often look different. Coin dies and seals, also being cut with a hard instrument into a hard surface, are also considered lapidary. The ideal comparison is therefore between the Bat Creek inscription and other lapidary inscriptions, such as coins and seals or seal impressions, and not with manuscript inscriptions, even though the line is not always a hard and fast one. The little dots or "pearls" at the ends of some of the lines forming the Bat Creek letters, incidentally, are a purely lapidary characteristic. These appear on Jewish War coins, in imitation of similar pearls that appeared on Greek coins of the period. It seems the die cutters made these dots first by drilling, and then connected them with lines afterwards, in order to create a clean line ending. > .... Also, I fail to see the "tail" >on the Bat Creek inscription that you describe. There is a little >mark to the side of the block "E", a little comma like symbol. If >that is what you are referring to, it isn't a tail. The "E" is clearly >blocked out with nothing extending below the vertical element >of the letter, however you hold it. The join between the vertical and the bottom horizontal is not the way one would expect it in a Roman "E", with the vertical resting on the bottom horizontal, which extends beyond it. Rather, the bottom horizontal (holding the stone as in BAR, p. 46, so the "E" looks "backwards") meets the vertical, which extends a little beyond _it_. I am calling this extension a "vestigial tail." I wouldn't want to insist that it was intentional, but it is present. The Alexander Jannaeus and other coins show that the tail was in any event optional in the late Second Temple period. Incidentally, the reason the paleo-Hebrew _he_ looks so much like a backwards E is that our E was in fact originally just a backwards _he_. > > ___ > ___\ > ___\ This is the closest I can show you to what an "he" > \ should look like. The horizontal bars should slope > down to the left. The block "E" on the Bat Creek > Tablet hardly resembles a real "he." > >Looking forward to your letter in BAR. This is a good _he_, but other types existed as well. In the Abba inscription, shown on p. 53 of my BAR paper, McConaughy's _he_ exists, alongside at least 3 other distinct types. Hu McCulloch Economics Dept. Ohio State Univ. (614) 292-0382 From: an535@yfn.ysu.edu (Mark A. McConaughy) Newsgroups: sci.archaeology Subject: Re: Bat Creek Stone in current _Biblical Archaeology Review_ Date: 25 Aug 1993 15:05:01 GMT Lines: 183 Hu, >If the prior examination was not adequate to determine >whether or not there were contaminating treatments on >the earspools, or if Beta Analytic's pretreatments were not >adequate to remove any inconspicuous ones that may have >escaped the technician's expertise, why don't you and/or Smith >have them reexamined by an appropriate specialist, and/or >have them retested? You're supposed to be the archaeologists, >not me! It's been 23 years now since Gordon called attention >to the Bat Creek stone. Why do amateurs like myself have >to get these tests run? Because, as professionals, we aren't going to waste our money on something that won't prove anything one way or the other. The questionable association of the sample and Bat Creek Tablet make it silly to spend money on something that will not provide any conclusive proof of its antiquity. Re association of the artifacts you indicate: >Not so. The Naational Anthropological Archives, down >in the basement of the NMNH, has the extant records of >the Mound Survey. The original of the excavator's report >on the three Bat Creek mounds is in MS 2400, in a long >letter dated 3/7/1889. Cyrus Thomas's 1894 description of >the excavation in the _12th Annual Report_ was lifted almost >verbatim from this report. Smith to the contrary notwithstanding, >Thomas's description, published 5 years later by a man who >was not there, is therefore not the primary source; this letter, >written about a month after the dig by John Emmert, the man >who actually soiled his boots finding the stone, is. (There's >even documentation in the archives that Emmert's boots actually >had mud on them! More on this below.) >The description of the three Bat Creek mounds, and which >artifacts came from which mound, is all right there in Emmert's >letter, just as it appears in Thomas's tome, with only minor >omissions and editing. This goes directly to the point concerning association. Thomas didn't view the materials in place. If Emmert faked the tablet, like we (not you) believe, then these descriptions are useless in demonstrating anything is really directly associated. There is no confirmation of the associations beyond Emmert's word, and that is questionable. Even if we presume Emmert's innocence, for the sake of argument, the fact that other burials in the mound had demonstratable European trade goods indicate the mound was disturbed, and this disturbance was not recognized by Emmert. Belt buckles that definitely are late 18th - early 19th century styles were recovered from a burial 3 1/2 feet from the top of the mound, and as Thomas (Emmert) stated; "Whether or not this was an intrusive burial could not be determined, thought the uniform composition of the mound and size of the oak growing above it seems to be against this supposition; . . ." Thus, Emmert was incapable of recognizing mound disturbances. He is NOT the skillful excavator you seem to think he is. This leads us to the brass bracelets you suggest might date between 45 BC and 200 AD. These bracelets match other European goods of the 18th-19th centuries. They were said to be found with the burial producing the tablet. The bone of contention here is you believe them to be early, we say they are European trade items. In the latter case, the burial would have to be considered disturbed and there was some type of mixing of materials in the grave. With Emmert's demonstratable lack of ability to distinquish soil disturbances, we have to question the association of artifacts in this tomb. At best, they are a mixture of prehistoric and historic items. At worst, if Emmert did fake things like we believe, the whole association may be made up. His catalog listings would be fanciful, just like the tablet. >If Emmert had wanted to give Thomas a Cherokee >inscription, why did he give him one that says "for Judea" >in paleo-Hebrew letters instead? Cyrus Gordon and you are the ones claiming it says "for Judea" in paleo-Hebrew letters. McCarter hasn't (BAR, pg. 55) and provides reasons why. Cross has questioned the interpretion of various letters as paleo-Hebrew, and he certainly should know since he probably has seen more paleo-Hebrew script than any person currently alive. I also question the interpretation of the "he" as a paleo- Hebrew letter. Thus, there is some dispute over whether it actually states what you think it states. Gordon's translation is not widely agreed upon by people who have dealt with paleo-Hebrew. >If Emmert had wanted to give Thomas a Cherokee inscription, >why did he give him one that says "for Judea" in paleo-Hebrew >letters instead? As I mentioned, it doesn't necessarily state "for Judea" and the use of a mixed alphabet is one of the features that indicates the tablet is a fake. Presumming Emmert was trying to provide evidence that the mound builders were related to modern Cherokee, he would at least be cognizant that language changes through time. A mixture of older and recent letters would provide an appearance of some antiquity, and that is what Thomas accepted. Even you have indicated at least two of the letters could be Cherokee. So I see no conflict here. >I wasn't aware that Cross had ever spoken out about Gordon's >early "For Judea, the End of Days" translation. On 29 July, >McConaughy attacked Gordon's credibility as a Hebrew scholar, >on the grounds that the inscription "contains only 9 symbols, not >enough to come up with the Hebrew inscription "For Judea, >the end of days." Could McConaughy please give a reference >to where Cross's criticism of this particular translation appeared? Cross's criticism is in the interpretations of the letters used for the translation. It isn't a direct critique of the translation. However, if the letters are incorrectly interpreted, as Cross indicates, then the translation is faulty. Mention of this is made in McCarter's reply to you in BAR. It is also cited in Mainfort and Kwas's 1991 article in Tennessee Archaeologist. I should point out you have taken issue with Frank Cross over his paleographical differences with your rendition of the stone. I find this rather amusing since you previously indicated you can't read Hebrew, and Cross has been working with paleo-Hebrew for many years. As for Cross's critique of Gordon's other work, check his article "Phoenicians in Brazil" BAR January/February 1979. This describes the problems with the Paraiba stone translation, and Gordon's proclivity to misinterpret things. Re: block "E": >Rather, the bottom horizontal (holding the stone as in >BAR, p. 46, so the "E" looks "backwards") meets the >vertical, which extends a little beyond _it_. I am >calling this extension a "vestigial tail." I wouldn't >want to insist that it was intentional, but it is present. I don't see anything that even resembles the tail, vestigial or otherwise, on the Bat Creek tablet. The two lines may not meet exactly, but they certainly do not resemble a "he" tail. I have made bigger mismatches with pencil and paper when writing block "E"s. Cross, McCarter, and I would all agree that the Bat Creek Tablet letter isn't a "he." BTW, the coin you depict on pg.56 of the BAR article does have a "tail" and the T-bar at the top of the letter. It certainly isn't a good block "E." >This is a good _he_, [my poor computer attempt at making >a 'he"] but other types existed as well. In the Abba inscription, >shown on p. 53 of my BAR paper, McConaughy's _he_ exists, >alongside at least 3 other distinct types. And all of those types have a "tail." None of the Abba "he'"s lack it and none of them resemble a block "E," either. Here is a series of quotes demonstrating your qualifications: >You're supposed to be the archaeologists, not me! >I know only a few words of Hebrew myself, so I am >in no position to judge what Gordon says here, . . . >Why do amateurs like myself . . . Why, indeed! You aren't an archaeologist, you have little knowledge of how radiocarbon dating samples are processed, and you don't know Hebrew. Yet when experts point out mistakes in your interpretations, you publish critiques of them as if you do know what you are talking about. You don't. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Mark A. McConaughy mmcconaughy@delphi.com Section of Archaeology an535@yfn.ysu.edu The State Museum of Pennsylvania m.mcconaughy on GEnie Box 1026 mmcconaugh on NVN Harrisburg, PA 17109 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ -- Mark A. McConaughy an535@yfn.ysu.edu From: brittobj@ucunix.san.uc.edu (Benjamin Jay Britton) Newsgroups: sci.archaeology Subject: Re: Bat Creek Stone in current _Biblical Ar Date: 25 Aug 1993 07:26:59 -0400 Lines: 89 >>...is correct. But can we now, in good conscience, still say that no evidence >>exists of significant pre-Columbian contact? Can we blandly and squarely >>state that "Columbus was first (except for a ragged settlement in l'Anse aux >>Meadows, and the "natives" who trotted across the Bering land bridge)"? Some >>circumspection, at least, may be in order, on the parts of those who have been >>vehemently isolationist in their dogma. The story of significant trans-oceanic >>pre-Columbian contact is the Golden Apple of the Hesperides... > > >"Methinks, he doth protest too much." See the dog. See the dog barking at the gates of the Underworld. That dog's name is not Cerberus, it's Spot! "Out, damned Spot! Run, Spot, Run!" Guilty as charged, if you mean this fence-sitting is difficult for me. It would be nice if current widely-held beliefs were all correct. Alternatively, it would be nice if stigma were not attached to being unconvinced of certain widely-held beliefs. I would actually be interested in its significance, if I thought that the miracle of Columbus' discovery, after 11,000 years of isolation, were true. I would be interested in the nascent parallel evolution theory, the significance of independent invention and its relevance regarding the nature of civilization and the essential nature of humankind. But ... I cannot believe the circular logic of a thousand frightened voices, assuring each other it is still safest to insist that Columbus discovered America. The evidence, in my opinion, is overwheming and compelling in its indications of significant trans-oceanic cultural contacts in pre-Columbian times. I say this with an open mind, ready to review anything which convincingly demonstrates that the thesis stated above is incorrect. But the evidence for is olationism is as scanty as that for discoidal hovercraft in near-earth orbit, and just as illogically presented. As far as I can see, America, region by region, developed its own style and traditions, just like the rest of the world, just as uniquely and just as clearly. Its easy to spot the difference between a Hopewell engraving and a Mayan one, for example; it's easy to spot the difference between a Han Dynasty bronze tripod and a Roman one also, for a similar reason. The cultures were distant from each other and contact was limited. But it existed. And it is essential to the nature of those artifacts in form and substance. It is not mere coincidence and independent invention. They spring from common roots. If I turn to the Chimu gold masks and gaze back at Schliemann's finds, the Aegean counterparts in time and style, I cannot fail to note that the thread which MAY connect them, an ocean-crossing, mercantile culture, did exist and was fascinated with masks and with gold: proto-Phoenicians and perhaps before them the Etruscans, for whom the word for mask is "phersu", from which we take the English word "person". Where else do we find precious masks on the faces of buried aristocracy? One notes the jade masks of China and Yucatan. One checks the correspondences in time. One sees a POSSIBLE correspondence. The study of post-Holocene archaeology is replete with examples of long- distance cultural contacts. Like the word "mene", ideas permeate (although if I read that word again, I'll reach for my revolver; but only because I like to be ahead of the fresh waves, and it won't be long before we're all sick of that new, little word - which reinforces my point, in that people just share cool ideas for the sake of it, because it's fun, because they make money, etc.) It happens. And I just can't convince myself that America, in the richness and variety of its pre-Columbian nature, did not share also with the so-called Old World cultures. The evidence strongly indicates otherwise. From magnets to astronomy, architecture, botany, metallurgy, textile manufacture, writing, and in so many other regards, indigenous American culture clearly parallels that of Asia, Africa, Europe and the Pacific Islands, both in style and time. I would love to be convinced that Isolationists are correct; I would argue passionately for "their side" if I could make myself agree that they're right. It would be so much more comfortable to be in tune with popular culture, rather than stuck out on some arcane, controversy-laden branch of Ygdrassil, watching Columbophilic axe-men attempt to separate this branch from common knowledge. In the long-run, I think it's obvious that it will have to be admitted that old Columbus was on nothing more than a voyage to claim dominion over lands previously held as secret trade havens, rather than a true voyage of discovery. More like a voyage of uncovery. But, hey, convince me otherwise! Some people accept whatever they are told and expect others to do likewise. Those who think for themselves demand a compelling collection of facts to enable personal judgement. Just because 240 million Americans believe Columbus discovered America, it ain't necessarily so! Our thousand experts teach the public otherwise. The case has been made regarding the Bat Creek Stone, both on this newsgroup and in professional literature. There exists no valid argument against its authenticity. It is one of many instances of informative cultural artifacts becoming the seeds of controversy about the "if" and not the "why". How long must we ask "if", before we begin seriously to ask "why"? -benb Benjamin.Britton@uc.edu (513)556-0283 From: hmccullo@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Huston McCulloch) Newsgroups: sci.archaeology Subject: Re: Bat Creek Stone in current _Biblical Archaeology Review_ Date: 26 Aug 1993 21:08:29 GMT Lines: 160 In article <25fv2t$i38@news.ysu.edu> an535@yfn.ysu.edu (Mark A. McConaughy) replies to my posting of 24 August concerning the Bat Creek Stone, an apparently paleo-Hebrew inscription found by a Smithsonian excavator in a burial mound in Tennessee in 1889. I had asked concerning e.g. C-14 testing of wood fragments found with the Bat Creek Stone, >> Why do amateurs like myself have >>to get these tests run? and he replied, > Because, as professionals, we aren't going to waste our money >on something that won't prove anything one way or the other. >The questionable association of the sample and Bat Creek >Tablet make it silly to spend money on something that will >not provide any conclusive proof of its antiquity. As recently as 29 July, McConaughy believed that the wood fragments recovered from the mound were "indicative of recent interment. The wood would not have been preserved very long in the temperate Tennessee environment ... All evidence indicates the burials in Bat Creek mound and the Bat Creek Tablet are Historic Cherokee dating to the early 1820's or 1830's." A C-14 date on the wood fragments (or on the bone awl also found - see my posting of 19 August) could have proven this and laid the issue to rest on the basis of real testing rather than mere (and erroneous, as it turns out) conjecture. McConaughy (19 Aug) reported that "[Smithsonian curator Bruce] Smith said records aren't clear as to precisely where any of the materials currently in the Smithsonian collection were recovered, in spite of the descriptions in [Cyrus] Thomas ['s 1894 _Mound Explorations_, where the Bat Creek stone was published as an official find of the Mound Survey] (i.e., Thomas may or may not be describing the objects you dated)." I replied, >>The description of the three Bat Creek mounds, and which >>artifacts came from which mound, is all right there in [excavator John >>Emmert's letter [of 3/7/1889], just as it appears in Thomas's tome, with only >>minor omissions and editing. To this McConaughy responds, > This goes directly to the point concerning association. Thomas >didn't view the materials in place. If Emmert faked the tablet, >like we (not you) believe, then these descriptions are useless in >demonstrating anything is really directly associated. There >is no confirmation of the associations beyond Emmert's word, >and that is questionable. There is nothing questionable about Emmert's word, except that he found the Bat Creek tablet. But it is circular, and therefore unscientific, reasoning to argue that Emmert's word is questionable because he found the Bat Creek stone, and that the Bat Creek stone is questionable because it was found by John Emmert. Despite Emmert's self-admitted drinking problem, Thomas had no qualms about rehiring him 1889 or certifying his work, Bat Creek stone and all, as authentic and authoritative in his 1894 report. > Even if we presume Emmert's innocence, for the sake of >argument, Innocence of what? Of finding an Old World inscription in a pre-Columbian context? Since when is this a crime? Either there are such inscriptions or there aren't, depending on what turns up when you excavate undisturbed sites. > .... the fact that other burials in the mound had >demonstratable European trade goods indicate the mound >was disturbed, and this disturbance was not recognized by >Emmert. Belt buckles that definitely are late 18th - early >19th century styles were recovered from a burial 3 1/2 feet >from the top of the mound, and as Thomas (Emmert) stated; >"Whether or not this was an intrusive burial could not be >determined, thought the uniform composition of the mound >and size of the oak growing above it seems to be against this >supposition; . . ." Gee, you pros sure have difficulty keeping your facts straight. It's a good thing you have us amateurs around to keep you out of trouble. The entire official record - the published report, Emmert's letter of 3/7/89, and Emmerts's catalogue (see my posting of 24 August) - is quite clear that the "belt buckles" to which you allude came from Bat Creek Mound #2, whereas the inscribed tablet came from a skeleton in Bat Creek Mound #3. There was some early confusion about this, which is why I clarified it on pp. 110-111 of my 1988 _Tennessee Anthropologist_ article, and in endnote 22 of my BAR article. One of the "buckles" is in fact a heart-shaped silver pin that was indeed a common 18th century trade item (see p. 110 of my article and the references cited there). This is Emmert's slip, originally. > ... Thus, Emmert was incapable of recognizing >mound disturbances. He is NOT the skillful excavator you >seem to think he is. In fact, Thomas added the part about how "the uniform composition of the mound and size of the oak growing above it seems to be against this supposition;..." Furthermore, McConaughy quotes Thomas out of context, for after the semicolon Thomas continues, on the basis of Emmert's carefully worded report, "... nevertheless the further discoveries made show that it [the burial in Bat Creek Mound #2 with the two 'buckles'] was subsequent to the original burials and not in accordance with the original plan." (p. 392). It seems that Emmert was instructed to avoid interpretations wherever possible, and just to report the facts as he found them. Thus if he found an awl, he called it a "bone instrument," or if he found a wooden earspool fragment, he called it a "wood fragment," leaving it to Thomas to make these identifications if he wished. In the case of Bat Creek Mound #2, he looked for but saw no clear signs of intrusion or proof of non-intrustion in the soil, even though the structure of the mound (with a stone chamber under this extended and relatively intact burial, containing flexed and scattered skeletons that were much more greatly decayed) clearly indicated intrusion. Thomas very appropriately put Emmert's 2 and 2 together and came up with 4. In the case of Bat Creek Mound #3, however, Emmert reported "I found some large Sasafras [sic] trees standing on the mound and Mr. Tipton [the farmer] told me that he had choped [sic] other trees off of it forty years ago and that the mound had been a cluster of trees and grape vines as far back as the oldest setler [sic] could recolect [sic]. There was an old rotten stump yet in the center of this mound the roots of which ran down in the mound almost or quite to where the [9] skeletons [and the tablet] were found. That any one could have ever worked this mound without leaving some evidence of it I think it imposable [sic]. Emmert wouldn't win any spelling bees and I am sure McConaughy could have done a better job if he had excavated the mound himself, but it is clear enough from Emmert's report that Mound #3 was undisturbed. > As for Cross's critique of Gordon's other work, check his >article "Phoenicians in Brazil" BAR January/February 1979. >This describes the problems with the Paraiba stone translation, >and Gordon's proclivity to misinterpret things. The Paraiba stone is very different from the Bat Creek stone, in that it may never have even existed, and we only have Gordon's analysis of its language to suggest that it did. The Bat Creek stone, on the other hand, not only exists, but was certified as authentic by the Smithsonian's Mound Survey. The primary issue with it is the identity of the script. Cross's BAR paper on Paraiba, as I recall, was just a popular recap of the points he made in _Orientalia_ in 1968. See also Gordon's original paper, Friedrich's comment, and Gordon's reply to Cross and Friedrich. They all make plausible-sounding points, but unfortunately one would have to be a veritable Friedrich, Cross, or Gordon oneself to be able to judge who won. A much less technical case against authenticity was made by Geraldo I. Joffily of Brasilia in the 1972 _Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenlaendischen Gesellschaft_. Unfortunately it is in French, but still that's a lot easier for most of us than is the Gordon-Cross-Friedrich debate, most of which is in Phoenician! Gordon may have replied to Joffily's points in _Riddles in History_, but I forget what he said, if anything. >Re: block "E": My goal in publishing my BAR paper was to push the inscription under the noses of hundreds of scholars who are very familiar with Hebrew and paleo-Hebrew, to see what their reaction to Gordon's reading is. Let's wait and see what they decide. The Sept./Oct. BAR just came out, so we have to do something about the name of this thread. -- Hu McCulloch From: brittobj@ucunix.san.uc.edu (Benjamin Jay Britton) Newsgroups: sci.archaeology Subject: Re: Bat Creek Stone in current _Biblical Archaeology Review_ Date: 26 Aug 1993 14:48:50 -0400 Lines: 165 In article 5573, Mark McConaughy writes: >Hu, > >>If the prior examination was not adequate to determine >>whether or not there were contaminating treatments on >>the earspools, or if Beta Analytic's pretreatments were not >>adequate to remove any inconspicuous ones that may have >>escaped the technician's expertise, why don't you and/or Smith >>have them reexamined by an appropriate specialist, and/or >>have them retested? You're supposed to be the archaeologists, >>not me! It's been 23 years now since Gordon called attention >>to the Bat Creek stone. Why do amateurs like myself have >>to get these tests run? > Because, as professionals, we aren't going to waste our money >on something that won't prove anything one way or the other. >The questionable association of the sample and Bat Creek >Tablet make it silly to spend money on something that will >not provide any conclusive proof of its antiquity. For all we know, you may fear such a re-test will weaken your argument. Ignorance is no excuse for scepticism. There is not a sufficient basis for disqualifying the association of the sample. You, yourself, recently claimed that a c14 re-test would be an important contribution to the body of knowledge concerning this excavation. If you have no desire to spend the requisite money on another test, refrain from claiming the test invalid, i.e. put up or shut up. Since you wish to stand on professionalism, you have that obligation. It should require no reminder. > the fact that other burials in the mound had >demonstratable European trade goods indicate the mound > was disturbed, Utterly circular logic, either ignorant or poorly-thought. No offense intended, but stronger logic must be employed or you must admit that your argument is groundless (no pun intended). If Emmert found a Roman coin in there, would you say that is was obviously a disturbed burial, because otherwise no Roman coin could have been placed there, since Columbus didn't sail until 1492? That would also be circular logic. There are strong indications that the brass pieces found at the base of the mound with the nine skeletons and the tablet are of early manufacture and from the first, original, undisturbed burial. >Belt buckles that definitely are late 18th - early >19th century styles were recovered from a burial 3 1/2 feet >from the top of the mound, and as Thomas (Emmert) stated; >"Whether or not this was an intrusive burial could not be >determined, thought the uniform composition of the mound >and size of the oak growing above it seems to be against this >supposition; . . ." Thus, Emmert was incapable of recognizing >mound disturbances. He is NOT the skillful excavator you >seem to think he is. >This leads us to the brass bracelets you suggest might date >between 45 BC and 200 AD. These bracelets match other >European goods of the 18th-19th centuries. They were >said to be found with the burial producing the tablet. The >bone of contention here is you believe them to be early, we >say they are European trade items. In the latter case, the >burial would have to be considered disturbed and there >was some type of mixing of materials in the grave. No one in the colorful history of this controversial find before you has felt so desperate as to claim that the burials at the base of the mound were disturbed; not even you, before this posting. I take it you are clutching at straws. Emmert *correctly* stated that the burial at the top of the mound *may have been* intrusive. He was more careful than you in his use of language. He was correct, you are not; your tendency to gross overstatements and circular logic have caused you to misrepresent Emmert's statement and attempt to force a conclusion on that basis, presumably to discredit Emmert's unequivocal assertion that the burials at the base of the mound were definitely undisturbed. You then repeat your argument of circular logic, if it's not demonstrably indigenous to America, it must be a fake or a disturbance. Yet in an earlier post you stated that in order for you to accept the fact of significant trans-oceanic travel, you would have to see a demonstrably non-indigenous artifact in a demonstrably genuine American excavation. One can only see that for which one has the eyes. > Gordon's >translation is not widely agreed upon by people who have >dealt with paleo-Hebrew. Practically no one, except self-described experts such as yourself, thinks that the language is anything but that which Gordon has said, i.e. paleo- Hebrew. Have any of your demurring associates alternative translations, or do they all simply refuse to translate it because they won't accept it is real? If they have no alternative readings, they are irrelevant. If they have alternative readings, it would be informative and worthwhile to discuss them. Do you want to go back to claiming it's Cherokee or a combination with other scripts, and attempt to give us your rendering? Or are you suggesting that the tablet is a meaningless collage of symbols? >use of a mixed alphabet is one of the features that indicates the >tablet is a fake. Presumming Emmert was trying to provide evidence >that the mound builders were related to modern Cherokee, he would >at least be cognizant that language changes through time. Circular logic again. Meaningless verbiage. Further, if Emmert were that "cognizant" and was thus inclined, he would know that the Smithsonian was trying desperately to prove that no old world influences *could be found* in the Americas, and he would certainly not use an old world script. The circumstances indicate this Tablet slipped past the Smithsonian reviewers only because they didn't recognize the script in time. It may be real, but if the Smithsonian had thought it was written in paleo-Hebrew, they would never have certified it as an authentic find from an undisturbed burial. That they mistook it for Cherokee makes it so interesting. The strongly expressed theses of the Smithsonian regarding the nature of indigenous American culture has at times conflicted with pure knowledge. No employee, including Emmert, could be unaware of the official views of the Institute. Emmert would have lost his job for sure, turning up a paleo-Hebrew artifact. > Cross's criticism is in the interpretations of the letters used for >the translation. It isn't a direct critique of the translation. However, >if the letters are incorrectly interpreted, as Cross indicates, then >the translation is faulty. If it wasn't so cold, it would be a nice day. Improper logic. A leap at conclusion. Even if letters are misread, the meaning of the text is not necessarily misunderstood. Therefore, even if letters were incorrectly interpreted, the translation is not necessarily faulty. Further there are strong indications that all letter were correctly interpreted. >I should point out you have >taken issue with Frank Cross over his paleographical differences >with your rendition of the stone. I find this rather amusing since >you previously indicated you can't read Hebrew, and Cross has >been working with paleo-Hebrew for many years. This is misrepresentation of fact. The rendition to which is here referred is Gordon's. As far as is known Cross hasn't even presented a "rendition* of his own, other than studious ignorance of its possibility of authenticity. McCulloch quite rightly points out the deficiencies in Cross' refusal to accept Gordon's translation. McCulloch *may* doubt Cross' correctness. >Cross, McCarter, and I would all agree >that the Bat Creek Tablet letter isn't a "he." Gordon's capacities are more clearly attested than yours or Cross' or McCarter's. There are plenty of reasons for believing that's a "he". Your opinion is interesting, worthwhile, but unconvincing in itself. >Yet when experts >point out mistakes in your interpretations, you publish >critiques of them as if you do know what you are talking >about. You don't. >~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ >Mark A. McConaughy Perhaps it might be more accurate to state that "he may not", rather than that he doesn't. He afforded you that courtesy. Your bald assertions are hardly scientific, whether regarding the Tablet or McCulloch. But I think we all appreciate your desire to rigorously test the Tablet's authenticity. Your "expertly" made chemise is rather transparent, by the way. Have more respect for others and expect the same. Let's base the discussion on facts. The fact is, McCulloch has done a great job researching this stone. Right or wrong, he deserves better from you, and you would help to clarify things by refraining from personal attacks. Your wide knowledge and intense interest are valued, but you may very well be all wrong about a) the Bat Creek Stone, and b) trans-oceanic travel in pre-Columbian times. Even professionals, locked as they often are in the dogma of their times, are often wrong. May I remind you of Sautuola and the Cave of Altamira? Aggasiz and the Glaciers? Raymond Dart and Austrolopithecus? Darwin? McCulloch may be very correct! -benb Benjamin.Britton@uc.edu (513)556-0283 From: zonker@cbnewsd.cb.att.com (thomas.m.harris) Newsgroups: sci.archaeology Subject: Re: Bat Creek Stone in current _Biblical Ar Date: 27 Aug 93 14:01:43 GMT Lines: 14 >Can we blandly and squarely state that "Columbus was first You're missing the point. We say Columbus discovered America for the same reason that we say the Wright Brothers were the inventors of the airplane. It's not that they are the first to try and have some success, it's that they are the first to be able to repeat the experiment and tell the rest of the world about it. The significance of Columbus is not that he got across the Atlantic once, but that he did it 3 times. The significance of the Wrights is not that their airplane flew, it's that it landed and then flew again and again and again. That occasional shipwrecked sailors or wandering barbarians crossed the ocean to a strange land is a significant discovery. Discovery requires repetion and communication. Tom Harris From: an535@yfn.ysu.edu (Mark A. McConaughy) Newsgroups: sci.archaeology Subject: Re: Bat Creek Stone in current _Biblical Archaeology Review_ Date: 27 Aug 1993 16:04:49 GMT Lines: 166 To Benjamin and Hu, Benjamin states re C14 dates: >For all we know, you may fear such a re-test will weaken your argument. >Ignorance is no cuse for scepticism. There is not a sufficient basis >for disqualifying the association of the sample. You, yourself, recently >claimed that a c14 re-test would be an important contribution to the >body of knowledge concerning this excavatin. If you have no desire to >spend the requisite money on another test, refrain from claiming the >test invalid, i.e. put up or shut up. Since you wish to stand on >professionalism, you have that obligation. It should require no reminder. and Hu states: >As recently as 29 July, McConaughy believed that the wood >fragments recovered from the mound were "indicative of recent >interment. The wood would not have been preserved very long >in the temperate Tennessee environment ... All evidence indicates >the burials in Bat Creek mound and the Bat Creek Tablet are >Historic Cherokee dating to the early 1820's or 1830's." A C-14 date >on the wood fragments (or on the bone awl also found - see my posting >of 19 August) could have proven this and laid the issue to rest on >the basis of real testing rather than mere (and erroneous, as it turns >out) conjecture. I don't feel there is any conflict here. The wood may well be contaminated with preservatives or be young as I think, or it may really date to the age Hu had it tested. However, after taking a look at the situation in which everything was found, claimed, etc., it just doesn't matter which of those hypotheses are correct. The wood can't be conclusively associated with the tablet and, thus, any date produced has no bearing on the issue of the age of the tablet. I'm not going to waste time or money arguing over something that is of dubious value. It all revolves around what truly is associated. A retest will not prove anything, one way or the other. A good C-14 date would resolve the problem, I haven't retracted that statement. However, a good C-14 date requires a suitable sample demostratably in direct association with the tablet. Unfortunately, there isn't any such sample and we can't obtain a good C-14 date for the tablet. Re: Associations -- I'm not going to take up bandwidth by reproducing all the comments -- see original posts: Hu is correct that the belt buckles came from Mound 2, that is my mistake. However, it doesn't negate the point I was making. The buckle and bracelet associations are claimed by Emmert and, if he is telling the truth, demonstrate there are disturbances in both mounds during the 18th-19th century. Disturbances were NOT recorded by either Emmert or Thomas. They clearly weren't capable of recognizing them. This is not circular reasoning, as Benjamin states. Those objects did not mysteriously appear in the mound (or maybe they did!) if you accept Emmert's descriptions. Someone had to have placed them there during the 18th or 19th century. If Emmert's discoveries are as stated, then there is no doubt that someone dug into the mounds during the 18th or 19th century. Either that, or the mounds actually date to the 18th or 19th century since Emmert and Thomas claim the soil wasn't disturbed! Benjamin, are you suggesting I am wrong and that first century AD Phoenician/Hebrew trader's brought 18th or 19th century AD trade goods with them so they could be placed in the mounds? That's a neat trick! Mound disturbances are not unusual, by any means. Many large mounds in the Eastern US were at least tunneled into during the 19th century by local inhabitants. Grave Creek Mound, south of Wheeling WVA, was tunneled into and turned into one of the earliest tourist traps west of the Allegheny's in the mid-1800's. Others were tunneling in simply to loot the graves. It isn't unusual to find them leaving something behind to show they were there. I suspect a similar thing happened at the Bat Creek mounds. As for the "large" trees growing on top of the mound, that is another red herring. First, we don't know the actual age of the trees cut down by the farmer. A 70 year old tree is a "large" tree and such specimens would only indicate the mound was at least 70 years older (placing it in the late 18th century). Conversely, even if they were very old trees, say 300 years old (getting toward the maximum age for most eastern deciduous trees), it doesn't mean the mound was undisturbed. Historic looters could simply tunnel in from the sides or around the tree(s). Again, all of this only has relevance if Emmert is telling the truth, and it doesn't affect the dating in any case. If, on the other hand, Emmert faked the tablet, there is no reason to believe he didn't fake the rest of his data. If so, the whole issue is moot since none of the items may be associated with one another. Re: writing on the tablet. Benjamin: >Practically no one, except self-described experts such as >yourself, thinks that the language is anything but that >which Gordon has said, i.e. paleo-Hebrew. much cut >Even if letters are misread, the meaning of the text is not >necessarily misunderstood. Therefore, even if letters were >incorrectly interpreted, the translation is not necessarily >faulty. Further there are strong indications that all letter >were correctly interpreted. more cut >McCulloch quite rightly points out the deficiencies in Cross' >refusal to accept Gordon's translation. McCulloch *may* doubt >Cross' correctness. Benjamin, this is a joke, right? Folks definitely do not agree that all the writing on the Bat Creek Tablet is paleo-Hebrew. That has been one of the main points of this whole discussion. However, there are some paleo-Hebrew-like letters on the tablet. If these letters are misidentified by Gordon, then his translation isn't correct -- the Hebrew words are not those he identified! The statement that McCulloch "rightly points out deficiencies in Cross' . . . " is really a joke. Based on what qualifications can McCulloch even begin to criticize Cross? McCulloch has admitted he doesn't read much Hebrew, let alone paleo-Hebrew! How is he capable of making any valid translation, identification, etc., if he admittedly has no experience with the materials? Cross is the acknowledged specialist in this field, translating the Dead Sea Scrolls and many other items. He is held in much higher regard professionally for this ability than Gordon, and certainly in much higher regard than McCulloch. Similarly, McCarver is a trained Semitist who is working on the Dead Sea Scrolls. Their criticisms concerning interpretations of paleo-Hebrew letters on the Bat Creek Tablet are based on experience with real paleo-Hebrew materials. I am a trained archaeologist with field experience in both the Near East and the Eastern US. At least we have all dealt with the subject matter discussed. McCulloch has not been trained in archaeology, linguistics, or any other relevant field that applies to the Bat Creek Tablet. His comments about radiocarbon dating in previous posts demonstrates a lack of knowledge about how it works, what can happen to samples, etc. He doesn't recognize a botched excavation when it is described. He also doesn't know a "he" from an "E" if it was on an eye chart. Thus, I do find it amusing when he criticizes Semitists and archaeologists as if he has real knowledge about these subjects. Something else -- although I have said the Bat Creek Tablet isn't Cherokee, as I originally indicated Thomas claimed, that doesn't mean I have disavowed the presence of any Cherokee letters on the Tablet. It only means I think it is a fake and that there is a mixture of Cherokee and other letters on it. Even McCulloch has admitted that at least two symbols could be viewed as Cherokee letters. As for providing a translation, you don't translate gibberish. The mixture of letters and alphabets make the tablet just that, gibberish. This gibberish alone qualifies the tablet to be classified as a fake, regardless of where it was found. Hu, Yes, lets see how things turn out in BAR. I have much better ways of spending my time than arguing about the Bat Creek Tablet. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Mark A. McConaughy an535@yfn.ysu.edu Section of Archaeology The State Museum of Pennsylvania Box 1026 Harrisburg, PA 17109 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ -- Mark A. McConaughy an535@yfn.ysu.edu From: hmccullo@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Huston McCulloch) Newsgroups: sci.archaeology Subject: Re: Bat Creek Stone in Jy/Aug _Biblical Archaeology Review_ Date: 27 Aug 1993 20:41:36 GMT Lines: 437 Mordechai Katzman of the University of Michigan has requested that I post a GIF file image of the Bat Creek stone. My own efforts to make a GIF file have been unsuccessful, but I have a BMP file, attached below, which can be read with Windows Paintbrush. In order to make it transmittable without unpredictable complications, it has been encoded using the Unix "uuencode" command. In order to use it, the reader will first have to decode it using the Unix "uudecode" command. For example, if the encoded version is assigned the name "code", and the user wishes to assign the DOS-usable name "batmap.bmp" to the decoded version, the user should execute the Unix command uudecode batmap.bmp The decoded version can then be passed to DOS, brought up on the screen under Windows Paintbrush, and printed out by Paintbrush. 200% in landscape mode nicely fills a page. The actual length of the stone is about 4.5 inches (11 cm). In this drawing, I have added roman numerals i - vii to the 7 whole letters in the first row, (from left to right, so as not to prejudge that the inscription is really Semitic), and viii to the lone letter in the second row, as in my 1988 Tennessee Anthropologist article. In my BAR article, BAR instead numbered the first row, right to left, with the arabic numerals 1-8 (including the broken letter as #8), and made the lone letter #9. Last year, Alan Lustiger (lustiger@att.com) offered to make a GIF-encoded version available for non-Windows users. He may still be willing, if you can't get the following to work for you. According to the documentation, uudecode will strip away any preceding or following text, so this entire message can be uudecoded without editing. I tested this, and it seems to work. What follows will appear as about 7 pages of gobbledygook, which is what Frank Cross says the inscription is anyway! No text follows. uuencoded bitmap (BMP) of Bat Creek Inscription: [[ DELETED BECAUSE IT WAS DEFECTIVE ]] From: hmccullo@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Huston McCulloch) Newsgroups: sci.archaeology Subject: Re: Bat Creek Stone in Jy/Aug _Biblical Archaeology Review_ Date: 28 Aug 1993 00:39:02 GMT Lines: 105 In article <25lbb1$h59@news.ysu.edu> an535@yfn.ysu.edu (Mark A. McConaughy) writes concerning the Bat Creek stone, an apparently paleo-Hebrew inscription found by Smithsonian excavator John Emmert in Bat Creek Mound #3 in Tennessee in 1889: [much deleted] > Hu is correct that the belt buckles came from Mound 2, >that is my mistake. However, it doesn't negate the point >I was making. The buckle and bracelet associations are claimed >by Emmert and, if he is telling the truth, demonstrate there >are disturbances in both mounds during the 18th-19th century. >Disturbances were NOT recorded by either Emmert or Thomas. Whoa, there! The official Smithsonian record is that Mound 2 (with a buckle and a clearly 18th century heart-shaped pin) had an intrusive burial that was not part of the original plan of the mound, whereas Mound #3 (with the wood fragments, brass bracelets, and inscribed stone) was clearly _undisturbed_. Emmert _did_ look for signs of instrusion in both mounds. It was not clear merely from the soil whether or not the upper burial in Mound 2 was intrustive - this Thomas deduced from the structure of the mound - but it was clear from the soil in Mound 3 that there had been no intrustion. The brass bracelets by themselves do not demonstrate an 18th century or thereabouts intrusion, as I demonstrated on pp. 104-107 of my 1988 _Tennessee Anthropologist_ article and recapitulated in my BAR article, which you claim to have received. If you or Smith or Mainfort and Kwas or any other professional archaeologists wish to _demonstrate_ that they are modern and that therefore something is out of place in the official record, here is another opportunity for you to replace conjucture with real facts! As I mentioned in my TA articles and again in the endnotes of my BAR article, Robert Anderson of the San Jose State University Dept. of Metallurgy claims to be able to age-date copper alloys, including bronze and brass, merely in terms of their electrical conductivity. This has something to do with the funny phase diagram of copper, which if I remember his explanation correctly, causes alloyants to segregate as the alloy cools, so that newly made alloys to have a non-uniform composition. As the alloy ages, however, the alloy becomes a more uniform mixture, and its conductivity changes perceptibly. He and Harry Hicks claim to have been able to date a bronze head from India to the Vedic period, a date that corroborates a C-14 date on casting residues inside the head. If his method really works - and any metallurgist should be able to confirm or reject this - it will surely _prove_ that the Bat Creek bracelets are modern if you are right and the official Smithsonian record that the bracelets were found with the C-14 dated earspools is wrong. In any event, it should be a great boon to archaeology in general. The record is quite clear that the bracelets, earspools, and inscription were all found under the skull and jaw bones of skeleton #1, at the base of undisturbed Bat Creek Mound #3. If you wish to prove that the bracelets contradict the date on the earspools, and that therefore something is amiss as you believe, you now have the opportunity to do so. Or do you have "much better ways of spending my time," as you concluded your last post, than looking for proof when your mind is already made up? You objected earlier, to having a specialist reexamine the earspools for hypothetical contaminants that you had claimed might have been present, that "as professionals, we aren't going to waste our money on something that won't prove anything one way or the other." (This even though earlier you had argued that such contaminants might be very relevant.) Well, Anderson has offered to perform his test on the Bat Creek bracelets FOR FREE, and is often in Washington on business. Or if you and Smith prefer, he could explain the test to Martha Goodway, a Smithsonian metallurgist specializing in ancient Asiatic bronzes, who could check out whether it really works on specimens she is familiar with, and then apply it to the Bat Creek bracelets alongside some known 18th century trade bracelets. All it involves is checking the conductivity of the alloy with an electrical meter. It is completely non-destructive except for two pin-pricks made by the electrodes. The ball is in your court. >Re: writing on the tablet. [much deleted] >[McCulloch] doesn't know a "he" >from an "E" if it was on an eye chart. Or from a Japanese Katakana "yo" for that matter (when held Smithsonian-wise, with the "E" looking "forwards"). If letter 5 in the BAR drawing, thus inverted, is a "yo", then letter 3, also inverted, is surely a "fu". But then you have to start pulling teeth, so I really don't think the inscription is Japanese, any more than English or Cherokee (either way up). Besides, Katakana is not said to have been developed until circa 1200 AD, much too late for the C-14 date. > As for providing a translation, you don't translate gibberish. >The mixture of letters and alphabets make the tablet just that, >gibberish. This gibberish alone qualifies the tablet to >be classified as a fake, regardless of where it was found. Not so. What appears to us to be gibberish may just reflect our own ignorance of what the writer intended. The Biblos inscription (See Naveh's _Early History of the Alphabet_, for example) has long been "gibberish", because no one has been able to translate it. Would you argue that "this alone" qualifies the Byblos tablet "to be classified as a fake, regardless of where it was found"? Robert Stieglitz of Rutgers Newark, incidentally, tells me that he has shown the Bat Creek inscription to innumerable Hebrew scholars here and in Israel who have no trouble reading "for Judea" -- until he tells them it's from Tennessee! Hu McCulloch Economics Dept. Ohio State Univ. (614) 292-0382 From: baylor@daisy.cc.utexas.edu (Baylor) Newsgroups: sci.archaeology Subject: Re: Bat Creek Stone in current _Biblical Archaeology Review_ Date: 28 Aug 1993 00:44:27 -0500 Lines: 9 Um, what is the Bat Creek Stone? i've flipped through my handy "Fantastic Archaeology" and found the Grave Creek stone, with inscription, but it doesn't have anything looking like a block E or Cherokee ga, so i guess it's something else. I can't read hebrew, but i'm not so awful at cherokee and would like to see an inscription of this Bat Creek Stone. - baylor From: baylor@daisy.cc.utexas.edu (Baylor) Newsgroups: sci.archaeology Subject: Re: Bat Creek Stone in Jy/Aug _Biblical Archaeology Review_ Date: 28 Aug 1993 01:09:57 -0500 Lines: 6 I can't get the BMP file of the Bat Creek inscription to work - outside of the fact that i can't decode to /stdout, i keep getting a short file error. - baylor From: brittobj@ucunix.san.uc.edu (Benjamin Jay Britton) Newsgroups: sci.archaeology Subject: Re: Bat Creek Stone in current _Biblical Ar Date: 28 Aug 1993 16:26:19 -0400 Lines: 70 >>Can we blandly and squarely state that "Columbus was first >You're missing the point. We say Columbus discovered America for >the same reason that we say the Wright Brothers were the >inventors of the airplane. It's not that they are the first to >try and have some success, it's that they are the first to be >able to repeat the experiment and tell the rest of the world >about it. The significance of Columbus is not that he got across >the Atlantic once, but that he did it 3 times. The significance >of the Wrights is not that their airplane flew, it's that it >landed and then flew again and again and again. That occasional >shipwrecked sailors or wandering barbarians crossed the ocean to >a strange land is a significant discovery. Discovery requires >repetion and communication. > Tom Harris We say, "Columbus discovered America (except for L'Anse aux Meadows and a few Bering Strait wanderers)", because it is 500 years since the Church-franchised invasion of America, because contemporary multi-cultural value systems do not allow us to ignore the presence of pre-Columbian residents, because the excavation at L'Anse aux Meadows was faultlessly conducted, and because it is beneficial to indoctrinate our public with a world-understanding which will not conflict with contemporary forms of government and social order. Some, however, are so struck by the fact of Columbus' voyages, that they sing it joyously like a rooster crowing about the sunrise. There are many indications that not only was Columbus not "first", he was also not the only one who made repeat voyages. Nor was he probably the only successful merchant of trans-oceanic trade. Nor was he probably the only leader of a colonizing force. Nor was he probably any combination of the above. We say he discovered America, because it's part of our cultural world-myth. The Greeks said Prometheus stole fire from the gods to give to humankind, who had never had it before. Other places, other people said differently. Shall we be so enthralled by the world-myths created to explain the structure of contemporary culture to a poorly informed public that we believe them ourselves? I shall decline. Columbus' "discovery" was significant only to contemporary culture. In the long run, say 15,000 years hence, his feat will be no more and no less significantly viewed, if at all, than that of the Asians, the Africans, the Northern Europeans, the Iberians before him, the Libyans and the pre-Columbian Americans themselves. Columbus may figure largely in the textbooks of the United States of America, but only minutely in the big picture. Shall we say Aeneas discovered Italy? Did Brutus discover Britain? Shall we consider "pagans" and "barbarians" unimportant for our purposes? We say Columbus discovered America, because for the last 100 years that fact was said to be absolutely true by the governmentally-subsidized officials. Not a boat was said to have made it across: not alive, nor dead was a single sailor said to have traversed the ocean. This dogma was insisted upon: and as it is disproven continuingly, new reasons, such as the ones you paraphrase above, are given to excuse or "explain" the assertion. Columbus did not discover America in any way, shape or form. He may have been a very nice person, brave, dedicated, etc., but he went where he was told to go, not to someplace no one knew existed. And he clearly knew he was going there, too; this was so abundantly clear that he lost his court case against the Spanish government, because they claimed he didn't discover anything, and they proved it. The court papers are now locked up more tightly than are the Dead Sea Scrolls. This is not bad, but it's significant. Perhaps our lurker-friend from the Spanish-Catholic Museum will be so kind as to explain why the Columbus Archives are open only to pro-Spanish, Columbus- Discovery-repeating scholars. He may be no longer reading these posts, but if so, his involvement would be edifying. Personally, I agree, Columbus is importan t to the public, so that they may understand and accept the structure of society. I am also interested in pre-Columbian and non-American trans-oceanic cultural contacts, although American culture seems intimately intertwined with civilizati on in every age since 3,000 bc. This controversy prevents clear anaysis of the nat ure of these contacts, and it therefore prevents clear analysis of all late pre-hist ory and history. If we open our minds to pre-Columbian contacts, we may learn a lot , not only as individuals, but also as a species striving to consider its own esse nce. -benb Benjamin.Britton@uc.edu (513)556-0283 From: brittobj@ucunix.san.uc.edu (Benjamin Jay Britton) Newsgroups: sci.archaeology Subject: Re: Bat Creek Stone in current _Biblical Archaeology Review_ Date: 28 Aug 1993 19:45:06 -0400 Lines: 83 > As for providing a translation, you don't translate gibberish. >The mixture of letters and alphabets make the tablet just that, >gibberish. This gibberish alone qualifies the tablet to >be classified as a fake, regardless of where it was found. perhaps we should smash the phaistos disk because we do not understand it. it must be fake, since frank cross can't read it! >Cross is >the acknowledged specialist in this field, translating the Dead >Sea Scrolls and many other items. He is held in much higher >regard professionally for this ability than Gordon, as i was unconvinced by his explanations for publishing delays of the dead sea scrolls, i find him incredible as a disinterested seeker of truth. his mind can hardly be seen as fertile for acceptance of the new. is he a devout Christian? i have never met the man, but i wouldn't be surprised. his statements re: bat creek stone have been nonsensical and ignorant, imho. his zeal for illogical presentations that support his ideology is well indicated by his support for the number-juggling act that pretended to scientifically date the Samuel manuscript at Cave 4 at Qumran. i might not trust him to translate the back of a cereal box; other people, i'm sure, put much more faith in his appraisals than me. i have much more faith in Gordon than in the cloistered Cross, so to speak. >McCulloch has not been trained in archaeology, if, by training, you mean ideological blindering, so much the better. he is apparently better informed and more careful than his critics. his work is proof of the value of unsubsidized archaeological study. McCulloch has allayed McCarver's and your "concerns" very competently, and has continued to develop worthwhile additional avenues of research. Cross has offered this discussion absolutely nothing coherent whatsoever. Cross' training appears to be `grim confirmation' of his incapacity to see or think for himself, in preference for repeating the mistakes of his mentors. his trust in his own paleographic dowsing is rendered absurd by his high-handed disregard for what he calls "Lilliputian attacks by non-specialists". he, like some who have posted on this thread, sometimes has made gross errors to support his theses. he seems to have been trained to disregard criticism and to toe his party line. his apparent shortcomings seem endemic to your brand of so-called professionalism, making it clear that such "training" does not guarantee archaeological capacity. to declaim McCulloch's capacity to make sense is vain. > I have much better >ways of spending my time than arguing about the Bat Creek >Tablet. and probably more successful ways, since you have contributed to what you obviously did not intend, i.e. a clarification of the fact that there is no sufficient basis for believing that the Bat Creek Tablet is anything other than a genuine pre-Columbian artifact indicating pre-Columbian trans-oceanic travel. you are insistent about the need to argue against pre-columbian contact; i wonder if you are more concerned about this, or if the ramifications of the tablet's contents have you more fearful. personally, i don't care, being neither hebrew, nor christian. is it the legal sovereignty issue, or is it just the religious ideology that scares you most? relax, science has made both nationalism and organized religion into secondary manifestations of truth. there is more to heaven and earth than the vatican-sponsored Columbus voyage. those who seek to understand these things are done a disservice by obfuscantists who provide no respite from world-myth chanting, who declaim truth for peace. peace is honorable, but truth is beautiful. it is safe to admit the truth about America and its interrelationship with the rest of the world, in my opinion. i believe no one will successfully claim soverignty rights, nor will people cease to honor the judeo-christian traditions. the truth will help us understand each other and ourselves. science and the future may not bow down lowly to the past without the respect which grows from recognizing that institutions of the past possess the power to speak the truth about their origins. such is confession, a skill with which any avowed westerner is familiar; but priests tell no secrets. for myself, i have decided the bat creek stone is real. the inconsistency and incoherence of its detractors' arguments are reasons why i disbelieve them. the evidence of the excavation clearly indicates the reasons to believe the stone is genuine. btw, has anyone reason to doubt the authenticity of the Guanabara amphorae? -benb Benjamin.Britton@uc.edu (513)556-0283 From: brittobj@ucunix.san.uc.edu (Benjamin Jay Britton) Newsgroups: sci.archaeology Subject: Re: Bat Creek Stone in current _Biblical Archaeology Review_ Date: 28 Aug 1993 19:45:39 -0400 Lines: 83 > As for providing a translation, you don't translate gibberish. >The mixture of letters and alphabets make the tablet just that, >gibberish. This gibberish alone qualifies the tablet to >be classified as a fake, regardless of where it was found. perhaps we should smash the phaistos disk because we do not understand it. it must be fake, since frank cross can't read it! >Cross is >the acknowledged specialist in this field, translating the Dead >Sea Scrolls and many other items. He is held in much higher >regard professionally for this ability than Gordon, as i was unconvinced by his explanations for publishing delays of the dead sea scrolls, i find him incredible as a disinterested seeker of truth. his mind can hardly be seen as fertile for acceptance of the new. is he a devout Christian? i have never met the man, but i wouldn't be surprised. his statements re: bat creek stone have been nonsensical and ignorant, imho. his zeal for illogical presentations that support his ideology is well indicated by his support for the number-juggling act that pretended to scientifically date the Samuel manuscript at Cave 4 at Qumran. i might not trust him to translate the back of a cereal box; other people, i'm sure, put much more faith in his appraisals than me. i have much more faith in Gordon than in the cloistered Cross, so to speak. >McCulloch has not been trained in archaeology, if, by training, you mean ideological blindering, so much the better. he is apparently better informed and more careful than his critics. his work is proof of the value of unsubsidized archaeological study. McCulloch has allayed McCarver's and your "concerns" very competently, and has continued to develop worthwhile additional avenues of research. Cross has offered this discussion absolutely nothing coherent whatsoever. Cross' training appears to be `grim confirmation' of his incapacity to see or think for himself, in preference for repeating the mistakes of his mentors. his trust in his own paleographic dowsing is rendered absurd by his high-handed disregard for what he calls "Lilliputian attacks by non-specialists". he, like some who have posted on this thread, sometimes has made gross errors to support his theses. he seems to have been trained to disregard criticism and to toe his party line. his apparent shortcomings seem endemic to your brand of so-called professionalism, making it clear that such "training" does not guarantee archaeological capacity. to declaim McCulloch's capacity to make sense is vain. > I have much better >ways of spending my time than arguing about the Bat Creek >Tablet. and probably more successful ways, since you have contributed to what you obviously did not intend, i.e. a clarification of the fact that there is no sufficient basis for believing that the Bat Creek Tablet is anything other than a genuine pre-Columbian artifact indicating pre-Columbian trans-oceanic travel. you are insistent about the need to argue against pre-columbian contact; i wonder if you are more concerned about this, or if the ramifications of the tablet's contents have you more fearful. personally, i don't care, being neither hebrew, nor christian. is it the legal sovereignty issue, or is it just the religious ideology that scares you most? relax, science has made both nationalism and organized religion into secondary manifestations of truth. there is more to heaven and earth than the vatican-sponsored Columbus voyage. those who seek to understand these things are done a disservice by obfuscantists who provide no respite from world-myth chanting, who declaim truth for peace. peace is honorable, but truth is beautiful. it is safe to admit the truth about America and its interrelationship with the rest of the world, in my opinion. i believe no one will successfully claim soverignty rights, nor will people cease to honor the judeo-christian traditions. the truth will help us understand each other and ourselves. science and the future may not bow down lowly to the past without the respect which grows from recognizing that institutions of the past possess the power to speak the truth about their origins. such is confession, a skill with which any avowed westerner is familiar; but priests tell no secrets. for myself, i have decided the bat creek stone is real. the inconsistency and incoherence of its detractors' arguments are reasons why i disbelieve them. the evidence of the excavation clearly indicates the reasons to believe the stone is genuine. btw, has anyone reason to doubt the authenticity of the Guanabara amphorae? -benb Benjamin.Britton@uc.edu (513)556-0283 From: an535@yfn.ysu.edu (Mark A. McConaughy) Newsgroups: sci.archaeology Subject: Re: Bat Creek Stone in Jy/Aug _Biblical Archaeology Review_ Date: 30 Aug 1993 14:52:07 GMT Lines: 95 Hu, >Whoa, there! The official Smithsonian record is that Mound >2 (with a buckle and a clearly 18th century heart-shaped pin) >had an intrusive burial that was not part of the original plan >of the mound, whereas Mound #3 (with the wood >fragments, brass bracelets, and inscribed stone) was clearly >_undisturbed_. Emmert _did_ look for signs of instrusion >in both mounds. It was not clear merely from the soil whether >or not the upper burial in Mound 2 was intrustive - this Thomas >deduced from the structure of the mound - but it was clear from >the soil in Mound 3 that there had been no intrustion. As you are found of saying, Whoa there! Determination that Mound 2 had an intrusive burial is based on post excavation analysis of the grave materials, not on the stratigraphy of the mound determined by Emmert's excavation. Thomas (pg. 392) states this about the Mound 2 burial; "Whether or not this was an intrusive burial could not be determined, thought the uniform composition of the mound and size of the oak growing above it seems to be against this supposition; . . ." Emmert's field notes (which you were so kind to send to me) state: pg. 4 re: Mound 2 "at the time I worked it a black oak tree three feet in diameter and two other trees had been cut off of it, the old decayed stumps and roots were taken out as we worked the mound." and re the burial with the buckles: "Whether this was an intrusive burial I am unable to say --" pg. 5 more re: Mound 2 stratigraphy: "The entire mound consisted of hard red clay from top to bottom." This description of the Mound 2 burial clearly indicates Emmert was unable to recognized intrusive soil disturbances in the mounds. If he couldn't recognize soil disturbances in Mound 2, where the artifacts clearly represent an intrusive burial, then he easily could have missed one in Mound 3. The presence of large trees and roots on Mound 3 are no different from the situation found at Mound 2. Recent disturbances were clearly missed, and root action was not taken into account during the excavations. Roots were merely removed and maps of root intrusions were not made. As for all the tests, etc., if the associations aren't any good, what are the tests going to prove? At best, the mounds are disturbed, you and I will have to agree to disagree on that. If Emmert faked things, then all of the remains are of questionable association and the notes simply document his fraud. Your tests might be able to date individual artifacts, but unless associations can be proven, that is meaningless. So test away. All you are doing is wasting your time and money. It is interesting that the ancient Hebrew traders/whatever ended up leaving a poorly (from our point of view) text in a local stone. Where are all the classical Roman period artifacts? Why did they climb over the mountains to Tennessee (or perhaps sail up the Mississippian, portage over a few rivers and streams) to get there? It seems to be a rather unusual place to find them. Conversely, along with Thomas trying to prove the mound builders were Cherokee, others were indicating they were the remnants of the Ten Lost Tribes. So an inscription with Hebrew and Cherokee letters would keep everyone happy. Emmert did his best to save his job. I do think he faked the tablet to save his job. We obviously will have to agree to disagree on that, too. We will see in a few years whether or not you were able to convince folks that it is a genuine artifact. Future text books will reflect your proposed contact scenerio if people accept it. That is the ultimate test. Benjamin: Since I have no further information about your "Roman amphorae," there is little I can say about them. My suspicions are that they will prove to be Colonial Olive Oil jars, but until the site is excavated by trained underwater archaeologists, none of us will know for sure. It would be useless to continue a discussion about them without additional information. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Mark A. McConaughy an535@yfn.ysu.edu Section of Archaeology The State Museum of Pennsylvania Box 1026 Harrisburg, PA 17109 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ -- Mark A. McConaughy an535@yfn.ysu.edu From: hmccullo@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Huston McCulloch) Newsgroups: sci.archaeology Subject: Re: Bat Creek Stone in Jy/Aug _Biblical Archaeology Review_ Date: 30 Aug 1993 16:39:24 GMT Lines: 98 In article <25t46n$bhq@news.ysu.edu> an535@yfn.ysu.edu (Mark A. McConaughy) wri tes: > As for all the tests, etc., if the associations aren't any good, >what are the tests going to prove? At best, the mounds are >disturbed, you and I will have to agree to disagree on that. >If Emmert faked things, then all of the remains are of >questionable association and the notes simply document >his fraud. Your tests might be able to date individual >artifacts, but unless associations can be proven, that is >meaningless. If your conjectures are correct, this particular association can be _disproven_. Disproof, after all, is what scientific tests ordinarily provide. If an hypothesis is considered "proven" this usually just means it has survived numerous attempts at disproof. Emmert says the Mound 3 artifacts were found together under the skull of a "very much decomposed" complete skeleton, in a mound that did not look to his experienced eye to have been disturbed. At this point, he had excavated hundreds of mounds. If, as you claim (25 August), the brass bracelets "match other European goods of the 18th-19th centuries," something is amiss if under the same skull are wood fragments dating to 32 AD - 769 AD, along with a stone that even McCarter (Jy/Aug BAR) agrees looks too much like an intelligible paleo-Hebrew inscription to be mere coincidence. If this were true, then Emmert must have faked his report, since an intrusion by a prankster would surely have disturbed the skeleton. Emmert's claim to have found the artifacts together is therefore a "testable hypothesis," as they say. It is not capable of proof, but merely of disproof. But this is what you want; to disprove Emmert's statement. So test away! I already got the C-14 date, so now it's your turn. > It is interesting that the ancient Hebrew traders/whatever >ended up leaving a poorly [intellegible?] (from our point of view) text in a >local stone. Where are all the classical Roman period artifacts? >Why did they climb over the mountains to Tennessee (or perhaps >sail up the Mississippian, portage over a few rivers and streams) >to get there? It seems to be a rather unusual place to find them. According to Charles Hudson of the U GA, De Soto "climbed over the mountains to Tennessee" as you put it, and camped for 6 days at an island at the mouth of the Little Tenn., 12 miles downstream from the Bat Creek mounds. Yet where are all the 16th century Spanish artifacts in Tennessee? If Old World peoples left artifacts for us to find, these artifacts must be _somewhere_, even though the odds are almost zero that they will be _anywhere_ in particular. Vonore Tennessee is an admittedly odd place for a Hebrew inscription to turn up, but then so is any place else. If you think it should have been off limits to explorers, take it up with De Soto! > ... Where are all the classical Roman period artifacts? Since you ask, "Roman contact with America around 200 A.D. has been established by the excavation of a sculptured clay head by archaeologists at the pyramid of Calixtlahuaca in Mexico. That there is no mistaking the facts or their implications has been demonstrated by Robert Heine-Geldern, "Ein roemischer Fund aus dem vorkolumbischen Mexico," Anzeiger der Oesterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophische-historische Klasse 98, 1961, pp. 117-119. This piece of solid evidence lends credence to previous accidental finds such as the Roman coins, bearing Latin inscriptions, found in the American Sourtheast since over a century and a half ago, as documented by John Haywood, _Natural and Aboriginal History of Tennessee_, George Wilson, Nashville, Tennessee, 1823 (republished by Mary U. Rothrock, McCowat-Mercer Press, Jackson, Tennessee, 1959). .... Among the inscribed Roman coins he identified were one of the Antonines [i.e. Antoninus Pius (138-161 AD) and Marcus Aurelius (161-180 AD) - fn], and another of Commodus [reigned 180-192 AD - fn]. Other coins pointing to contacts with the Roman Mediterranean during the second century A.D. have meanwhile come to light in the neighboring state of Kentucky, where inscribed Hebrew coins of Bar Kokhba's rebellion against Rome (132-135AD) were dug up in Louisville, Hopkinsville and Clay City. The coins are assorted (not duplicates of each other) and were found at different times in widely separated areas: at Louisville in 1932, Clay City in 1952, and Hopkinsville in 1967. These coins have been examined and identified by Professor Israel T. Naamani [since deceased] of the University of Louisville (_The Courier-Journal_, Lousiville, of 12 July 1953, 14 March 1967, 20 March 1967). Clay City (population under 500) had no citizens previously interested in - or even aware of - curiosa such as Bar Kokhba numismatics. The coin found there was sent to the late Professor Ralph Marcus of the Univ. of Chicago who had no trouble in reading 'Simon' (Bar Kokhba's personal name) on the one side, and 'year 2 of the Freedom of Israel' (ie, 133 AD) on the other." -- Cyrus Gordon, "The Bat Creek Inscription," in CH Gordon, ed., _The Book of the Descendants of Doctor Benjamin Lee and Dorothy Gordon," Ventnor Publisher, 1972. But each of these would be a study in itself, and stands or falls by itself, independently of the Bat Creek stone. Since the latter was certified by Cyrus Thomas as authentic in a volume so authoritative that as recently as 1991 Stephen Williams was praising it as having "for all intents and purposes shut the door, from a scientific standpoint on the Moundbuilder question," it is particularly interesting to me. If it is a hoax, as you insist, then it is a Smithsonian hoax, perpetrated by a Smithsonian employee, published under official Smithsonian auspices, and never recalled to the factory. Hu McCulloch Economics Dept. Ohio State Univ. (614) 292-0382 From: brittobj@ucunix.san.uc.edu (Benjamin Jay Britton) Newsgroups: sci.archaeology Subject: Re: Bat Creek Stone in Jy/Aug _Biblical Archaeology Review_ Date: 30 Aug 1993 14:32:05 -0400 Lines: 160 >Benjamin: > Since I have no further information about your "Roman >amphorae," there is little I can say about them. My suspicions >are that they will prove to be Colonial Olive Oil jars, but until >the site is excavated by trained underwater archaeologists, >none of us will know for sure. It would be useless to continue >a discussion about them without additional information. >~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ >Mark A. McConaughy an535@yfn.ysu.edu It is admirable to keep an open mind as you obviously are. Since there is no reason, other than the insistence of Colomobophiles that they can't be real, to disbelieve in their authenticity, you are obviously engaging a clear critical faculty to withold final judgement on them. you may have to do this for for quite awhile, however, since you say that you will not be staisfied until the site is excavated. the brazilian government has expressly forbade this and they have covered the site with tons of silt to prevent it (it is underwater) by a large rock in the middle of guananbara bay. they insist that the amphorae are phoenician, not roman; and on that basis, the have struggled to refute the (to me) absurd claims of the present italian government for sovereignty and citizen's rights in brazil, which was made by the italian government received word that the amphorae were indeed roman. as for their being Colonial Olive Oil Jars, talk to Professor Elizabeth Will of the Classics Department at University of Massachusetts, the world's foremost authority on these amphorae and their relation to the Roman port of Kouass, near contemporary Morocco, North Africa. She has examined them, she has made them available to people outside her office to examine them, she has published her findings, and others have published their findings as well. No one knowledgeable enough to make a valid identification of them has found them to be anything other than Roman amphorae from the port of Kouass. The only question is their date. therefore, unless you have solid information to the contrary, it is quite recalcitrant of you to resist the identifications these experts have made; i applaud your individualism. i may suggest that you won't obtain additional information unless you actually seek it. re: Bat Creek, whoa again. Emmert said the possibility of the mound 2 burials might be intrusive in the mound. To quote him, "Whether this was an intrusive burial I am unable to say --" Obviously the possibility occurred to him, and he decided to leave interpretation for others, i.e. Thomas. He was clear in stating that the mound in which the 9 skeletons were found was undisturbed. He said, "That any one could have ever worked this mound without leaving some evidence of it I think would be imposable." One may note and consider the significance of the contrast between these two statements of his, the basis of your claims of his incompetence. You rest your argument on the following statement" > Emmert was unable to recognized intrusive soil disturbances in the >mounds. To support it, you say this: >The presence of large trees and roots on Mound 3 are no different from >the situation found at Mound 2. Recent disturbances were clearly missed Read Emmert's satement above. He allows for the possibility of intrusive burial in mound two (and shows competent instinct and judgement, based on recent analysis of the belt buckle in mound two). Therefore, he *did not* miss recent disturbances at all. He wisely, circumspectly and judiciously mentioned the possibility of them in mound two. And he was *RIGHT*, not *WRONG*. You are rather misreading him. Your statement that he clearly missed this late intrusion is patently misleading and insubstantial. Your deduction from this blatant distortion of his report is therefore also insubstantial and misleading; it is simply not reasonable to suppose that he was "unable to recognize intrusive soil disturbances. To advance such an arugment is either indicative of illogical thought formulation or deliberately misleading. To your credit, I know you are debating this in a rather parliamentary, pseudo-legalistic way - but at some point, ethics must dictate to search for truth rather than to argue insubstantial and misleading points. Your deductions based on such faulty logic make you conclude that >if the associations aren't any good, >what are the tests going to prove? At best, the mounds are >disturbed, you and I will have to agree to disagree on that A fine state to be in, if you please; but once there, opting for ignorance, do not presume to insist that the find is a fake. Such an insistence would be presumptuous, since you are basing it on the unproven, insubstantial belief that the Mound Three was disturbed. All evidence is in conflict with your position, so it is presumptuous to make sweeping statements re: authenticity. As I say, the tablet may be real, you should say, the tablet may be fake. Clearly you should not presume to insist that the tablet is fake. > It is interesting that the ancient Hebrew traders/whatever >ended up leaving a poorly (from our point of view) text in a >local stone. Where are all the classical Roman period artifacts? >Why did they climb over the mountains to Tennessee (or perhaps >sail up the Mississippian, portage over a few rivers and streams) >to get there? It seems to be a rather unusual place to find them. Evidence, practically all of which you ignore with an audible harrumph, indicates that ancient Hebrew speakers were a rather small percentage of those who crossed the ocean blue before chris columbus. much more in evidence is epigraphy in lybian and iberian, and i'm sure you will not be able to see such things in this lifetime, because your sunglasses are tinted to be opaque at that wavelength of the spectrum. this doesn't make them fake, however; it just means that the epigraphic evidence is there to see, thanks to the work of Professor Barry Fell and others, so see it if you can, ignore it if you want, but don't presume to claim fakery without hard proof. Don't even presume to state that it isn't there. You know it's there, whether you believe it's real or not is your business, but that constitutes only your interpretation, not the true facts. Further, that area is crawling with evidence of long-distance trade, hardly an unusual location for an exotic item like the Bat Creek Tablet. More importantly, it is crawling with evidence of a dynamic, powerful, far-flung indigenous american culture, so evidence of external influences would be the exception rather the norm. how many paleo-hebrew inscriptions have been found in Rome? Would you say that the lack is evidence of no contact? No. > I do think he faked the tablet to save >his job. We obviously will have to agree to disagree on that, too. Fine, but don't insist on the accuracy of your opinion about it. You and Stephen Wilson act as though you are absolutely proven correct. That's the problem with Wilson's book. He presumes he's right about pre-Columbian travel (though he probably isn't), then he proceeds to character-assassinate anyone who thinks differently. The book is really best for those already informed of the facts, to understand how Isolationist Dogma Bites are inflicted. But it gives the Columbic Rabies to young, unsuspecting readers. > We will see in a few years whether or not you were able to >convince folks that it is a genuine artifact. Future text >books will reflect your proposed contact scenerio if people >accept it. That is the ultimate test. There is too great an investment, by contemporary culture, in the world- myth to which you pledge allegiance. No one could reaonably expect, to see near-future textbooks do anything other than allude to the possibility of significant cultural contacts through long-distance trans-oceanic travel. As time goes on, and as the finds constituting what the public will come to know as proof are documented and accumulate in number, the revisioning of the role of Columbus will have to evolve. If we are fortunate, we will not see a cultural revolution eager to dismiss the Columbus-myth as mere propoganda of the dominant classes, nor will experience such a cultural lapse that by the time rebuilding is complete, no one will care who Columbus was anyway. But in the short run, it's not Columbus that's important, rather we need to look at the real significance on the economies and cultures of the lands bordering the ocean, and on their interactions with each other. How, for example, was Harappas affected by Sumeria? How far east did Indus Valley sailors venture? What role, if any did they play in exploration of the Pacific? To what extent was amber brought by *ship* from the north to the mediterranean, and what were the effects of this cultural interaction. As long as we deny that long-distance oceanic contacts were possible, we are left with wondering how it could seem so clear that similarities between cultures of the Holocene existed. To say that Paleolithic homo sapiens were capable of reaching every spot on the globe, but it was impossible for those who lived in, say, 1300 BC, is truly ignorant. It would not be ignorant to say that perhaps they may have, after all. The ultimate test is not that which is promoted to the public as truth, it is if one can accept for oneself that the thesis in question is adequately sure to be considered true. Textbooks represent the cosmology of a culture, with which often the best-informed disagree. Enough to convince a few to open their minds and engage them in efforts to uncover the truth... -benb Benjamin.Britton@uc.edu (513)556-0283 From: svm@kozmix.hacktic.nl (Sander van Malssen) Newsgroups: sci.archaeology Subject: Re: Bat Creek Stone in Jy/Aug _Biblical Archaeology Review_ Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1993 01:21:23 GMT Lines: 82 In article <25lri0$2hi@charm.magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu>, Huston McCulloch wrote: > Mordechai Katzman of the University of Michigan has requested that I > post a GIF file image of the Bat Creek stone. My own efforts to > make a GIF file have been unsuccessful, but I have a BMP file, Here's a GIF version: [[ DELETED. A viewable copy of BCS.GIF is included with this text file ]] -- Sander van Malssen svm@kozmix.hacktic.nl From: bandreas@gemini.hyperdesk.com (Bill Andreas) Newsgroups: sci.archaeology Subject: Re: Bat Creek Stone in Jy/Aug _Biblical Archaeology Review_ Date: 30 Aug 1993 22:27:38 GMT Lines: 175 The Bat Creek mounds article in a recent BAR has engendered some heated discussion in the last several weeks in this forum. To a large extent, however, I believe the most significant point regarding the "paleo-Hebrew inscription" has not been discussed: Assuming the artifact is a paleo-Hebrew inscription buried in a pre-Columbian context, of what significance is it? Before considering these points, a few notes on the discussion about the context of the object. 1) The significance of a C14 date. A C14 date on earspools, or a set of C14 dates on the earspools, will not definitively, or even probably, prove one point of view or another. We do not know enough about what causes contamination of an object that can cause the C14 dating to be off (by a wide margin in either direction). We do not know anything (substantive) about the excavation methods and preservation methods of this particular artifact to judge (even given what little we know about contamination) to be able to judge the quality of the dates. Given ancient or modern C14 dates, any number of well-reasoned arguments can be made that the dates are wrong. In general, C14 dating is only useful when dealing with a set of artifacts, each of which has good excavation and preservation records. Even if you believe that a good C14 date can be taken on the earspools, there is still room for reasonable argument over the calibrated date. As an archaeologist working in the Eastern Mediterranean, I don't know the status of the C14 calibration curves in the New World, but presumably, they are some problem areas in the curves. Plus, since wood is involved, one needs to have the argument about when the artifact was made/deposited versus when the tree died (e.g., was cut down) from which the artefact was made. (C14 dates the "death of the wood", not the date of the artefact or burial. There are well-documented cases of 300-400 year old wood being re-used or first-used in making an artefact.) My point is simply that making additional C14 tests on the wood artefact will engender more debate, but resolve little. 2) The "quality" of the excavation There has been quite a bit of discussion as to whether Emmert would have (could have) recognized an intrusive burial in the mound or not. Regardless of the quality or lack of quality of Emmert's excavation, the state of archaeology at the time of Emmert's excavation was such that it must be assumed that Emmert could have easily missed an intrusive burial. This has nothing to do with Emmert's individual capabilities or with the potentital significance of the site. Archaeologists working at that time -- ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD -- simply did not have the skill set to distinguish/record much in the way of stratigraphy. Even if this was Sir Flinders Petrie's excavation, it would be valid to assume that the burial could be intrusive. (Heavens, even if this was a modern excavation, there are a great number of archaeologists whose excavation and recording skills are such that other archaeologists would question whether the burial was intrusive.) My point is simply that in a modern well-recorded excavation, it can shown (generally) that a burial is not intrusive. In an excavation conducted using late 19th century techniques and recording, you cannot prove that a burial is, or is not, intrusive. 3) The bracelets I am not aware of any good parallels in the Eastern Mediterranean, between c200BC and 200AD for the brass bracelets. Nor, have I seen in any discussion of the Bat Creek mounds a citation to a good parallel. I have seen several parallels to 18-19th century bracelets used as trade goods. Technically, these bracelets could have been made almost any time from the Late Bronze Age onward, albeit, the specific proportions of the metals is quite rare in Imperial Roman and earlier times. Without specific parallels to ancient brass bracelets of the shape, the metal composition, and manufacturing technique, the argument that they are in fact ancient seems rather weak. 4) The inscription proper The leading (and not so leading) scholars in Paleo-Hebrew do not agree on ANY singular or controversial inscription (that I know of). This is in part due to the nature of the inscriptions - short potentially cryptic inscriptions do not lend themselves to a single definitive reading, or even to a consensus about what the inscription might generally refer to. While I do not agree with F.M. Cross on a number of his readings and interpretations, I do think he is right in this case in consigning the inscription to the "enigmatic, can't really tell what it is" pile. If you cannot get a consensus about the inscription (other than it has some very problematic letter forms and spelling), what you end up with is everyone picking those parts of those arguments that best suit a particular point of view. In sum, we have a mound excavated and recorded with only limited control that contains an interesting burial which must be considered potentially suspect given excavation techniques of the time. The burial contains (only) one artefact that can be currently dated scientifically and that is insufficient for a conclusive date. The burial contains bracelets which could be ancient, but given current parallels, are more likely to be recent. The burial contains an enigmatic inscription, which could be Paleo-Hebrew, but there is no consensus among leading scholars concerning it. This leads me to my last point -- of what significance is the find anyway? Assuming the artefact is indeed a Paleo-Hebrew inscription on a stone buried in Pre-Columbian times, what does it mean? It would certainly prove that Hebrew sailors in the early first millenium were a lot better (or a lot luckier) than most scholars of navigation and trade would tend to think. This would certainly be of some importance, but without other good examples of early long sea voyages, I'm not sure it matters that much. Would it prove pre-Columbian contact by Mediterranean peoples? Perhaps it would, but, some examples of Roman artefacts found in reasonably good New World contexts (in particular stone anchors and amphorae) can just as likely be ballast that was carried by much later ships as stuff dropped by Roman ships visiting South America. One could equally (with great imagination) postulate a very long trading network that carried a curious stone a long way. I don't see that the Bat Creek inscription really adds much of anything to our construction of history. No one is postulating that (accepting it as authentic) the bringers of the stone caused any noticeable change in New World culture. No one, for example, has noted any early Synogogues in Tennessee or a trade route being established between the Eastern Mediterranean and the eastern Atlantic seaboard. The scholarly consensus is that there was pre-Columbian contact between the Old World and the New World. The contact appears to have primarily been sporadic. It did not cause a notable change in either world's cultures. It probably entailed some pretty heroic sea voyages. The Bat Creek inscription does not change this view in either way (strengthen or weaken the view), nor, given its problematic context and inscription is it likely to change this view in the future. The wider public view that Columbus sailed the ocean blue and discovered a nice new world for all the Europeans to come and play in (and properly tame and civilize) isn't going to be changed by this inscription either. There is much better evidence that makes much better TV docudramas (Leif Erikson and his band of intrepid Vikings) that can be used to inform the masses that there was contact between the continents before Columbus and his a) Conquest/Invasion b) All-important Discovery -- take your politically correct pick. Of much more interest is (at least to me), is research into some aspects of pre-Columbian contact between the New World and Old World that may have had some noticeable impact on at least some of the cultures involved, for example, research into when the exploitation of George's Bank first started or research into late Medieval map-making. It seems to me that research into areas such as this (whether by amateurs or professionals) will have a much more meaningful impact on our construction of history. -- Bill ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- o o|William Andreas HyperDesk Corporation o o|Phone: +1-508-366-5050 x1052000 West Park Drive ---+Fax:+1-508-898-3841Westborough, MA 01581 USA E-Mail: bill_andreas@hyperdesk.com From: an535@yfn.ysu.edu (Mark A. McConaughy) Newsgroups: sci.archaeology Subject: Re: Bat Creek Stone in Jy/Aug _Biblical Archaeology Review_ Date: 31 Aug 1993 14:19:54 GMT Lines: 150 Hu, If we are correct, then no amount of testing of objects from Bat Creek will provide an accurate assessment of the age of the tablet. The reasons are as follows: What we believe really happened: 1) Based on epigraphic analysis, the tablet is identified as a fake (this you would disagree with -- but Cross, et al., don't). 2) Who made it? Best guess is Emmert since he was the one who "found" it, had the most to gain from its discovery (notoriety and a job), and because no one else from the time made any claim on the tablet. 3) There is no evidence besides Emmert's description that the tablet actually came from the mound. If he manufactured the tablet, as we surmise, then this description is worthless. He could have either planted it there himself, or more likely, just described it as being there. There are no witnesses to its discovery in the mound, or of any other alleged associates described by Emmert. This is why testing would be fruitless from this perspective. 4) Thus, there is no proof that the tablet ever was in the position described by Emmert (and it probably wasn't since he faked the tablet) and any tests of materials allegedly from the mound will not provide any useful information about the age of the tablet. 5) And yes, as you point out, if Emmert faked the tablet, he must have faked the report. That is exactly the point, we think he faked the report! He is the only witness to the things he claimed were found in the mound. Our best case scenario which gives Emmert the benefit of the doubt vis a vis him faking the tablet: 1) Emmert's description of Mound 2 indicates he is incapable of determining if a mound has been disturbed by relatively recent excavation. 2) Mound 3 is similar in nature and structure to Mound 2. Brass trade bracelets, (we would argue they are 18th-19th century, you indicate earlier -- note: people may be experimenting with dating brass and copper, but it is still experimental and not yet widely accepted as a viable dating methodology.) indicating similar historic disturbances, were recovered from Mound 3. 3) Emmert missed the historic disturbance and didn't record natural disturbances (rodents and tree roots), except to mention that there were tree roots. Thus, excavation methodology employed by Emmert is of poor quality. 4) The site was disturbed during the historic period and Emmert's methodology was poor, thus, any association between the tablet, bracelets, and Native American materials in the tomb cannot be conclusively demonstrated. Dating objects from Mound 3 will not yield anything except a date for that individual artifact. The dates can't be applied to other remains from the mound since associations are uncertain. We have no way of knowing if the skeleton was in situ or not. It could have been moved or reinterred by folks digging into the mound (so the spirits of the dead wouln: >Yet where are all the 16th century Spanish artifacts >in Tennessee? I don't know if they have recovered any materials from the de Soto expedition in Tennessee. But they have plenty of evidence from surrounding states. Undeniable European artifacts have been recovered from 16th century Native American sites along de Soto's route in southeastern US. At the site of Little Egypt, Georgia they have recovered iron celts, wedges, chisels, and a distinctive 16th Century Nueva Cadiz Plain glass bead. Iron celts, wedges, and chisels have also been recovered at the King site. A 16th Century European rapier has also been found at King. A small, steel dirk has been recovered from a Barnett Phase burial at the Sixtoe Field site. An iron celt or wedge has been recovered from Hightower Village, Alabama. In addition, 16th Century European artifacts have been recovered from Etowah, Johnston Farm Austin Sorings, Bussell Island, Toqua, Rymer, Audubon Acres, Wilson, Ogletree Island, and 1Ce308. Some of these might be from the de Soto expedition, but some might be associated with Luna and Pardo, who are also known to have traded with the Native Americans during the 16th Century. A couple of references for de Soto expedition evidence include: DePratter, Chester, Charles Hudson, and Marvin Smith 1985 The Hernando de Soto Expedition: From Chiaha to Mabila. In _Alabama and ITs Borderlands, from Prehistory to Statehood_, edited by Reid Badger and Lawrence A. Clayton, 108-126, U. of Alabama Press. Hudson, Charles, Chester DePratter, and Marvin Smith 1984 The Hernado de Soto Expedition: From Apalachee to Chiaha. _Southeastern Archaeology_ 3:65-77. Hudson, Charles, et al. 1985 Coosa: A Chiefdom in the Sixteenth-Century Southeastern United States. _American Antiquity_ 50(4):723-737. Smith, Marvin 1976 The Route of De Soto through Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama: The Evidence from Material Culture. _Early Georgia_ 4(1-2):27-48. 1977 The Early Historic Period 91540-1670) on the Upper Coosa River Drainage of Alabama and Georgia. _The Conference on Historic Site Archaeology Papers_ 11:151-167. Additional data are available in specific site reports that I haven't listed since these are harder to find. So, you see there is plenty of evidence for the de Soto expedition in the Southeast. Good evidence. Where is there similar remains for the Hebrew arrival? The coins you mention have been debunked by Epstein (see other post with the bibliography). Most of those coins were not recovered from good contexts, and some of them are demonstrable counterfeits. They aren't even real Hebrew coins. You also mention other things that "prove" transoceanic contact. I think you will find that the items you cited are not widely accepted as genuine evidence of contact by most archaeologists. I don't have knowledge of all of them, and I don't have the time to research all of them, either. As I told Benjamin early on, I am not here to write a book on the subject. Besides, there are others who have written books and articles about the things you have accepted as evidence for hyperdiffusion. I have made a separate bibliography of references that I will post that covers most of these topics. People can check them out if they are really interested. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Mark A. McConaughy an535@yfn.ysu.edu Section of Archaeology The State Museum of Pennsylvania Box 1026 Harrisburg, PA 17109 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ -- Mark A. McConaughy an535@yfn.ysu.edu From: an535@yfn.ysu.edu (Mark A. McConaughy) Newsgroups: sci.archaeology Subject: Re: Bat Creek Stone in Jy/Aug _Biblical Archaeology Review_ Date: 31 Aug 1993 14:22:40 GMT Lines: 121 Here are references that debunk many of the hyperdiffusionist claims. This list is by no means exhaustive. However, they represent a good starting point and I highly recommend them. Cole, John R. 1979 Inscription Mania, Hyperdiffusionism and the Public: Fallout from a 1977 Meeting in Vermont. Man in the Northeast 17:27-53. 1980 "Enigmatic Stone Structures" in Western Massachusetts. Current Anthropology 21(2):269-270. 1980 Cult Archaeology adn Unscientific Method and Theory. In Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory, edited by Michael B. Schiffer, pp. 1-33, Academic Press. Cross, Frank Moore 1968 The Phoenician inscription from Brazil. A Nineteenth Century Forgery. Orientalia 37:437-460. 1979 Phoenicians in Brazil? Biblical Archaeology Review 5(1):36-43. Epstein, Jeremiah F. 1980 Pre-Columbian Old World Coins in America: an Examination of the Evidence. Current Anthropology 21(1):1-20. Epstein Stephen M. 1987 Scholars Will Call it Nonsence: The Structure of von Daniken's Argument. Expedition 29(2):12-18. Feder, Kenneth L. 1984 Irrationality and Popular Archaeology. American Antiquity 49(3):525-541. 1990 Frauds, Myths, and Mysteries: Science and Pseudoscience in Archaeology. Mayfield Publishing Company, Mountain View, California. Jett, Stephen C. 1978 Pre-Columbian Transoceanic Contacts. In Ancient Native Americans, edited by Jesse D. Jennings, pp. 592- 650. McGhee, Robert 1984 Contact between Native North Americans and the Midieval Norse: a Review of the Evidence. American Antiquity 49(1):4-26. McKusick, Marshall 1970 The Davenport Conspiracy, Report #1, Iowa City: Office of the State Archaeologist, University of Iowa. 1979 A Cryptogram in the Phoenician Inscription from Brazil. Biblical Archaeology Review 5(4):50-54. 1979 The North American Periphery of Antique Vermont. Antiquity 53(208):121-123. 1981 Deciphering Ancient America. Skeptical Inquirer 5(3):44-50. 1982 Psychic Archaeology: Theory, Method, and Mythology. Journal of Field Archaeology 9:99-118. 1984 Psychic Archaeology from Atlantis to Oz. Archaeology 37(5):48-52. 1990 The Davenport Conspiracy Revisited. Iowa State University Press, Ames. McKusick, Marshall and Erik Wahlgren 1980 Vikings in America: Fact and Fiction. Early Man 2(4):7-11. Ross, A., and P. Reynolds 1978 Ancient Vermont. Antiquity 52:100-107. Sagan, Carl 1980 A Scientist Looks at Velikovsky's 'Worlds in Collison." Biblical Archaeology Review 6(1):40-51 Story, R. 1976 The Space-Gods Revealed: A Close Look at the Theories of Erich von Daniken. Harper and Rowe, New York. Swauger, James L. 1981 Petroglyphs, Tar Burner Rocks, and Lye Leaching Stones. Pennsylvania Archaeologist 51(1-2):1-7. Wauchope, Robert 1962 Lost Tribes & Sunken Continents. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Williams, Stephen 1988 Fantastic Messages from the Past. Archaeology 41(5):62, 64, 70. 1991 Fantastic Archaeology: the Wild Side of North American Prehistory. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia. Witthoft, John 1960 Of Forgeries and Fantisies. Pennsylvania Archaeologist 30(2):1-17 1964 Alleged Phoenician Inscriptions from York County, County, Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania Archaeologist 34(2):93-94. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Mark A. McConaughy an535@yfn.ysu.edu Section of Archaeology The State Museum of Pennsylvania Box 1026 Harrisburg, PA 17109 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ -- Mark A. McConaughy an535@yfn.ysu.edu From: baylor@daisy.cc.utexas.edu (Baylor) Newsgroups: sci.archaeology Subject: Bat Creek Inscription Date: 31 Aug 1993 16:54:00 -0500 Lines: 40 I just obtained a copy of the inscription from Bib Arch. Interesting. Looks like 8 characters (with a tiny bit of a ninth on an edge). They also look pretty crude. I have no idea what language they are. I don't know anything about Hebrew, stone carving or archaeology. But I imagine carving in stone is pretty hard. I remember when i broke my arm and had to write with my left hand, and my english characters looked worse than what i see on the stone. With some imagniation, i could see the stone as cherokee, especially if i make allowances for carving. When the syllabary (version 2 - the first was hard to print) came out, they say people were so happy to use it that people purposely took trips just to write letters home. That doesn't explain why something like that's in a tomb, but back when everyone was practicing, i could see a Cherokee illiterate (maybe child) or a bad carver practicing on a rock. In any event, looking at the inscription, i'm not even sure which direction the stone should face. But the first letter (labeled #7 in the picture) looks like a SE. #6 looks like a GA, albeit a messy one. #5 looks like a GV written backwards. If the inscription is backwards, then it's ok. I've watched children practice their alphabet, and have seen them write Ss and Es backwards so maybe it was just a mistake of someone learning. #4 sort of resembles either a TSE or QUO. I have no idea what #3 would be - it looks unfinished and might just be a faded se. #2 looks like a poor LV, but it could be a NU or HU. #1 looks like a pretty decent TLV, but looks better as a backwards ME. #9, the one on the bottom, completely eludes me. Maybe a real bad QU. But it looks alot more like the symbol for the American Cancer Society. Having flipped through lots of books written in different languages, i know many countries have the same symbols as other countries. None of the symbols on the rock seem very unique, so it could be anything. I have no idea if it's cherokee. But it might be. Who knows. Just thought i'd add my .02 - baylor Newsgroups: sci.archaeology Subject: Re: Bat Creek Stone in Jy/Aug _Biblical Archaeology Review_ From: brittobj@ucunix.san.uc.edu (Benjamin Jay Britton) Date: 31 Aug 1993 13:47:58 -0400 Lines: 64 >I don't see that the Bat Creek inscription really adds much of >anything to our construction of history. Discussions such as those which swirl around the Bat Creek Stone are an entree into other discussions about more significant trade items. Until one can presume that significant cultural contact was at least possible, one is stuck with the Columbus afficianados and their epithets regarding the moon and frayed edges of textiles. It is distracting and daunting to some to bother with such noise. Proving that *significant* contact was possible is a first step. >It would certainly prove that Hebrew sailors in the early first >millenium were a lot better (or a lot luckier) than most scholars >of navigation and trade would tend to think. This would certainly >be of some importance, but without other good examples of It might not prove that, because the ship could have been sailed by sailors of any stripe, perhaps with a few hebrew refugee passengers. > No one is postulating >that (accepting it as authentic) the bringers of the stone >caused any noticeable change in New World culture. No one, >for example, has noted any early Synogogues in Tennessee or >a trade route being established between the Eastern Mediterranean >and the eastern Atlantic seaboard. Actually, such things have indeed been postulated, but serious discussion of their possibility is having to wait for acceptance by interested parties in the possibility of such occurences. Certain native American languages have been found to contain elements that suggest possible trans-oceanic contacts. The copper trade from the Great Lakes region has been plausibly linked (if one accepts the possibility of shipping) to the procurement of metal for Europe in pre-Columbian times. Tin has been suggested, also only plausibly if one accepts that ancient ships and people were as capable as late Spaniards, as having come from Potosi around Lake Titicaca in S. America. Jade has been suggested as a trade item from MesoAmerica across the Pacific. Your point is well-taken that contact in and of itself is irrelevant. What is interesting is any *significant contact*. The relation of architecture in SE Asia circa 1000 ad vis a vis that of Mesoamerica is an example of a subject waiting for serious study. >The scholarly consensus is that there was pre-Columbian contact >between the Old World and the New World. The contact appears >to have primarily been sporadic. It did not cause a notable >change in either world's cultures. When scholars actually do all agree on the first sentence above, new information regarding the second sentence may emerge. I doubt the third sentence will continue to be held for too long. Examples: Blowguns and barkpaper books. >Of much more interest is (at least to me), is research into >some aspects of pre-Columbian contact between the New World >and Old World that may have had some noticeable impact on >at least some of the cultures involved, for example, research >into when the exploitation of George's Bank >first started or research into late Medieval map-making. Agreed. -benb Benjamin.Britton@uc.edu (513)556-0283 Newsgroups: sci.archaeology Subject: Re: Bat Creek Stone in Jy/Aug _Biblical Archaeology Review_ From: brittobj@ucunix.san.uc.edu (Benjamin Jay Britton) Date: 31 Aug 1993 20:06:56 -0400 Lines: 87 >1) Based on epigraphic analysis, the tablet is identified >as a fake (this you would disagree with -- but Cross, et >al., don't). >2) Who made it? Best guess is Emmert since he was >the one who "found" it, had the most to gain from its >discovery (notoriety and a job), and because no one >else from the time made any claim on the tablet. >3) There is no evidence besides Emmert's description >that the tablet actually came from the mound. it bears repeating that nothing would have lost emmert his job faster than finding a tablet inscribed in paleo-Hebrew in a Smithsonian sponsored dig. your scenario is illogical. Emmert made no more and no less a "claim on the tablet than did Thomas. They both were official employees of the Smithsonian. Therefore the Smithsonian Institute has made as much of a claim on the tablet as has anyone. You misstate the situation of evidence in favor of isolating a scapegoat. The Smithsonian has embraced the official report, embraced it before and still do. Although one shouldn't be surprised if in light of recent revelations (i.e. the tablet contains a paleo-Hebrew inscription) if the Smithsonian disowns the official report now, this will reflect more on the Smithsonian's unwillingness to accept the possibility of trans-oceanic travel than on the report or the tablet itself. Yo date, however, the Smithsonian stands behind the report, which states that the tablet was recovered from beneath the skull of a skeleton in Mound Three of the Tipton [Bat Creek] Complex. So much for: > no one >else from the time made any claim on the tablet. >3) There is no evidence besides Emmert's description >that the tablet actually came from the mound. It is notable to see how blithely you accept the authenticity of finds dated post 1500ad and with what vehemence, in contrast, you resist accepting even an official Smithsonian Institute find as real. > Besides, there are others who have >written books and articles about the things you have accepted as >evidence for hyperdiffusion. I have made a separate bibliography >of references that I will post that covers most of these topics. >People can check them out if they are really interested. >~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ >Mark A. McConaughy an535@yfn.ysu.edu oh, the hyperdiffusionists, you mean the Smith and his Egyptian theory? your bibliography is one only a mother could love, food for paranoid minds. i especially like the touch about including von daniken... calling the activities of the authors of these books as debunking is not universally apt. Some are bunking away themselves. It is ignorant and naiive to blithely assume that people were unable to cross the ocean in pre-columbian times. these authors almost universally share that blind spot. let them write about space aliens and leave trans-oceanic travel to genuine scholarship. and let them keep their religious beliefs away from their archaeological pen-hands, too. there is simply insufficient evidence to claim that the Bat Creek Tablet is a fake. You would be irresponsible to proclaim it as such: and in response to Baylor, who inquired about this a few posts back, that is no doubt the reason why Williams conspicuously ignored it in his Fan_Arch book, as he ignored cotton. He is a dogmatist, not a seeker of truth. He is therefore ignorant about the Bat Creek Tablet and the Cotton cultural complex, from its chromosomes, to its looms, its dates, and its ceramic loom-weights and their inscriptions. So he doesn't mention them. There is a lot more he doesn't mention. He hasn't mentioned the Guanabara amphorae. He hasn't mentioned them, because they may force him to concede new ground, as did the excavation at L'Anse aux Meadows. with all due respect to the work of both of these well-intentioned people, williams and velikovsky should be locked inside the set of sartre's no exit and left there forever. meanwhile there is archaeological work to be done. ps. like velikovsky, i think the dating in egypt is all screwed up, too. the resistance of *old school* archaeologists to accept that possibility is an example of institutional inertia and resistance. but, like williams, i think one would be nuts to think it's caused by anything as bizarre as a flip of the poles. it's just caused by stubborn, old archaeologists who have been making theories and repeating them for fifty years, and they don't want to be around to be proven wrong. i don't blame them, so long as they aren't overly vituperative about disagreement. -benb Benjamin.Britton@uc.edu (513)556-0283 From: an535@yfn.ysu.edu (Mark A. McConaughy) Newsgroups: sci.archaeology Subject: Re: Bat Creek Stone in Jy/Aug _Biblical Archaeology Review_ Date: 1 Sep 1993 14:22:47 GMT Lines: 173 Benjamin, >it bears repeating that nothing would have lost emmert his job >faster than finding a tablet inscribed in paleo-Hebrew in a >Smithsonian sponsored dig. your scenario is illogical. Hogwash. Thomas was trying to find out who built the mounds. In the 19th century there were several competing theories as to who did it. One was that they represented the remains of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. Another was held by Thomas -- that they were ancestors of the Cherokee. The tablet provided "support" for both theories. The only way Emmert would have been fired is if he was actually caught faking the tablet. Since he was working on his own, that was not a factor he had to fear. >Emmert made no more and no less a "claim on the tablet than >did Thomas. They both were official employees of the Smithsonian. >Therefore the Smithsonian Institute has made as much of a claim >on the tablet as has anyone. Sorry, but this doesn't wash. Thomas did not claim to make the discovery. Emmert was the one to "find" the tablet in the mound. He presented it to Thomas, not vice versa. Thomas and the Smithonsian were simply duped by Emmert. >You misstate the situation of evidence in favor of isolating a >scapegoat. The Smithsonian has embraced the official report, >embraced it before and still do. This is also wrong. True, when the report was issued in 1894 it was considered accurate. However, even though it has been reissued, that doesn't mean the current Smithsonian supports or believes everything in it. It is just an accurate reprint of the original book. If you would bother to ask folks at the Smithsonian -- and even other modern archaeologists -- we would tell you not to accept everything written in Thomas's book as accurate or correct. Work conducted after Thomas's time clearly shows some of his ideas and interpretations are incorrect. However, his book is useful from the perspective of where sites were found and located since they are now largely destroyed. You must consider the history of the book and the discipline of archaeology in evaluating its significance and worth. You do not seem to be able to do that. >It is notable to see how blithely you accept the authenticity of >finds dated post 1500ad and with what vehemence, in contrast, >you resist accepting even an official Smithsonian Institute find >as real. and there is simply insufficient evidence to claim that >the Bat Creek Tablet is a fake. You would be irresponsible >to proclaim it as such: The find is only as good as the finder. In this case, there is good evidence that the person was not truthful and/or able to deal with complex stratigraphic relationships. You will also find that the Smithsonian considers the Bat Creek Tablet to be a fake if you'd check with them. They don't believe it is real. You might not like our interpretation of the inscription on the tablet. We will have to disagree on that point. To us, it clearly is not what Gordon translated and is a fake. >oh, the hyperdiffusionists, you mean the Smith and his >Egyptian theory? your bibliography is one only a mother could >love, food for paranoid minds. i especially like the touch about >including von daniken...calling the activities of the authors of >these books as debunking is not universally apt. Some are >bunking away themselves. It is ignorant and naiive to blithely >assume that people were unable to cross the ocean in pre-columbian >times. these authors almost universally share that blind spot. let >them write about space aliens and leave trans-oceanic travel to >genuine scholarship. and let them keep their religious beliefs >away from their archaeological pen-hands, too. Yes, the bibliography runs the gamut from Smith to von Daniken. It is a list which covers most of the major transoceanic hypotheses, as well as lost continents, outer space people, etc. However, they all share a basic premise, that New World cultures were derived from somewhere else. That is the reason for including all the different references. The references do cover "serious" claims at transoceanic diffusion, as well. You don't seem to like Smith and his Egyptian connections very much. That is very surprising since many of your stated transoceanic connections ultimately are derived from some of Smith's comparisons. You also seem to feel all of us isolationists outright reject transoceanic contact and consider it impossible. That isn't true. We just insist on good information. Check the Jett article if you don't believe me. Besides, we accept Norse and early Spanish contact since there is good evidence for those things. If and when there is similar quality evidence for other voyages, we will accept them as well. Comparisons of vague artistic similarities (often misinterpreted) that date to widely divergent time periods in Old and New Worlds hardly constitutes "good" evidence of diffusion. What did folks do over the intervening years? Sit at the Atlantis weigh station for a few thousand years before eventually making land in the New World? Timing of many claimed contacts just doesn't work. The references provide a good all around background into the subject. >and in response to Baylor, who inquired about this a few >posts back, that is no doubt the reason why Williams >conspicuously ignored it in his Fan_Arch book, as he ignored >cotton. He is a dogmatist, not a seeker of truth. First, as to why Williams didn't treat all those things in his book, I can't say from firsthand knowledge. However, it is virtually impossible for one person to know everything about everything! Nor is it possible for one book to deal with every crazy idea, theory, etc., that is around. There are other books that deal with most of the topics you describe. Conversely, one thing I can categorically state, Williams is NOT a dogmatist as you claim. You don't know him, and that is clear from your description. Williams has and will change his ideas, hypotheses, etc., when the data indicate he is wrong. I seriously doubt that any one who has worked in the field of archaeology for any length of time holds the same ideas about their work as those they had when they started in archaeology. There certainly are things that I did 20 years ago that I would say should be revised or changed. However, these are based on data that prove revisions are needed, or that I/we were wrong. Bat Creek is not the high quality data that will change folks beliefs in transoceanic contact. Re some specific items you claim show contact: >The copper trade from the Great Lakes region has been >plausibly linked (if one accepts the possibility of shipping) >to the procurement of metal for Europe in pre-Columbian times. How so has this been linked/proven? All tested copper items from good contexts in pre-Columbian mounds and sites in the Eastern US have proven to be manufactured from raw ores obtained around Lake Superior. The material has been cold hammered into form. There is no evidence for smelting. None have any tin in them to make brass or bronze. Smelted ores are confined to South and Central American state level societies. It is here that you find some bronze. It occurs in Peru, where there are tin deposits, though. Where are the European ores? Where is there evidence for smelting as was done by the Europeans in the Eastern US? Where is there any evidence that the copper from the Eastern US sites has anything at all to do with Europe? >Jade has been suggested as a trade item from MesoAmerica >across the Pacific. Again, suggested isn't proven. Most Mesoamerican jade comes from deposits in the middle Rio Balsas drainage. Chinese jade comes from the Khotan area of Turkestan, upper Burma, and Yunan province. Some tests were run on 25 specimens of Mesoamerican jade by Norman and Johnson. They claimed they resemble Asian jades. However, Foshag has raised serious questions concerning the validity of their mineralogical tests and the items can't be assumed to be of Asian origin. Again, good data are required to prove these presumptions. Most archaeologists do not deny the POSSIBILITY of transoceanic contact. However, any claims for it must be backed up with solid data. So far, very little solid or good data have been forthcoming. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Mark A. McConaughy an535@yfn.ysu.edu Section of Archaeology The State Museum of Pennsylvania Box 1026 Harrisburg, PA 17109 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ -- Mark A. McConaughy an535@yfn.ysu.edu From: hmccullo@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Huston McCulloch) Newsgroups: sci.archaeology Subject: Re: Bat Creek Stone in Jy/Aug _Biblical Archaeology Review_ Date: 1 Sep 1993 18:34:27 GMT Lines: 129 "You're nothing but a techno-peasant until you've logged on to the network and added your two bits to the cyberchat." -- Newsweek, 9/6/93 In article <25vmma$9tv@news.ysu.edu> an535@yfn.ysu.edu (Mark A. McConaughy) continues the ongoing discussion of the Bat Creek Stone. I continue to believe, even if McConaughy does not, that the true date of the wood is important. Even if, as McConaughy is for some reason convinced, something is awry with the associations, knowing this true date could help establish this. Accordingly, I called Beta Analytic (who performed the original 1988 test) this morning, and spoke with Darden Hood about contamination and other issues. He said that if, say, someone once saw a cockroach and blasted the drawer with Raid, there would be petroleum residues on the sample that would not be visible under a microscope. This confirms Bruce Smith's statement, contributed earlier by McConaughy, that the circa 1981 examination of the wood does not rule out contaminants, or at least the more subtle ones. However, he indicated that it would be _very_ unlikely that such contamination would be quantitatively large enough to make a circa 1820 AD sample yield a date of 1605 BP, simply because such a large portion of the sample would have to be the hypothetical contaminant. Nevertheless, Beta can do a solvent extraction pre-treatment that subjects the sample to a battery of organic solvents and high-tech paint strippers that should eliminate almost any such contaminant. Such a pre-treatment was _not_ done on the 1988 test sample. Hood confirmed that that sample (which I never saw, since it was shipped straight from the Smithsonian to Beta) weighed 30 mg on receipt, and was a tiny sliver, approximately 1 mm X 4 mm. After acid and alkaline washes, which would have removed copper, lime, and humic acids, only 8 mg of wood was left, which was a very small sample by 1988 standards, even for AMS testing, and explains the unusually large standard error (170 yrs). Hood indicated that retesting with 100 mg of material would facilitate solvent extraction pre-treatment, and should give a standard error on the order of 60-80 yrs. Any more than this would not be useful, and 50 might be adequate. Today AMS testing uses much smaller samples than in 1988. However, at least 50 would greatly facilitate handling and pre-treatment. I also spoke with Thomas Stafford at the Univ. of Colorado Inst. for Arctic and Alpine Research, who specializes in chemically difficult C-14 dating. He suggested isolating the cellulose in addition to solvent extraction. This should eliminate all possible sources of contamination but tree rootlets, which could be removed manually under a microscope. He would want 200 mg of material, given Beta's prior experience and the additional step he is proposing. Again, 5.5 gm are available, and the photo in BAR is only about 1/2 the total. I also enquired about bone collagen testing of the awl found with the tablet, wood, and brass bracelets. Whomever I spoke with (earlier) at Beta indicated that Beta would want 10 or more grams of bone for this test (even with AMS testing of the carbon). From the Smithsonian photograph of the awl, I guesstimate that it contains about 1 cc of bone. If its density is 1 - 2, its weight would then be 1-2 gm, too little for Beta. Stafford, however, indicated that he could run such a test comfortably with 200 mg of bone (provided it was in good condition), for about $800, including accelerator testing of the carbon at Lawrence-Livermore Nat'l Labs in Calif. With 5 mg he could perform a pretest that would determine the condition of the bone. Testing the awl is therefore a valid additional possibility. Again, I have already requested and received a specimen from this burial for testing, and have used up my goodwill with the Smithsonian, not to mention my fundng. Any request for retesting the wood or testing the awl would therefore have to come from professional archaeologists. Specific comments on McConaughy's posting: > If we are correct, then no amount of testing of objects from >Bat Creek will provide an accurate assessment of the age of >the tablet. The reasons are as follows: > >What we believe really happened: Who is "we"? I only see one signature on your posting. You and all other professional archaeologists? Surely not, since most pros are surely either uninformed about this particular burial, or are as misinformed as you yourself were just a few weeks ago, when the inscription was Cherokee, the wood itself indicated recent interment, the "buckles" from Mound #2 came from Mound #3, Emmert was Thomas's cousin, etc., etc. >1) Based on epigraphic analysis, the tablet is identified >as a fake (this you would disagree with -- but Cross, et >al., don't). No, Cross never said it was a _fake_. He knew better. All he said was that it did not look to him like _Paleo-Hebrew_ (despite a "striking" yod {BAR letter # 4} and a "normal" lamed {BAR letter #3}). In his letters to Mainfort and myself and his AP interview, he merely said that it should be considered illegible and unclassifiable, and did not claim to be able to demonstrate that it was inauthentic. Non-paleo-Hebrew is of course a very different matter than non-authentic. Only Kyle McCarter, in his comment on my paper in BAR, claims to identify it as a fake on the basis of epigraphic analysis. However, there is a major methodological problem with this, which I address in my letter which I expect will appear in the Nov/Dec. BAR. >The coins you mention have been debunked by Epstein >(see other post with the bibliography). Most of those coins >were not recovered from good contexts, and some of them are >demonstrable counterfeits. They aren't even real Hebrew coins. In my 1988 Tennessee Anthropologist article, I have already discussed Epstein's article. I said there, "Epstein sent a copy of a newspaper photograph of one of the three [Bar Kokhba coins from Kentucky] to Yaakov Meshorer ... , who identified it as a copy from the beginning of the 20th century of the type sold in Palestine to tourists and pilgrims, apparently a passably good case of an authentic coin." However, ".... Epstein admits that Ralph Marcus of the U. of Chicago _personally_ examined the same coin, and determined it to be genuine, and that Marcus and Meshorer are both experts on the period. He also notes that Israel Naamani [now deceased] of the Univ. of Louisville continued to accept Marcus's judgement even after Meshorer's verdict. But because the coin seemed similar to a fourth Bar Kokhba coin from S. Carolina, also identified by Meshorer as a modern forgery ..., Epstein concluded that it was indeed a modern copy. Having thus disposed of the one, he hastened to the conclusion that the other two were surely also of modern origin." I concluded, "In sum, the Bar Kokhba coins remain in limbo. All 3 deserve furthr research, at the minimum hands-on examination by more experts to determine if they are genuine or copies." So while Epstein did find some good (though inconclusive, as it turns out) evidence against one of the 3, he can hardly be said to have "debunked" all 3. But they're different matters than the Bat Creek Stone itself. Hu McCulloch Economics Dept. Ohio State Univ. (614) 292-0382 From: hmccullo@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Huston McCulloch) Newsgroups: sci.archaeology Subject: Diffusionism Bibliography Date: 1 Sep 1993 19:26:16 GMT Lines: 87 "Night and day they're hunched over their screens, indulging in one of the cheapest and possibly safest addictions of the late 20th century." Newsweek, 9/6/93. In article <25vmrg$9ud@news.ysu.edu> an535@yfn.ysu.edu (Mark A. McConaughy) writes: >Here are references that debunk many of the hyperdiffusionist >claims. Why is diffusionism automatically "hyperdiffusionism"? Some diffusionists are admittedly a bit hyper (so are some isolationists!), but this sort of hyperterminology is more appropriate for rhetoric.archaeology than sci.archaeology. Anyway, your list is a good idea, even if some of the entries aren't very relevant. Here are some comments and additions: >Jett, Stephen C. > 1978 Pre-Columbian Transoceanic Contacts. In Ancient > Native Americans, edited by Jesse D. Jennings, pp. 592- > 650. I haven't read this, but Jett's well known as a (non-hyper) diffusionist. Comments in this paper inspired Johannessen, Carl L. and Anne Z. Parker, "Maize Ears Sculpture in 12th and 13th Century AD India as Indicators of Pre-Columbian Diffusion." _Economic Botany_ 43 (2), 1989, pp. 164-180. Johannessen and Parker show that at least 3 Hoysala temples in southern India contain numerous statues of figures holding what can only be ears of Zea mays, or maize, supposedly brought to the old world by Columbus. Perhaps some of the people Columbus found really were Indians after all? Or did Americans discover the Old World long before Columbus "discovered" them? Johannessen's color slides are even better than the B&W's in the article, and I'm sure he'd be glad to give his lecture on this to academic audiences. He's in the Dept. of Geography, Univ. of Oregon, Eugene. >McKusick, Marshall and Erik Wahlgren > 1980 Vikings in America: Fact and Fiction. Early Man > 2(4):7-11. Add: Neilsen, Richard. "The Arabic Numbering System on the Kensington Rune Stone," Epigraphic Soc. Occasional Papers 15 (1986) 47 - 61. ______. "The Aberrant Runes on the Kensington Runestone," ESOP 16 (1987), 51-83. ______. "The Kensington Rune Stone, Part 3: Linguistic Evidence for its Authenticity," ESOP 17 (1988), 124-178. _____. "The Kensington Rune Stone, Part 3: Linguistic Evidence for its Authenticity (conclusion)," ESOP 18 (1989), 110-32. Neilsen argues that Wahlgren and others' case against the Kensington Rune stone does not hold water -- the dialect is good Bohuslansk, the "aberrant" runes are attested in manuscripts, the Arabic numbering system used to date the stone to 1362 AD was not unknown in Scandanavia at that time, etc. He builds on Hall's 1980 book, _The Kensington Runestone is Genuine_. I highly recommend Neilsen's papers, and would like to know if there's any criticism of them. Williams' 1991 _Fantastic Archaeology_ devotes a lot of space to the Kensington runestone, but makes no mention of Neilsen. >Story, R. > 1976 The Space-Gods Revealed: A Close Look at the > Theories of Erich von Daniken. Harper and Rowe, > New York. Guilt by association! Trans-oceanic contacts by extracontinental aliens (of the white, black and yellow variety) in floating saucers are one thing, but inter-stellar contacts by extraterrestrial aliens (of the green and purple variety) in flying saucers are another! >Williams, Stephen > 1991 Fantastic Archaeology: the Wild Side of North American > Prehistory. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia. Lot of interesting stuff, but too bad he doesn't mention Neilsen. Or Bat Creek. Hu McCulloch Economics Dept. Ohio State U. (614) 292-0382 From: hmccullo@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Huston McCulloch) Newsgroups: sci.archaeology Subject: Re: Bat Creek Stone in Jy/Aug _Biblical Archaeology Review_ Date: 1 Sep 1993 20:44:39 GMT Lines: 93 In article <25tusq$k5n@kiosk.hyperdesk.com> bandreas@gemini.hyperdesk.com (Bill Andreas) writes: >The Bat Creek mounds article in a recent BAR has engendered some >heated discussion in the last several weeks in this forum. To >a large extent, however, I believe the most significant >point regarding the "paleo-Hebrew inscription" has not been >discussed: > > Assuming the artifact is a paleo-Hebrew inscription buried > in a pre-Columbian context, of what significance is it? In itself, not much except for the record books. But its broader significance is that it opens a veritable Pandora's box of _other_, not so well documented, apparent evidence of pre-Columbian contacts. > Even if you believe that a good C14 date can be taken on the > earspools, there is still room for reasonable argument over > the calibrated date. As an archaeologist working in the > Eastern Mediterranean, I don't know the status of the C14 > calibration curves in the New World, but presumably, they are > some problem areas in the curves. Plus, since wood is > involved, one needs to have the argument about when the > artifact was made/deposited versus when the tree died (e.g., > was cut down) from which the artefact was made. (C14 dates > the "death of the wood", not the date of the artefact or > burial. There are well-documented cases of 300-400 year old > wood being re-used or first-used in making an artefact.) On the C-14 date in general, see my posting of 1 Sept. 18:34:27 GMT. In response to your specific questions here, Darden Hood at Beta Analytic tells me that the calibration curve is the same for the entire northern hemisphere, and only slightly different (off by 30 years or so) for the southern hemisphere. There are problem areas, but the worst one is circa 1500-1800, where the industrial revolution messed up the natural C-14 / C-12 mixture. Post-1950 is also bad, because of atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons (we're so hot that our own tissues would appear to come from far in the future!) Also, the C-14 date dates the wood growth, not the death of the tree. Thus, tree rings of the same tree give different dates. (This is how dendrocalibration works). It's true that the C-14 date doesn't directly tell us the date of either the burial or the inscription, but it is still good to have. It would be even better to improve upon it and/or to supplement it with a date on the awl and/or an Anderson test on the bracelets. > .... Regardless of the quality or lack of quality of Emmert's > excavation, the state of archaeology at the time of Emmert's > excavation was such that it must be assumed that Emmert could have > easily missed an intrusive burial. This has nothing to do with > Emmert's individual capabilities or with the potentital > significance of the site. Archaeologists working at that time > -- ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD -- simply did not have the skill set to > distinguish/record much in the way of stratigraphy. What you say goes for the entire Mound Survey. Yet according to the latest and up-to-datest entry in McConaughy's recent bibliography posted here, namely William's 1991 _Fantastic Archaeology_, the Mound Survey "for all intents and purposes shut the door, from a scientific standpoint on the Moundbuilder question." If you would throw out the Mound Survey, the door is wide open again! It would be ideal if archaeologists could go back and re-excavate the Bat Creek mounds from scratch a few times, to see if everything keeps turning up as Emmert described. But they can't. So we're stuck with what we've got. The Mound Survey wasn't up to modern standards, but I think it has to be regarded as indispensable, at least. > I am not aware of any good parallels in the Eastern Mediterranean, > between c200BC and 200AD for the brass bracelets. Nor, have I seen > in any discussion of the Bat Creek mounds a citation to a good > parallel. I have seen several parallels to 18-19th century > bracelets used as trade goods. Technically, these bracelets could > have been made almost any time from the Late Bronze Age onward, > albeit, the specific proportions of the metals is quite rare > in Imperial Roman and earlier times. Without specific parallels > to ancient brass bracelets of the shape, the metal composition, > and manufacturing technique, the argument that they are in fact > ancient seems rather weak. Did you see pp. 6-7 of my Spring 1993 Tennessee Anthropologist article, where I cite some ancient C-shaped bracelets? See eg Gisela Richter, _Greek, Etruscan, and Roman Bronzes_ (1915), #1115. She says this shape is not very indicative to culture, but was used by many people. 18-19th century trade bracelets were typically cut from brass wire drawn by the method invented in France in the 1730s. The Bat Creek bracelets were laboriously wrought instead. Has anyone heard anything about the reliability of Anderson's copper alloy dating method? Hu McCulloch Economics Dept. Ohio State Univ. (614) 292-0382 From: kckluge@krusty.eecs.umich.edu (Karl Kluge) Newsgroups: sci.archaeology Subject: Re: Bat Creek Stone in Jy/Aug _Biblical Archaeology Review_ Date: 01 Sep 1993 22:41:11 GMT Lines: 5 In-reply-to: hmccullo@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu's message of 1 Sep 1993 20:44:39 GMT If a followup C-14 test was done to try to improve the accuracy, what dating of the spool would disprove the authenticity of the tablet? If the 95% interval shifted to, say, 300 A.D. - whatever, would you consider that as proving it non-authentic? From: brittobj@ucunix.san.uc.edu (Benjamin Jay Britton) Newsgroups: sci.archaeology Subject: Re: Bat Creek Stone in Jy/Aug _Biblical Archaeology Review_ Date: 1 Sep 1993 17:29:43 -0400 Lines: 163 >>it bears repeating that nothing would have lost emmert his job >>faster than finding a tablet inscribed in paleo-Hebrew in a >>Smithsonian sponsored dig. your scenario is illogical. > > Hogwash. Thomas was trying to find out who built the >mounds. In the 19th century there were several competing >theories as to who did it. One was that they represented >the remains of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. Another was >held by Thomas -- that they were ancestors of the Cherokee. >The tablet provided "support" for both theories. The only >way Emmert would have been fired is if he was actually >caught faking the tablet. The Smithsonian and Thomas, Emmert's boss, were of the absolute isolationist school, and they were undertaking the excavations, at least in part *IMHO only* to prove that thesis. Emmert would simply not have manufactured a paleo-Hebrew inscription to show his boss, and if he had, for some reason would he have failed to be sure his boss noticed it was in paleo-Hebrew? The thing languished for 100 years before it was recognized as not-Cherokee. I am intrigued and interested in Baylor's thoughts on that though. Have you opinions on Baylor's opinions re: Cherokee lettering? Last I knew, you said you are sure it isn't Cherokee. All this stuff about Emmert losing his job or keeping his job is nothing but hypothetical simulation. It is vain to conjecture what the motives were for a crime which is not known to exist. The evidence for the "crime" exists only in the form of opinions of those who, like yourself, refuse to believe a carefully excavated and reported find might be authentic. That's all! Just the stark, sticky claim of disbelief from the mavens of one school of thought. >> The Smithsonian has embraced the official report, >>embraced it before and still do. > This is also wrong. True, when the report was issued in >1894 it was considered accurate. However, even though it >has been reissued, that doesn't mean the current Smithsonian You may have misunderstood me. The Smithsonian has not officially pronounced the stone to be a fraud; in this regard, they still embrace the official report, which clearly states that the stone is authentic. >You will also >find that the Smithsonian considers the Bat Creek Tablet to >be a fake if you'd check with them. They don't believe it is >real. whatever they say in private to you or me may echo their private beliefs, and we can expect it to echo the isolationist tradition of the Smithsonian, but publicly they have not stated that the stone is a fraud. They lack proof. They are aware of that. It may be real. So your collegial use of the term `our', as in : > You might not like our interpretation of the inscription on the >tablet. does not extend to the official stand of the Institute. I appreciated your executive summary of the bibilography you provided. Your references often include many who ignore cases in which the information is worth investigating, in favor of attacking cases which may be faulty. As commendable as watchdogging is, one should not bite the milkman. It is encouraging to see that `your kind' does not lock shut the door to new knowledge, but it is a partisan approach you are taking, and I think you would do better to not lump research on space aliens in with research on barkpaper books or pottery styles. Speaking of pottery styles, you mention: >Timing of many claimed contacts just doesn't work. You seem to be ignoring the fact that timing of many claimed contacts does work. Perhaps you're not ignoring that, but when you use that to bolster an argument to justify resisting belief in the possibility of trans-oceanic travel, it reads as irrelevant and distracting. We are interested in the timings which DO work, examining them in detail, are we not? Re: Smith, well, I do think stela B might have a couple of elephants on them, but i think it much more likely that the Mesoamericans shared their knowledge with SE Asia than with Egyptians. The timing of building stepped pyramid sun temples with enclosed stone roof structures with roof-combs is quite remarkable, and worth perusing. Books for us westerners with good documentation of these Cambodian and Vietnamese structures are a little hard to find. One interesting one is Angkor: The Monuments of the God-Kings, Joan Lebold-Cohen, Harry Abrams, 1975. The Dong-Son cultures of SE Asia and the peoples there of Hindu tradition seem possibly relevant... The Tao T'ieh (probably misspelled) is a complex artistic motif with cosmological associations which seems to link Asia to America in pre-Columbian times, too. And as for doubting the significance of "Comparisons of vague artistic similarities (often misinterprete d)" only a fool or a hyperinventionist would dare to dismiss the elements of information waiting to be understood therein. And, yes, the timing does work. I am glad to hear that Williams and you profess to be open-minded; your candor is appreciated. I agree that Bat Creek is not *necessarily* the high quality data that will change folks beliefs in transoceanic contact. But it is significant that even though you can't prove it is fake, you insisted it was. You base that insistence on scepticism alone that the tablet, if real, could have originated somehow in the mediterranean. You may be wrong, as you know. Maybe new knowledge will eventually bring you to believe that the thesis of its authenticity is not as eminently doubtable as you thought. There will be, at that time, no more reason to doubt it than to doubt the authenticity of Egyptian faience beads found in English mud. >>The copper trade from the Great Lakes region has been >>plausibly linked (if one accepts the possibility of shipping) >>to the procurement of metal for Europe in pre-Columbian times. > How so has this been linked/proven? The evidence for this exists in the copper forms found on and around Isle Royal from the period 3000-1000bc. Spear heads with fluted hafting stems, copper axes in identical styles to those made at the same time period in Europe and across the "Old World", copper circlets and gorgets in the same style as those used for trading the raw copper (a bracelet- like shape and a gorget/ingot-like shape, respectively). The stone tools found in association with these copper implements, the burial styles (i.e. log chamber tombs under mounds), and the use of astronomical orientation in the placement of these mound complexes are also evidence of this contact. This is as highly controversial as the Bat Creek Tablet, however, and will receive the same level of vituperative resistance from the Isolationist camp. But there is simply no way to argue away the similarity of those copper tools. One would be left, in trying to defend an isolationist position, as one has been with the Bat Creek tablet, in postualting that the finds were faked. And there is no basis for believing that the finds were faked, any more than that the Bat Creek Stone was faked. Only scepticism provides an incentive for argument. I didn't mention them to you earlier, because i thought the bat Creek stone would be a better rag-doll for you to shake, with its inscription being in known lettering and all... Some might blindly insist that the similarity in copper spear and axe styles of the Isle Royal artifacts are merely hyperinventionism; but such insistents have yet to adequately explain the loss of the hafted spear and copper axe technology to the people of america: they rest their case on suppositions of lax forgettery by indigenous americans. for those who believe that a three-week ship voyage was not impossible, that the social disorder of the mediterranean which took place at that time, seems possibly related. One also may note the change in burial styles across Europe at that time from inhumation (as at Isle Royal) to urnfield-style creamtion. That also, to a neo-diffusionist (to coin a phrase) seems possibly related. Most copper from Western Europe of this time period is also cold-hammered, as were the tools from Isle Royal (although i haven't examined them myself, and i wouldn't be surprised to find smelted copper among indigenous american artifacts. > Some tests were run on 25 specimens of Mesoamerican >jade by Norman and Johnson. They claimed they resemble Asian >jades. However, Foshag has raised serious questions concerning >the validity of their mineralogical tests and the items can't be >assumed to be of Asian origin. Again, good data are required to >prove these presumptions. Thanks for these references. I haven't heard of them. What was the nature of the tests which were performed? It is right to require good data, and we should expect it to be sought. But let's not kill *all* the messengers who accompany it when found. Are you satisfied with Emmert? (No, he says, I want Meggers and Evans!) Just kidding ;) have you read Unearthing Atlantis, by Charles Pellegrino? I'd be curious about your reaction to it. -benb Benjamin.Britton@uc.edu (513)556-0283 From: an535@yfn.ysu.edu (Mark A. McConaughy) Newsgroups: sci.archaeology Subject: Re: Bat Creek Stone in Jy/Aug _Biblical Archaeology Review_ Date: 2 Sep 1993 16:20:49 GMT Lines: 147 Hu, >I continue to believe, even if McConaughy does not, that the >true date of the wood is important. Even if, as McConaughy >is for some reason convinced, something is awry with the >associations, knowing this true date could help establish this. The only thing the date will do is date the earspool. Its age will not prove the age of the tablet if you can't demostrate the sample is directly associated with the tablet. The question of association is critical in proving antiquity. Re possible contamination of the dated sample: >Accordingly, I called Beta Analytic (who performed the >original 1988 test) this morning, and spoke with Darden >Hood about contamination and other issues. He said that >if, say, someone once saw a cockroach and blasted the drawer >with Raid, there would be petroleum residues on the sample >that would not be visible under a microscope. This confirms >Bruce Smith's statement, contributed earlier by McConaughy, >that the circa 1981 examination of the wood does not rule out >contaminants, or at least the more subtle ones. >However, he indicated that it would be _very_ unlikely that >such contamination would be quantitatively large enough to >make a circa 1820 AD sample yield a date of 1605 BP, simply >because such a large portion of the sample would have >to be the hypothetical contaminant. First, there is no conclusive evidence the sample was treated or contaminated in any way. This is merely a hypothesis on my part based on the appearance of the wood. It looks too well preserved to be untreated. Beta's statement is correct IF the sample was superficially treated with some type of preservative or insecticide. Conversely, there are preservatives that actually penetrate and replace organic materials (such as PEG - Polyethylene glycol). PEG would not have been used in the 19th century, but we really don't have good information on what kinds of preservatives they were using. If a replacement preservative was used, then it could easily create a much older date since a large portion of the organic sample would be replaced as per requirements. It is also possible the sample isn't contaminated and dates to the age Hu obtained. In any case, if the sample can't be shown to come from undisturbed contexts or to be directly associated with the tablet (something that is highly questionable given the nature of the excavations and the "finds"), then the obtained date can't be assumed to provide an accurate age assessment for the tablet. >Who is "we"? I only see one signature on your posting. We can quibble about this. I am the only one directly responsible for the posting. However, the outright fraud and botched excavation interpretations did not spring forth solely from me. They are based on materials McCarter published in his BAR article and information Bruce Smith provided to me. >Surely not, since most pros are surely either uninformed >about this particular burial, or are as misinformed as you >yourself were just a few weeks ago, when the inscription >was Cherokee. . . BTW, I haven't retracted the presence of Cherokee characters on the tablet, only that it WAS made by a Cherokee. There is a difference. >No, Cross never said it was a _fake_. He knew better. All >he said was that it did not look to him like _Paleo-Hebrew_ >(despite a "striking" yod {BAR letter # 4} and a "normal" lamed >{BAR letter #3}). In his letters to Mainfort and myself and his >AP interview, he merely said that it should be considered illegible >and unclassifiable, and did not claim to be able to demonstrate >that it was inauthentic. Non-paleo-Hebrew is of course a very >different matter than non-authentic. Only Kyle McCarter, in his >comment on my paper in BAR, claims to identify it as a fake on >the basis of epigraphic analysis. However, there is a major >methodological problem with this, which I address in my letter >which I expect will appear in the Nov/Dec. BAR. True, Cross never said it was an outright fake, he did imply it. McCarter did state it. I've said it. Smith has said it to me. So there are a few of us that do think it is a fake. Also, Non-paleo-Hebrew does make for problems with translation and authenticity. Few, if any, people write texts mixing characters from different languages (exceptions are written languages based on other alphabets, such as Cherokee). Usually they usually write the complete text in one language, and follow it with the complete text in another language. Mixing letters just confuses all the potential readers/users. Besides, where did the Non-paleo-Hebrew come from? That is something else that would have to be explained. Since you have admitted that you don't know much Hebrew, I will be interested in seeing just how you arrived at your conclusions re McCarter's analysis. I'm am looking forward to seeing the letter. So you don't like Epstein's coin analysis, either! The Clay Creek, Kentucky coin is the one shown to be a late 19th-20th century fraud. The coin from Louisville was not directly examined, but details of it match an identified fake found in South Carolina. The other one may or may not be a fake. Nevertheless, these identifications do not treat the question of where the coins were found and in what context. All of them are from contexts that could be recent. None were found in association with Native American objects. What do they prove except that someone lost them -- and this could have happened in the late 19th or early 20th centuries just as easily as any other time since folks were collecting them (and purchasing frauds during popular trips to the Holy Lands). You seem to accept authenticity of items based on very tenuous information. That is your prerogative. However, I would like to see things coming from far better contexts than demonstrated for the coins from the southeastern US before accepting them as really ancient discards. RE Kensington Stone: The Kensington Stone has been studied, restudied, and studied ad infinitum. However, mainstream archaeologists have certainly voted fraud on this one. I suspect Wallace and Wahlgren would dispute Hall and Neilsen's papers. No, William's does not comment on them -- so what? There is plenty of evidence that the stone is a fraud, from a statement by Cran's (one of the discoverers) son that his father told him that Ohman and he made it, to the use of colloquial 19th century Swedish phrasing to write out the ancient text, and in the use of uniform 1 inch wide chisel marks to make the inscription (very English of them!). You know, this is beginning to resemble Barry Fell's Greatest Hits. BTW, have you bothered talking to anyone in the Ohio State U Anthro Department or the Ohio Historical Society about your ideas and hypotheses? OSU does have a good Anthro department. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Mark A. McConaughy an535@yfn.ysu.edu Section of Archaeology The State Museum of Pennsylvania Box 1026 Harrisburg, PA 17109 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ -- Mark A. McConaughy an535@yfn.ysu.edu From: an535@yfn.ysu.edu (Mark A. McConaughy) Newsgroups: sci.archaeology Subject: Re: Bat Creek Stone in Jy/Aug _Biblical Archaeology Review_ Date: 2 Sep 1993 20:26:36 GMT Lines: 91 Hu, >What you say goes for the entire Mound Survey. Yet according >to the latest and up-to-datest entry in McConaughy's recent >bibliography posted here, namely William's 1991 _Fantastic >Archaeology_, the Mound Survey "for all intents and >purposes shut the door, from a scientific standpoint on the >Moundbuilder question." If you would throw out the Mound >Survey, the door is wide open again! This is hardly true, Hu. There are problems with individual sites listed in Thomas's work, and with some of his interpretations. However, even if we threw out the complete book and ignored it, evidence since that time reinforces the basic conclusion that the mounds were build and used by Native Americans. Physical Anthropological studies of mound building populations demonstrates these people were relatives of modern Native Americans and the artifacts found in the mounds also supports that conclusion. >Did you see pp. 6-7 of my Spring 1993 Tennessee Anthropologist >article, where I cite some ancient C-shaped bracelets? See eg >Gisela Richter, _Greek, Etruscan, and Roman Bronzes_ (1915), >#1115. She says this shape is not very indicative to culture, but >was used by many people. 18-19th century trade bracelets were >typically cut from brass wire drawn by the method invented in >France in the 1730s. The Bat Creek bracelets were laboriously >wrought instead. European trade bracelets from the 18th and 19th century can be hand wrought. They come in many forms, the wire type is only one of those. There also are engraved forms, twisted or braided wire forms, etc. These were traded widely since the Native Americans did like jewelry. Benjamin: >Have you opinions on Baylor's opinions re: Cherokee lettering? >Last I knew, you said you are sure it isn't Cherokee. You have mistated my position on this rather consitantly. I have only retracted that I believed that the Bat Creek tablet was made by a Cherokee. I have consistantly stated there are Cherokee letters on it. However, I now believe they were faked by Emmert. >All this stuff about Emmert losing his job or keeping his job >is nothing but hypothetical simulation. It is vain to conjecture >what the motives were for a crime which is not known to exist. >The evidence for the "crime" exists only in the form of opinions >of those who, like yourslf, ruse to believe a carefully excavated >and reported find might be authentic. Unfortunately, this is not all hypothetical, as you imply. There is 19th century correspondence that clearly indicates Emmert had a drinking problem and that his work was unreliable and did, in fact, lead to him being fired on one occasion. Emmert had good motivation to try and keep his job given the poor economy of the time. >The Smithsonian has not officially pronounced the stone to >be a fraud; in this regard, they still embrace the official report, >which clearly states that the stone is authentic. This is indeed true. No one from the Smithsonian has "officially" stated it is a fraud, etc. Conversely, I doubt you will find any one who will "officially" pronounce Thomas's report correct in all aspects, either. Re: the Central American diffusionist stuff. I am not going to get into all of that because I don't have the time to really expand this discussion. Check the references and their bibliographys for information about that material. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Mark A. McConaughy an535@yfn.ysu.edu Section of Archaeology The State Museum of Pennsylvania Box 1026 Harrisburg, PA 17109 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ -- Mark A. McConaughy an535@yfn.ysu.edu From: srr@udorn.Eng.Sun.COM (Steve Reid) Newsgroups: sci.archaeology Subject: Re: Diffusionism Bibliography Date: 2 Sep 1993 22:56:42 GMT Lines: 13 >Story, R. > 1976 The Space-Gods Revealed: A Close Look at the > Theories of Erich von Daniken. Harper and Rowe, > New York. "Guilt by association! Trans-oceanic contacts by extracontinental aliens (of the white, black and yellow variety) in floating saucers are one thing, but inter-stellar contacts by extraterrestrial aliens (of the green and purple variety) in flying saucers are another!" But, the arguments used by both seem to be of a strikingly similar nature! Open minds must examine this apparent connection. From: hmccullo@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Huston McCulloch) Newsgroups: sci.archaeology Subject: Re: Bat Creek Stone in Jy/Aug _Biblical Archaeology Review_ Date: 3 Sep 1993 15:17:48 GMT Lines: 141 In article kckluge@krusty.eecs.umich.edu (Karl Kluge) asks concerning the C-14 date on wooden earspool fragments found with the Bat Creek Stone: >If a followup C-14 test was done to try to improve the accuracy, what dating >of the spool would disprove the authenticity of the tablet? If the 95% interva l >shifted to, say, 300 A.D. - whatever, would you consider that as proving it >non-authentic? An excellent question! You are trying to pin me down without seeing the results, but that is fair enough. I am sure archaeologists would want to form their own conclusions based on their own experience with associations, even if I were a trained archeologist (which I am not). But for what my humble opinion is worth, I definitely would want to see both the improved wood date and a date on the awl, now that I know it is feasible, before drawing any conclusions. Ignorance may be bliss to some, but knowledge is what science is supposed to be all about. Ideally, I would also like to see an Anderson date on the bracelets, or at least to know that someone tried to reproduce his method and couldn't. Given the potential interest of this, I think the effort would be well worth it. If Emmert was really an outright liar, as McConaughy and others are ready enough to assume, he might conceivably have saved up some authentic artifacts from other contexts that he excavated on his own during the period 3/87-1/89 when he was not employed by the Smithsonian, and then claimed to have found them while he was officially working for the Survey in order to increase their impact and his prestige as a productive excavator. One possibility then, is that the wood and the awl are both old, but inconsistent. The earspools may have been made from old tree growth, and they may have been made in the youth of the person buried, who may have been old when he or she died. It is also possible that they were handed down for a few generations before being buried, though my guess is that this would not have been the case. The wood should be checked to determine what species it is, or at least how fine its grain is, i.e. precisely how many rings per cm. Fine grain wood like bass is nice for carving, but if it is fine grained there may be a great deal of variation of age within a single earspool. Also, which way does the grain run? Obviously the fibers run from right to left in the BAR photo, so that the spools were cut from a vertical section of the tree (assuming a trunk or orienting a branch as if it were a trunk). But is this vertical section at right angles to the bark or parallel to the bark? Or does it run right through the heartwood? Parallel to the bark would cause relatively little variation within the sample, whereas perpendicular would cause maximum variation, particularly if the grain is fine. If perpendicular, it may be possible to determine (from the curvature of the grain) which fragments are youngest and which oldest. A date from the youngest would be ideal. Or at least one that is adjusted (by the rings/cm count) for its position in the spool. In order to get a 200 mg sample for Stafford's cellulose test, one of the larger chunks would have to be cut in half (there are 11 such chunks, including 6 not shown in the photo, totalling 5.5 gm). It is possible that the exposed endgrain could then actually be tree-ring dated. But tentatively, let's say that the wood could at most have been 300 years old at the time of the burial, and as little as 10. The awl may have been made from an old bone salvaged from a trash heap rather than from last week's supper, but bone on the surface probably wouldn't last more than a few years. It may have been a favorite tool that was carried about for some time, but to work it would have had to have been pointed, and the point would have broken easily, requiring repointing and eventual discarding. Unlike the earspools (and the inscription), there was nothing special about it except that it worked. Even if the animal was a carnivore (was it?), the vegetation growth the bone represents was probably from within its own lifetime. So let's say, tentatively, that it couldn't have been more than 50 years old at the time of the burial, and perhaps as little as 2. So if the awl date minus the tree date is significantly more than 300 - 2 = 298 years (tentatively), they are inconsistent. Likewise, if the tree date minus the awl date is significantly more than 50 - 10 = 40 years, they are inconsistent. For this purpose, compute the se of the difference as the square root of the sum of the se's of the individual dates, and take 2 of these se's to form a 95% confidence interval. Even though we're only looking at one tail of the distribution at a time, we eventually look at both tails, so half of a 2-tailed confidence interval is appropriate in each case. I don't see that dendrocalibration would affect these results, though if they came out in a funny part of the curve I would have to rethink that. (The existing range, 32 AD - 769 AD, actually has some moth holes in it, that were specified in the detailed report. These were only a few decades long, however, and I think it would be confusing to do anything but ignore them for practical purposes.) Paleo-Hebrew is not known to have been used in the Old World after the Bar Kokhba rebellion of 132-135 AD, so refugees from this war are the latest plausible context for this contact. Knowledge of the script could easily have died out within a few generations without the support of a community, so let's say the inscription was made before 200 AD. The stone is so primitive that it is unlikely that it was brought from the Old World (unlike the bracelets, which were surely made in the Old World). It might have been passed down for several generations before being buried, however, and this is the greatest source of uncertainty here. But let's say that within 150 years its significance was forgotten to all but its last owner, and that he or she died within 50 years. So if _either_ the awl or the wood, taken individually, is significantly much later than 400 AD (dendrocalibrated), there is an inconsistency. How much is "much" depends on how much it got passed down by people who were unaware of its significance. Such a stone might be regarded as powerful "medicine," and treasured by generations of shamans. Nevertheless, let's say that if either the wood or the awl is significantly later than 400 AD there is a "big inconsistency." Thus, the existing point estimate, 427 AD, is already "too late" for the script, and consistency is preserved only by the measurement error. In my mind (though surely not in McConaughy's), such inconsistencies would not necessarily imply inauthenticity. However, they would constitute solid evidence (as opposed to the existing mere speculation) that something is wrong, or at least very unusual, with the association, and would call for additional offsetting evidence (e.g. patination on the stone, use of letter forms that were unknown to semitists in 1889, etc) before the find would be plausible. How much such evidence would be necessary would of course depend on the degree of inconsistency, so I'm afraid I can't give you a definite answer to your original question, however fair it was. A clearly modern date (i.e. 18th-19th century, or even 16th-17th century) on the wood, the awl, or the bracelets, would pretty well discredit the find. If the C-14 dates turned out to be significantly BC, yet consistent with one another, I would have to go back and research Hasmonaean scripts of the 2nd and 1st centuries BC. I have mostly neglected these (except for the block he that shows up in the later ones), since the fit generally seems adequate in the 1st and 2nd centuries AD, since the tiny script on these coins causes eyestrain, and since OSU's library doesn't have Meshorer's comprehensive book. But I don't think significantly BC dates are very likely. Significantly pre-586 BC for both C-14 dates (allowing as how the wood may have been old wood) would clearly be wrong, since the stance of the yod is definitely non-first-Temple, as is the he. Furthermore, the lamed would be up at the top of the other letters, instead of down with them in a single row as it is. Undoubtedly 586 BC could be pushed up substantially. Hu McCulloch Economics Dept. Ohio State Univ. (614) 292-0382 *** Newsgroups: sci.archaeology From: bertsche@ssc.gov (Kirk Bertsche) Subject: Re: Bat Creek Stone in Jy/Aug _Biblical Archaeology Review_ Date: Fri, 3 Sep 1993 15:32:33 GMT Lines: 80 In article <262pvj$bbl@charm.magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu>, hmccullo@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Huston McCulloch) wrote: > > However, he indicated that it would be _very_ unlikely that such contamination > would be quantitatively large enough to make a circa 1820 AD sample yield a > date of 1605 BP, simply because such a large portion of the sample would have > to be the hypothetical contaminant. This is easy to estimate. The half-life of C-14 is roughly 5000 years and the supposition is that contamination caused a 1500 to 2500 year error. This means that something like 25% of the carbon which was dated came from petroleum-source solvents, and only 75% was from the original sample. > Nevertheless, Beta can do a solvent extraction pre-treatment that subjects the > sample to a battery of organic solvents and high-tech paint strippers that > should eliminate almost any such contaminant. Such a pre-treatment was _not_ > done on the 1988 test sample. Hood confirmed that that sample (which I never > saw, since it was shipped straight from the Smithsonian to Beta) weighed 30 mg > on receipt, and was a tiny sliver, approximately 1 mm X 4 mm. After acid and > alkaline washes, which would have removed copper, lime, and humic acids, only 8 > mg of wood was left, which was a very small sample by 1988 standards, even for > AMS testing, and explains the unusually large standard error (170 yrs). I would simply re-do the original test. The contamination would not be uniform in the earspool, and the chemical pretreatment done by different people on a physically different piece of the sample would surely leave a different fraction of contamination remaining than did the original test. This should give a radically different date than the original if the date is due to contamination as postulated. Based on the numbers you give above, about 15-20mg should be sufficient to do this. (8mg of clean wood is a lot by today's standards at a good lab. Anything more than about 3-4mg will leave material to be thrown away.) > Hood indicated that retesting with 100 mg of material would facilitate solvent > extraction pre-treatment, and should give a standard error on the order of > 60-80 yrs. Any more than this would not be useful, and 50 might be adequate. > Today AMS testing uses much smaller samples than in 1988. However, at least 5 0 > would greatly facilitate handling and pre-treatment. Not a bad suggestion. But personally, I would only mess with the solvent extraction if a re-do of the original test was consistent with the original date. > I also spoke with Thomas Stafford at the Univ. of Colorado Inst. for Arctic an d > Alpine Research, who specializes in chemically difficult C-14 dating. He > suggested isolating the cellulose in addition to solvent extraction. This > should eliminate all possible sources of contamination but tree rootlets, whic h > could be removed manually under a microscope. He would want 200 mg of > material, given Beta's prior experience and the additional step he is > proposing. Again, 5.5 gm are available, and the photo in BAR is only about > 1/2 the total. > > I also enquired about bone collagen testing of the awl found with the > tablet, wood, and brass bracelets. Whomever I spoke with (earlier) at Beta > indicated that Beta would want 10 or more grams of bone for this test (even > with AMS testing of the carbon). From the Smithsonian photograph of the > awl, I guesstimate that it contains about 1 cc of bone. If its density is 1 - > 2, its weight would then be 1-2 gm, too little for Beta. Stafford, however, > indicated that he could run such a test comfortably with 200 mg of bone > (provided it was in good condition), for about $800, including accelerator > testing of the carbon at Lawrence-Livermore Nat'l Labs in Calif. With 5 mg he > could perform a pretest that would determine the condition of the bone. > Testing the awl is therefore a valid additional possibility. Both good ideas. I would trust Tom; he is a good, careful researcher and knows what he's doing. But, as McConaughy and others state, the more important difficulty is to show that that the earspool and awl are truly associated with the tablet. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Kirk Bertsche bertsche@ssc.gov Superconducting Super Collider Laboratory KB6YZA 2550 Beckleymeade Ave, MS 9000 (214) 708-4231 Dallas, TX 75237 FAX: (214) 708-4820 Opinions expressed above are my own, and do not necessarily reflect official positions of the laboratory. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ From: hmccullo@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Huston McCulloch) Newsgroups: sci.archaeology Subject: Re: Bat Creek Stone in Jy/Aug _Biblical Archaeology Review_ Date: 3 Sep 1993 21:29:04 GMT Lines: 59 In article bertsche@ssc.gov (Kirk Bertsche of the Superconducting Super Collider Lab in Dallas) quotes my article <262pvj$bbl@charm.magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu>, >> Nevertheless, Beta can do a solvent extraction pre-treatment that subjects t he >> sample to a battery of organic solvents and high-tech paint strippers that >> should eliminate almost any such contaminant. Such a pre-treatment was _not _ >> done on the 1988 test sample. Hood confirmed that that sample (which I neve r >> saw, since it was shipped straight from the Smithsonian to Beta) weighed 30 mg >> on receipt, and was a tiny sliver, approximately 1 mm X 4 mm. After acid an d >> alkaline washes, which would have removed copper, lime, and humic acids, onl y 8 >> mg of wood was left, which was a very small sample by 1988 standards, even f or >> AMS testing, and explains the unusually large standard error (170 yrs). and adds: >I would simply re-do the original test. The contamination would not be >uniform in the earspool, and the chemical pretreatment done by different >people on a physically different piece of the sample would surely leave a >different fraction of contamination remaining than did the original test. >This should give a radically different date than the original if the date >is due to contamination as postulated. > >Based on the numbers you give above, about 15-20mg should be sufficient to >do this. (8mg of clean wood is a lot by today's standards at a good lab. >Anything more than about 3-4mg will leave material to be thrown away.) > > .... personally, I would only mess with the solvent extraction if a re-do of >the original test was consistent with the original date. However, the objective is not to determine whether the original test was contaminated, but simply to find the true date of the wood. There is a legitimate (if not quantitatively large) question about hypothetical contamination in the 1988 date, and in any case its standard error was disappointingly large. So why not just go for a good, decontaminated date on the first go round? I gathered Stafford would be willing to do the test with far less than 200 mg, but I kept talking him up, to make sure there would be plenty of material. If the sample is minuscule, there is an off chance that it will consist of nothing but a rootlet. I'd feel more comfortable extracting C from a largish sample, mixing it up, and testing a dab of the mixture. As I mentioned earlier, any sample of the wood should be tested for Cu, Zn, Pb, and Ag, just to check if the bracelets (Cu + 27% Zn + 3.3% Pb, roughly) were really responsible for preserving the wood, as appeared to the Smithsonian excavator to have been the case. If instead Ag is present in addition to the visible Cu, they were probably preserved by native copper cladding that is often present on such earspools. Hu McCulloch Economics Dept. Ohio State Univ. (614) 292-0382 From: brittobj@ucunix.san.uc.edu (Benjamin Jay Britton) Newsgroups: sci.archaeology Subject: Re: Bat Creek Stone in Jy/Aug _Biblical Archaeology Review_ Date: 3 Sep 1993 20:33:48 -0400 Lines: 215 >>Story, R. >> 1976 The Space-Gods Revealed: A Close Look at the >> Theories of Erich von Daniken. Harper and Rowe, >> New York. > >"Guilt by association! Trans-oceanic contacts by extracontinental aliens (of >the white, black and yellow variety) in floating saucers are one thing, but >inter-stellar contacts by extraterrestrial aliens (of the green and purple >variety) in flying saucers are another!" >But, the arguments used by both seem to be of a strikingly similar nature! >Open minds must examine this apparent connection. This is a simplistic statement that does little of value except allude to the mindset of its author. A truly open mind would be open to learn, and a critical capacity in an open mind would filter all information, including isolationist dogma and isolationist-derived dogma, right along with solid evidence for trans- oceanic travel; please do so with cotton, copper use, astronomically oriented architecture, polished stone axes, barkpaper books and blowguns. If you will not, save your pejoratives. If you will, please contribute more coherently. Personally, I will not bother to respond to posts re: theories of airflight. I consider them utterly irrelevant to the question of significant cultural contacts by trans-oceanic travel in pre-Columbian times. I was struck by something Mark McConaghy wrote; that at the time the Bat Creek stone was found, there were two hypotheses prevailing at the Smithsonian and that Thomas was of the "purely indigenous origin" school. There were other explanations also offered, including the notorious and disproven "theory of the lost continent", held by people like Ignatius Donnelly. Most of the evidence arrayed which indicated trans-oceanic contact was collected by holders of the "lost continent" theory. A certain number of those who were of the "NOT purely indigenous origin" camp wrote that the Americas might be the lost continent in question, the continent written about so frequently in ancient literature. Many of these authors (including Squier and Davis) used evidence of pre- Columbian trans-oceanic contact, to bolster a theory we might call the "lost tribes" theory. I did find some confirmation that the Smithsonian vacillated between embracing the "lost tribes" theory and the "purely indigenous origin" theory. I would like to suggest a possibility, a sense of which i have caught from these old readings (which i wouldn't have bothered with, had not McConaghy suggested it indirectly; thanks). there is an eagerness in these old writings to explain the "Mound Builders" as being somehow utterly *other* than native american. they are written of, as though the writers wished the readers to believe that the "mound builder" culture must be non-indigenous; and these "non-indigenous mound builder theorists usually fell into one of two camps; the "lost continent camp" and the "lost tribes" camp. They shared a tendency to ignore the essentially indigenous nature of the "mound builder" culture. When the atlantic floor was carefully mapped, it was rather conclusively proven that no "lost continent" existed. This scored one for the "purely indigenous origin" people and one big one against the "lost continent" people. It was then a "lost tribes vs. purely indigenous origin" ballgame. The PIO people scored big and easy points by showing things like No Arches! No Bronze! Obvious continuous occupation from early dates and obvious local development of cultural complexes! The lost tribes, hypothesizing intact and complete colonization, was pretty much put out of the game. So for the 20th century, we have been witnessing a fast-developing, prolific and intelligent schhol of thought re: prehistoric american culture, all of which has been based on the thesis of the "purely indigenous origin" school. Therefore, for example, the collected papers of the first international meeting of archaeoastronomers consisted of two books: one green for the "old world" and one brown for the "new world". Attempts to develop comparisons between the two "worlds" were absolutely unrepresented in the collection, regardless of whether the authors sought to prove or disprove the possibility of trans-oceanic cultural contacts affecting archaeoastronomy. Most sadly, imho, out of all this, the work and evidence sought and developed by non-"PIO" scholars, was relegated to the middens of archaeological ivory towers. Students of the PIO school, as only students and dogs can, attacked anyone who smelled like a non-PIOer (c.f. mr. reid and mr. mcconaghy above) Conformism is as abundant and as tyrannically-imposed as it is awful. New research investigating possibilities of trans-oceanic contact are thoughtlessly disregarded and mindlessly demeaned. This brings us to the present, where the arguments used by the PIOers are of a strikingly similar nature to those of religious fundamentalists who claim that if it's in the book, it must be true. If it disagrees with the book, it must be false. PIO has become a school of thought based solely on blind faith. The circumstances of the Bat Creek inscription demonstrate this clearly: no evidence exists to indicate the tablet is anything other than a genuine artifact dating from pre-Columbian times. Based on PIO militaristic scepticism alone, the tablet and its excavator are called FAKES and those who withold judgement re: the tablet are equated with moon-men. This silliness about the "he" not being a "he", refusing to see the vestigial tail, ignoring that other lapidary inscriptions use a tailless "he", expecting that romanized jews cabable of procuring trans-oceanic transport might have a romano-jewish-american way of making a "he", utterly ignoring the script and claiming it as gibberish -the stone's critics are literally ignorant. >>Have you opinions on Baylor's opinions re: Cherokee lettering? >>Last I knew, you said you are sure it isn't Cherokee. > > You have mistated my position on this rather consitantly. >I have only retracted that I believed that the Bat Creek tablet >was made by a Cherokee. I have consistantly stated there >are Cherokee letters on it. However, I now believe they were >faked by Emmert. My apology. Which letter(s) do you consider Cherokee? Is it not possible that the purported "he" might actually be a "he"? Are there other letters which you feel are cherokee or not-paleo-hebrew? >>All this stuff about Emmert losing his job or keeping his job >>is nothing but hypothetical simulation. It is vain to conjecture >>what the motives were for a crime which is not known to exist. >>The evidence for the "crime" exists only in the form of opinions >>of those who, like yourslf, ruse to believe a carefully excavated >>and reported find might be authentic. > > Unfortunately, this is not all hypothetical, as you imply. There >is 19th century correspondence that clearly indicates Emmert had >a drinking problem and that his work was unreliable and did, in >fact, lead to him being fired on one occasion. Emmert had good >motivation to try and keep his job given the poor economy of the >time. Emmert sustained an alcohol addiction because of using liquor as medication for the ague which he contracted while doing a wintertime excavation. despite the destructive influence of his addiction, he was considered such a valuable and competent excavator that he was retained. his only job concern consisted in tha t the project Thomas had hired him for was complete due in part to his own years of faithful, responsible service to the Smithsonian. You make him a scapegoat with no justification except your own refusal to accept the tablet as real. Furthermore, if you check the dictionary and think about it, you'll realize that by stating a)the tablet is fake because you don't believe it's real, and b)Emmer t must have faked it, since he's the only one who had an opportunity, and c)when asked for his motivation, you say he did it to save his job, you are indeed engaged in the process of hypothetical simulation. It is the basis for your clai m. Evidence of pre-Columbian contact may be resting quietly all over the Americas and the "Old World" waiting for the hundred-headed dog to die of old age or for the banks dependent on the Treaty of Tordesillas to close. It is no more and no less noble for america to have been part of the culture which the "old World" shared than it is for Greece or Iran or India or China or Norway. The burden of proof, given the evidence for trans-oceanic travel, rests in the opinion of this researcher, on the dogmatists of the PIO School. But they do not shoulder this burden, for they have the blessings of the governments and the gratitude of the banks to exempt them. How different are such "professionals" from priests? Let them explain why cotton, copper use, astronomically oriented architecture, polished stone axes, barkpaper book, blowguns, after literally millions of years of human and pre-human activity, these things were NEVER done, then after the end of the last ice age, when your purported isolationism took its hold, across the world's seas, including in your alleged safe haven of america, these cultural traits suddenly appeared? These are only a few of the indicators of contact. But they cannot, so they will not. Human civilization, as it exists in sharing information and exploring the nature of the universe in which we exist, makes no sense from the PIO perspective. The theory of independent inventionism reels under the weight of the evidence fo r contact. It is sensible for those in positions of authority to embrace a measur e of acceptance that significant trans-oceanic contact did take place. Otherwise, the mind is beggared to consider a world of nonsense, where birds fly for weeks across oceans with poisonous seeds in their bellies as sailors fearfully watch them disappear over the watery horizon, not daring to follow; a world in which, although our paleolithic ancestors could traverse the globe completely, our historical sources are lying and cannot sail a boat and do not. Diodorus Siculus wrote of a Phoenician route to "a large island in the Atlantic Ocean, beyond the Pillars of Hercules" Homer and Plutarch mention islands situated in the Atlanti c. Aelian in "Varia Historia" (book iii, chap. xviii) relates Theopomus' record of an interview between King Midas of Phrygia, and Silenus, who had traveled to India. Silenus tells Midas that there was another continent across the Atlantic where tall, happy, long-lived mortals inhabited wonderful cities; and how these giants had once sailed to Europe in hundreds of ships but thought everything there so dull and ugly that they soon sailed home again. He said that the land was "larger than Asia, Europe, and Libya together". St Clement, in his epistle to t he Corinthians, said that there were other worlds beyond the ocean. Columbus refer red to the Islands of the Antilles. Post-Columus Spanish maps referred to South Amer ica as the Atlantic Island. St Brendan's voyage was recorded, Hui-Shen's was recorde d. Were all these people liars and fabulists? Why must we conclude that they were? Asian chickens were bred in pre-Columbian america, roman amphorae were found fro m Roman shipwrecks, Roman-style bricks with Christian and Iberian mason's marks we re found in Comalco in Mexico, where 375 structures, including a stepped pyramid we re built by the Mayans. Phoenican inscriptions have been found on door lintels, on cave walls, ogham inscriptions have been found on solstice aligned stone chamber s and on coastal landings suitable for trading ships... one could continue... the evidence for trans-oceanic contact is vast, and mere scepticism is not proof against it. McConaghy has nothing to offer but scepticsm. Reid has less. I have been refreshed and excited to read old reports recently of the nature of the non-colonialized americans written by government explorers: "Black populations have been found in America in very small numbers only, as isolated tribes in the midst of very different populations. Such are the Carrua s of Brazil, the Black Caribees of Saint Vincent, in the Gulf of Mexico; the Jamassi of Florida, and the dark-complexioned Californians... Such, again is the tribe that Balboa saw some representatives of in his passage of the Isthmus of Darien in 15 13; ... they were true negroes." "Many of the Zuni are white. They have a fair skin, blue eyes, chestnut or aubu rn hair, and are quite good-looking. They claim to be full-blooded Zunians, and ha ve no tradition of intermarriage with any foreign race. This circumstance creates no surprise among this people, for from time immemorial a similar class of people h as existed among the tribe." -U.S. Explorations for a Railroad to the Pacific, vol. ii, p. 107, footnote "A stranger in the Mandan village is first struck with the different shades of complexion and various colors of hair which he sees in a crowd about him, and is at once disposed to exclaim.`These are not Indians.' There are a great many of thes e people whose complexions appear as light as half-breeds; and among the women particularly there are many whose skins are almost white, with the most pleasing symmetry and proportion of feature; with hazel, with gray, and with blue eyes... ...there have been very few visits of white men to this place, and surely not enough to change the complexions and customs of a nation. And I recollect perfec tly that Governor Clarke told me, before I started for this place, that I would find the Mandans a strange people and half-white. -George Catlin,explorer, painter My point is that points of knowledge may pass unnoticed through domatism and ignorance, and we should be as critical about isolationism as about diffusionism if we care about the truth. We may decide to return to and restudy old evidence. I would appreciate thoughtful responses which would inform me of your opinion; in fact, it is to solicit the opinions of knowledgeable, interested people that i offer this post. have you evidence for isolationism, for diffusion, have you personal beliefs about the subject that you can share? if so, please post... -benb Benjamin.Britton@uc.edu (513)556-0283 From: baylor@daisy.cc.utexas.edu (Baylor) Newsgroups: sci.archaeology Subject: Re: Bat Creek Stone in Jy/Aug _Biblical Archaeology Review_ Date: 5 Sep 1993 23:18:03 -0500 Lines: 15 I'm sorry. I'm no archaeologist, amateur or otherwise. So i have a very simplew question. How do you date an inscription? Let's say we have a precolumbian-aged rock buried in a tomb blank. Someone digs it up, then marks it up, then turns it in saying its really an old inscritpion. How do you tell that from an inscription that was carved precolumbianish and buried? Also, what is an earwig or whatever that thing was? And why is wood dating important here? Oh yeah, mr mcnoughaty (sorry about the spelling), why do you think it might be Cherokee letters but not a cherokee author? How does one tell the author from just the inscription. Sorry for all the questions, but i got lost awhile back - baylor From: katzman@math.lsa.umich.edu (Mordechai Katzman) Newsgroups: sci.archaeology Subject: Re: Bat Creek Stone in Jy/Aug _Biblical Archaeology Review_ Date: 6 Sep 1993 07:24:16 GMT Lines: 13 Here is a question by a non-knowledgeable but interested person :) If regular contact between inhabitants of the American continent and the old world had occurred, wouldnt we expect to find references to it in literature? As far as I understood, the Bat Creek stone, if authentic, is dated back to the first centuries AD- and we do have vast literature from that era- how come the contacts are not mentioned there? Or are they? From: brittobj@ucunix.san.uc.edu (Benjamin Jay Britton) Newsgroups: sci.archaeology Subject: Re: Bat Creek Stone in Jy/Aug _Biblical Archaeology Review_ Date: 6 Sep 1993 10:58:58 -0400 Lines: 183 >If regular contact between inhabitants of the American continent and >the old world had occurred, wouldnt we expect to find references to >it in literature? >As far as I understood, the Bat Creek stone, if authentic, is dated >back to the first centuries AD- and we do have vast literature from >that era- how come the contacts are not mentioned there? >Or are they? there are many references in literature to what might be the americas presently. here are a few: Chronicle of the Mali Empire, by al-Umari, circa 1300 ad, describes two flotas sent from the muslim kingdom of Mali in west africa to explore and colonize the lands across the atlantic. Geneology of the House of Gwynedd, Gutyn Owen, circa 1500, wrote that Madoc departed in 1170 and left most of his followers in America before returning Autobiography of Willem the Minstrel, circa 1250, describes Madoc's voyage and discovery of a sun-drenched paradise six days west of a "treacherous garden on the sea", his return to Wales and his search for compasses to bring back to his colony Decades, Peter Martyr, Italian scholar of King Ferdinand's court, possible companion of Columbus, wrote of Columbus' discovery that "some of the inhabitants of the land honoreth the memory of one Matec (or Mateo) when Columbus arrived on the coast." Martyr also wrote that Columbus marked "these are Welsh waters" on his charts of the west indies Title Royal, John Dee, written 1580, "The Lord Madoc, sonne to Owen Gwynedd, Prince of Wales, led a Colonie and inhabited in Terra Florida or thereabowts..." Principal Navigations, Richard Hakluyt, checked references to Madoc's trip Sketches of Lousiana, Amos Stoddard, 1816, describes the testimony of a Cherokee chief Oconostota that white people built forts and were defeated in a war with the cherokee in the region of alabama, georgia and tennesee Eric the Red's Saga, circa 1000 ad, describes the exploration of the land and coast southwest of Greenland, called "Markland and Vinland" The Navigatio of St. Brendan, circa 600-800 ad, irish christian religious tract describing a voyage by a curious high official of the church to see for himself the "land of the blessed". Handwritten manuscripts of this work were found in Genoa, where Columbus was born, and in a monastery near Lisbon where he worked as a cartographer. Chu I Chuan, Liang Shu, circa 460 ad, describes the voyage of hui shen, a Budhist monk across the Eastern Sea to the Country of the Extreme East, to evangelize for the Buddha for 30 years, returning to china circa 500 ad. he describes the land of Fu-Sang, 7,000 miles east of china. Hui Shen was originally from afghanistan Imago Mundi, Pierre d'Ailly, 1410, "according to the Philosopher and Pliny, the Ocean which stretches between the extremity of further Spain and the eastern edge of India is no great width. For it is evident that this sea is nav igable in a very few days if the wind be fair..." Columbus owned this book and marked this passage in it. On the face in the Moon, Plutarch, 75 ad, describes a phoenician colonizing expedition departing from Carthage, apparently to the area around Newfoundland or Nova Scotia Complete Works, Diodorus Siculus, circa 100 bc, describes a ship's journey after being blown across the atlantic by storms to a land with navigable rivers, i.e. not madeira, not azores Herodotus, circa 300 bc, describes circumnavigation of africa, which supposedly took three years; an inscription in brazil states that the writers were separated from that expedition by storms Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns and Theogony, c.f. "...there was created a race of god-like race of hero-men... Grim war and dread battle destroyed a part of them... But to the other father Zeus the son of Cronos gave a living and an abode apart from men, and made them dwell at the ends of the Earth. And they live untouched by sorrow in the islands of the Blessed along the shore of deep swirling Ocean..." The Odyssey, Homer, "It is for Odysseus that my heart is wrung... pining away on a lonely island far way in the middle of the seas. The island is well-wooded and a goddess lives there, the child of the malevolent Atlas, who knows the sea in all its depths and with his own shoulders supports the great columns that hold earth and sky apart." Strabo, "So no one should be surprised if, in the first place, the poet [Homer] has written his mythical account of the wanderings of Odysseus in such a way as to set most of his stories of Odysseus in the Atlantic Sea beyond the Pillars of Hercules (for the stories he told were so closely related to the facts, both in respect of places and in respect of everything else created by his fancy, that he rendered his fiction not unplausible); nor surprised if, in the second place, some men having believed in these stories themselves and also in the wide learning ofr the poet, have actually turned the poetry of Homer to their use as a basis of scientific investigations, as has been done by Crates of Mallos and certain others as well." Geography, III, 4, 4 Argonautica, Appolonius Rhodius, describes a journey to a land beyond the straits (some say the dardanelles, some say gibraltar) to a land across the ocean where Atlas ruled, and his daughters, called the Hesperides, kept the garden where the golden apple was hung on a tree guarded by a serpent Natural History, Pliny, "Next to be considered are the characteristics of lead, which is of two kinds, black and white. The Greeks called it cassiteros, and there is a fabulous story of their going to islands of the Atlantic Ocean to fetch it ..." Geography, Strabo, "And on this point he [Poseidonius] does well to state that the story about the island... is not a fiction... an island no smaller in size than a continent." Pythians 9, 1-7, Pindar, "Once the flowering haired son of Leto, snatched Cyrene away from the wind-echoing vales of Pelion,... to dwell in plenty at the foundation of a third continent." Aegyptica, Proteus, "The immortals will send you to the Elysian plain at the world's end,... day after day the West Wind's tuneful breeze comes in from Ocean to refresh its folk..." Ezekiel 27: 3-4, 10, 12; 28: 13 (R.S.V.) "O Tyre, you have said, `I am perfect in beauty.' Your borders are in the hearts of the seas... Persia and Lud and Put were in your army as men of war... Tarshish trafficked with you because of your great wealth of every kind; silver, iron, tin, lead they exchanged for your wares... You were in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone was your covering." Shan Hai Ching, by Ta Shang and Shu Hai, circa 2000 bc, a geography, called in english Classic of the Mountains and Rivers. describes america... Pausanius Aristotle Cicero Pomponius Mela there are plenty.... it is worth noting that the phoenicians, who controlled the straits of gibraltar from 800-150 bc were notoriously secretive. they would have left no public records of their trade routes, deeming it a capital offense for a sailor to sell navigational secrets. When Carthage, the primary western capital of the phoenicians was sacked by rome, some records were carried away to Byzantium and elsewhere. The romans at first seemed to make very little sense of why the phoenicians blockaded the straits. their first invasion of england floundered on the high tides, so unused to ocean travel were they. they may have recovered the ancient records of the ocean routes from alexandria or from byzantium. They seem to have followed the same strategy of hiding the information re: trans-oceanic travel, i.e. keep it quiet until you can invade full force. the christian church, a romanized greek jew's invention [Paul], became the official state religion, but unlike zoroastrianism it survived the destruction of the monarchy which had adopted it. the new holy roman empire continued the tradition, maintained the archives, and, some say, maintained a sporadic contact with the americas. the crusades cemented the power of the western christian church and enabled italian merchants to avail themselves of the archives of constantinople and the cities of the mideast. the black death put their struggle with the muslims on hold for awhile, but finally they relocked the blockade on the straits of gibraltar, preventing muslim fleets from interfering in their conquest of the atlantic states. ferdinand and isabellas's army and navy were bought and paid for by rome. then, columbus... re: trans-oceanic travel in first-centuries ad although the romans destroyed carthage, they became rather lax masters in north africa, using it as a commercial sector, rather than a military one. ships departed constantly from north africa to points east and west, including to roman colonies on the west coast of africa. all a captain need have done is to sail out west farther than usual, then to be caught in the escalator current which flows from africa to the islands of the carribean, and then on up the coast eventually circling back to Europe and africa. the trip across the atlantic would take 3 weeks approximately. i'll close with a quote from Sir Francis Bacon "You shall understand... that about 3000 years ago, or somewhat more, the navigation of the world, especially for remote voyages, was greater than in this day. Do you think with yourselves that I know not how much it is increased with you in these six score years; I know it well; and yet I say, greater then than now... So you see by this accident of time we lost our traffic with the Americas... As for the other parts of the world, it is most manifest that in the ages following... navigation did everywhere greatly decay, and especially far voyages." -benb Benjamin.Britton@uc.edu (513)556-0283 Newsgroups: sci.archaeology From: rcmolden@parmesan.cs.wisc.edu (Robertc. Moldenhauer) Subject: Re: Bat Creek Stone in Jy/Aug _Biblical Archaeology Review_ Date: Tue, 7 Sep 1993 14:46:55 GMT Lines: 26 In article <26eoj0$j0f@controversy.math.lsa.umich.edu> katzman@math.lsa.umich.ed u (Mordechai Katzman) writes: >Here is a question by a non-knowledgeable but interested person :) > >If regular contact between inhabitants of the American continent and >the old world had occurred, wouldnt we expect to find references to >it in literature? > >As far as I understood, the Bat Creek stone, if authentic, is dated >back to the first centuries AD- and we do have vast literature from >that era- how come the contacts are not mentioned there? >Or are they? > > > Also why no wheels in the Americas? Surely some of the contacts would have brought wheels. Also farm animals, when the Europeans finally did come to the Americas, they brought horses with them. Some escaped and you had wild horses all over the place, one would presume that earlier travellers would have brought horses with them also, but there are no horses before the Spanish. Yet another argument against frequent contact is the spread of disease, if people in the Western Hemisphere had regular contact with people in the Eastern Hemisphere, they shouldn't have been so sussceptable to old world diseases. Newsgroups: sci.archaeology From: bertsche@ssc.gov (Kirk Bertsche) Subject: Re: Bat Creek Stone in Jy/Aug _Biblical Archaeology Review_ Date: Tue, 7 Sep 1993 16:51:10 GMT Lines: 37 In article <268cv0$f5j@charm.magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu>, hmccullo@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Huston McCulloch) wrote: > However, the objective is not to determine whether the original test was > contaminated, but simply to find the true date of the wood. There is a > legitimate (if not quantitatively large) question about hypothetical > contamination in the 1988 date, and in any case its standard error was > disappointingly large. So why not just go for a good, decontaminated date on > the first go round? My predjudice is to do as little treatment of a sample as is necessary. The more treatment one does, the more chance for contamination during the treatment process, and the higher the backgrounds which must be subtracted. On the other hand, a cellulose extraction should not be too problematic. (It may even be advisable to consider doing two measurements; one a re-do of the original test, and the other a cellulose separation.) > I gathered Stafford would be willing to do the test with > far less than 200 mg, but I kept talking him up, to make sure there would be > plenty of material. If the sample is minuscule, there is an off chance that i t > will consist of nothing but a rootlet. I'd feel more comfortable extracting C > from a largish sample, mixing it up, and testing a dab of the mixture. I seriously doubt that Tom would use the entire 200mg, as this would almost certainly entail special processing and greater chance for contamination. I suspect that he wouldn't use more than about 10mg of cleaned wood in any case, and that you won't really get a "mixed up" sample. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Kirk Bertsche bertsche@ssc.gov Superconducting Super Collider Laboratory KB6YZA 2550 Beckleymeade Ave, MS 9000 (214) 708-4231 Dallas, TX 75237 FAX: (214) 708-4820 Opinions expressed above are my own, and do not necessarily reflect official positions of the laboratory. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ From: brittobj@ucunix.san.uc.edu (Benjamin Jay Britton) Newsgroups: sci.archaeology Subject: Re: Bat Creek Stone in Jy/Aug _Biblical Archaeology Review_ Date: 8 Sep 1993 00:15:05 -0400 Lines: 65 >Also why no wheels in the Americas? Surely some of the contacts would have >brought wheels. the wheel was known in mexico, as is documented from the numerous wheeled toys found in association with sites of apparent child sacrifice. all we know for sure is that the wheel was obviously not *commonly* used. use of wheeled vehicles was considered novel by indigenous americans during the early columbian era. the wheel may have been an unwelcome innovation to the cultures of the americas at earlier time periods. the rarity of wheels in the americas is evidence that "old world" cultures did not dominate the cultures in the americas during the pre-columbian times, but it is not evidence of no contact. the wheeled toys, mentioned earlier, are contemporaneous with similar toys in egypt and north africa, where child sacrifice was part of a periodic ritual to tanit (the canaanite goddess, consort of baal). similar toys have been found worldwide from many time periods. wheels were not unknown, rather they were apparently unwelcome or otherwise unwanted, in the americas. Also farm animals, when the Europeans finally did come to >the Americas, they brought horses with them. Some escaped and you had wild >horses all over the place, one would presume that earlier travellers would >have brought horses with them also, but there are no horses before the Spanish. evidence for the extinction of the horse in america is very weak, as far as i have been able to find. as was mentioned a few days ago on this conference, some native american communities claim that they have always used horses. in short, little evidence supports the claim of horse extinction in america. the same goes for the wild cattle. there is little evidence to support the theory of wild cattle extinction in the americas. sometimes, claims can be repeated so often that people take it for granted they are true or at least supported by clear evidence; the theory, originated in the 1800's and supported by little more than the reports of spanish military diarists, of the absolute extinction of american horse and cattle, imho, isn't well documented or proven. >Yet another argument against frequent contact is the spread of disease, if >people in the Western Hemisphere had regular contact with people in the Eastern >Hemisphere, they shouldn't have been so sussceptable to old world diseases. this subject was discussed about a month ago. whites and blacks were no more and no less contagious to many of the diseases which ravaged the denizens of untamed america than were the native americans. smallpox, the big killer, was as deadly to europoids as to Indians. the much greater killer of native americans was displacement from living sites. also several examples of instances of deliberat e introduction of disease into native american populations were mentioned by participants in this newsgroup, but even so, the europoids were as liable to contract these diseases as were the Indians. disease did not assure that no indi an tribes lived east of the mississippi; andrew jackson did. his generals may have used disease as a weapon, but they were not immune to smallpox themselves. to be oblique, the hand of nergal has always been a weapon in war, but usually not the primary weapon. another common objection to consideration of the possibility of trans-oceanic travel has been the lack of the arch in mayan architecture. for clear architectural parallels, see the stepped temples (sans arches) from se. asia circa 800-1200 ad. people have looked so consistently east from the americas that they often overlook clear and compelling evidence of contact from the west. there are many strong reasons to believe that contact between america and asia occurred by trans-oceanic travel in pre-columbian times. see barkpaper -benb Benjamin.Britton@uc.edu (513)556-0283 Newsgroups: sci.archaeology From: cctr114@cantua.canterbury.ac.nz (Bill Rea) Subject: Re: Bat Creek Stone in Jy/Aug _Biblical Archaeology Review_ Date: Wed, 8 Sep 1993 21:31:40 GMT Lines: 73 Baylor (baylor@daisy.cc.utexas.edu) wrote: : I'm sorry. I'm no archaeologist, amateur or otherwise. : So i have a very simplew question. : How do you date an inscription? The shapes of letters change with time, so by studying the way letters are formed in written materials where we do know the date of writing, we can match incriptions with similar letter forms to the same age. To do a simple pracitical experiment, grab a copy of Scientific American and turn the to ``50 and 100 Years Ago'' section and look at some of the type faces they use. They look ``old'' because the shapes of letters used in type setting have changed over time. Just this week the local newspaper ``The Christchurch Press'' changed its default type face and the paper now looks much more modern. Similar things have happen throughout recorded history. Some ancient documents have dates in them on which we can get a pretty accurate absolute dating. These documents become keys by which others of similar letter forms can be dated. This all might sound rather inaccurate to most people, but it is a useful tool. A clear example is the dating of the Dead Sea Scrolls. These were initally dated by paleographic means, but if any scholar wished to dispute the consensus view of the scrolls, they only had to redate them and then new interpretations (just like the ones they were proposing) became viable. Now that some of the scrolls have been radio carbon dated, and these essentially confirm the paleographic dates, it is much more difficult to propose viable new interpretations which are dependant on redating the scrolls, because the dissenter must explain why both the paleographic dates and radio carbon dates are both wrong. The fact that the paleographic dates and radio carbon dates agree is an indication of the usefulness of paleographic dating. : Let's say we have a precolumbian-aged rock buried in a : tomb blank. Someone digs it up, then marks it up, then turns it : in saying its really an old inscritpion. How do you tell that : from an inscription that was carved precolumbianish and buried? A fresh scratch on a rock is pretty obvious. Usually if a stone sits in the ground for a long period of time, some chemical changes take place on its surface as a result of acid or alkaline conditions, the wettness of the soil and its composition and so on. It is possible to get a measure of the rate of these changes and if the proposed date for the ancient inscription is inconsistent with these changes then the genuineness of the inscription is questioned. Also going back to the paleographic data, to do a really good fake requires a very detailed knowledge of the script that are using. Most fakers don't know enough to do a really good fake. In the BAR article on the Bat Creek stone, Carter questions whether all of the letters visible can be identified as being of the paleo-Hebraic script. I certianly don't think they are. Another topic that has been discussed here about whether the changes in the rock are consistent with the date is the Sphinx. : Also, what is an earwig or whatever that thing was? And : why is wood dating important here? Its far easier to date a peice of wood than a stone. The wood was supposed to have been from the same undisturbed mound. It is a reasonable assumption that the wood was deliberately buried with the stone by the same people at the same time. Thus a date on the wood will give us the maximum age of the burial of the wood and stone. It this case it would also seem to be a reasonable assumption that the stone was inscribed for the purposes of the burial (assuming its genuine). Read the BAR articles if you can get hold of them. -- ___ Bill Rea (o o) -------------------------------------------------------------------w--U--w--- | Bill Rea, Computer Services Centre, | E-Mail b.rea@csc.canterbury.ac.nz | | University of Canterbury, | or cctr114@csc.canterbury.ac.nz | | Christchurch, New Zealand | Phone (03)-642-331 Fax (03)-642-999 | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: brittobj@ucunix.san.uc.edu (Benjamin Jay Britton) Newsgroups: sci.archaeology Subject: Re: Bat Creek Stone in Jy/Aug _Biblical Archaeology Review_ Date: 8 Sep 1993 19:47:47 -0400 Lines: 162 As i understand it, the Biblical Archaeology Review magazine ostensibly engages in what it refers to as Biblical archaeology. in a book review by Michael Coogan (p.6 Vol 19, no. 5, Sept-Oct 93) in BAR, the following is found: "The phenomenon known as "Biblical archaeology and the opposition to it are in some ways peculiarly American... There is... a suspicion of religion and religious studies. Religion is often regarded as an illegitinate subject for "objective" investigation... The strongest opposition to the excesses of Biblical archaeology - and even denial of its validity - has often come from scholars whose backgrounds were extremely conservative; as they rejected the religious traditions of their forma tive years, often the basis of their interest in Biblical matters, some of these scholars have also attempted to distance themselves from overzealous correlation of archaeological and Biblical data by separating them entirely. Ironically, in doing so they can exhibit the same dogmatic certainty, self-righteousness and polemical argumentation that characterized the writings of their religious forebears... In his discussion of the interpretation of the finds at Qumran, Moorey seems to side with the more sceptical of recent interpreters, who have rejected Roland de Vaux's views of the chronology and interpretation of the site..." Roland de Vaux was a Catholic priest who died in 1971. In 1956 he was listed as a consultant to the Pontifical Biblical Commission. The present head of the Commission is Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who also heads the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, called during its heyday the Holy Inquisition. The Pope is the reigning head of the Commission, and the executive head is presently called its secretary, formerly called the Grand Inquisitor. To be more specific, Ratzinger is presently the Church's Grand Inquisitor. The congregation consists of an "Assessor", "Commiss ar", and two Dominican monks; these individuals undertake secret investigations pertaining to any breach of doctrine, within or outside the Church which might threaten Church unity. The Pontifical Biblical Commission and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith have basically merged, under Pope Paul VI (1971 june 27). A review of the approach of these august bodies to knowledge concerning their area of interest, including "Biblical archaeology" shows these: "the task of giving an authentic interpretation of the Word of God... has been entrusted to the living teaching office of the Church alone." -Universal Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1990 "To succumb to the temptation of dissent... [allows] infidelity to the Holy Spirit... The freedom of the act of faith cannot justify a right to dissent. This freedom does not indicate freedom with regard to the truth, but signifies the free determination of the person in conformity with his moral obligations to accept the truth." -Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, 1990 "[The function of the Pontifical Biblical Commission is] to strive... with all possible care that God's words... will be shielded not only from every breath of error, but even from every rash opinion... to endeavor to safeguard the authority of the scriptures and promote their right interpretation." -New Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. xi, p.551 Small wonder that the dead sea scrolls were hidden from the public. What are the reponsibilities of "Biblical archaeologists" to the those in the field of scholarship and science? What must we expect of these "Biblical scholars" in situations which entangle them with material inimical to the teachings of the church? To what extent are Frank Cross' interpretations if the Bat Creek stone affected by his intimate association with these Vatican Commissions? >The phenomenon known as "Biblical archaeology and the opposition to it >are in some ways peculiarly American... There is... a suspicion of >religion and religious studies. american or not, the suspicion is of archaeological interpretations limited and determined by the doctrines of organized religions. perhaps the pressing question of possible trans-oceanic contacts in pre-columbian times, fed by the explosion of new evidence for contact, may make the suspicions seem american. divinity per se is not the issue. > Religion is often regarded as an >illegitinate subject for "objective" investigation... rather, "objective investigations" of archaeological and historical phenomena are antithetical to the mandate of "Biblical archaeology" >The strongest >opposition to the excesses of Biblical archaeology - and even denial of >its validity - has often come from scholars whose backgrounds were >extremely conservative; as they rejected the religious traditions of their >for mative years, often the basis of their interest in Biblical matters, >some of these scholars have also attempted to distance themselves from >overzealous correlation of archaeological and Biblical data by separating >them entirely. Ironically, in doing so they can exhibit the same >dogmatic certainty, self-righteousness and polemical argumentation that >characterized the writings of their religious forebears... i also feel that "Biblical archaeology" is invalid, although i am open to discussing the reasons why others might not consider it invalid. i could even change my mind; but the constraints and the manifestation of those constraints (see dead sea scrolls) of the church on its so-called archaeologists are incompatible with pure science and unbiased scholarship. i am hardly a conservative (quaker, conscientious objector, unitarian universalist) religiously or politically. and i feel that religion should take the big back seat to science in scientific investigations. there is more to heaven and earth than Paul or the others dreamed of... >In his >discussion of the interpretation of the finds at Qumran, Moorey seems to >side with the more sceptical of recent interpreters, who have rejected >Roland de Vaux's views of the chronology and interpretation of the site... de Vaux's views must be seen in the context of his official responsibilities to the Doctrine of the Faith. Would it do to have the Messiah portrayed as a militant radical intent on overthrowing the Temple? Hardly. So, for de Vaux and the Church, Qumran will remain a villa for as long as possible. Common sense (and location) says it wasn't. history is instructive in recording the development of church dogma re: the "Discovery of America". what is the present position of the church regarding the question of possible pre-columbian contact with the "Old World"? to what extent does this position affect their willingness to accept new information? can the church reconcile itself to accepting the evidence when it is compelling and overwhelming? it appears that the church contains within its archives records of significant pre-columbian contacts in the form of bishops who colonized the antilles. what arrangement is necessary or what pre-requisites exist to enable the church to publicly adopt the posture that significant pre-columbian contacts occurred. i have referred in previous posts to the hundred-headed dog, cerberus, which guards the gates of the underworld. the underworld, to the ancients of europe and the mediterranean, was the other side of the spherical globe of earth, the americas. the hundred-headed dog is the collection of "Biblical archaeologists" and "Biblical scholars" who guard the dogma of the church. they no more make policy than do the guards at the vatican doors. their task, which they eagerly undertake for scraps of meat and promises of life hereafter, is to fulfill the mandate of the Pontifical Biblical Commission and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. if i wanted, i could argue forever that the table in front of us isn't a table at all. such is sometimes the task of the hundred-headed dog. show me one speck of evidence, one real bit of anything to prove that the bat creek tablet isn't real. you cannot. the history of sovereigty in the americas is shocking, amazing and entertaining from a distance. it is interfering with the conduct of true science. lost races and church sponsored invasions are steamy subjects; if you try to take the long view, you'll find it's possible to be really religious, and truthful and open-minded, all at the same time. religious and ethnic dogma must be respected, but it must not prevent scientists and scholars from learning the truth. the drive to dictate cosmology to the masses should not prevent the truth from emerging. biblical sholarship should not parade in the vestments of science. religionists should not slander scientists to protect sacred dogma. rather, as learning is sacred to scientists and as it grows and changes, so too should religionists let their scriptures grow and change in the light of new knowldge. at least they better, if they want to call it science, as distinct from blind faith. -benb Benjamin.Britton@uc.edu (513)556-0283 From: hmccullo@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Huston McCulloch) Newsgroups: sci.archaeology Subject: Re: Bat Creek Stone in Jy/Aug _Biblical Archaeology Review_ Date: 10 Sep 1993 15:44:38 GMT Lines: 95 In article cctr114@cantua.canterbury.ac.nz (Bill Rea) writes in response to the following query by Baylor (baylor@daisy.cc.utexas.edu): >: I'm sorry. I'm no archaeologist, amateur or otherwise. >: So i have a very simplew question. >: How do you date an inscription? [stuff deleted] >: Let's say we have a precolumbian-aged rock buried in a >: tomb blank. Someone digs it up, then marks it up, then turns it >: in saying its really an old inscritpion. How do you tell that >: from an inscription that was carved precolumbianish and buried? Rea replies: >A fresh scratch on a rock is pretty obvious. Usually if a stone >sits in the ground for a long period of time, some chemical changes >take place on its surface as a result of acid or alkaline conditions, >the wettness of the soil and its composition and so on. It is possible >to get a measure of the rate of these changes and if the proposed >date for the ancient inscription is inconsistent with these changes >then the genuineness of the inscription is questioned. The Bat Creek inscription happens to have undergone changes such as those Rea describes. Perhaps he or other archaeologists could use them to get a ballpark date on the inscription itself, to see how well it matches the apparent date of the script used (circa 1st or 2nd century AD), the existing C-14 date on the wood (32 AD - 769 AD) and/or any future tests that archaeologists may get around to doing on the associated artifacts described in the official Smithsonian report and background documents, viz. a bone collagen C-14 test on the awl, an improved and decontaminated cellulose extraction test on the wood, and/or an Anderson test on the brass bracelets. The Bat Creek stone is primarily a light-colored siltstone, but has a dark, almost black iron oxide crust on one side. The inscription is scratched into this crust. In most places, the letters penetrate the crust, leaving the light siltstone showing through. But where the crust was thick or the engraver lost patience, they do not penetrate. Being iron oxide, scratching the surface leaves a red-orange dust that would have shown up very brightly when the inscription was new. However, the inscription aged for so many centuries under wet conditions (assuming all is as in the official Smithsonian report), that this dust has entirely reconsolidated into the original off-black surface of the stone. The edges of the original grooves have actually become rounded from gradual redeposition of the ferric oxide, and a film of iron oxide that has deposited on the _bottoms_ of the pentrating grooves is visible under a low-powered microscope. A tiny bit of silica or other foreign matter has actually become fused into one of the grooves (the base of #2 in the BAR drawing, as I recall) by the reconsolidting iron oxide dust, since the groove was formed. As a consequence of this redeposition, the original non-penetrating grooves are very difficult to read in front-lit photos such as the official Smithsonian mugshot, and as a consequence, Cyrus Gordon actually misread the shape of one of the letters. (The photo in the July/August Biblical Archaeology Review is instead side lit with an intense light, to show off the letters to maximum advantage. The white edges on most of the letters in this photo are not the bottoms of the grooves, but merely the reflection of the harsh light off the glossy edges of the grooves. Note also the black shadows next to the white lines.) Two vertical strokes in the upper RH corner of the BAR photo were added by an unknown party sometime between 1894 and 1970. These do not penetrate, but are quite visible, even in the Smithsonian photo, because their fresh red iron oxide dust has not reconsolidated back into the amorphous crust on the surface of the stone. They could be used for comparison without any new physical destruction of the artifact. If Rea or others can actually quantify, even approximately, how old the original grooves are, from their degree of redeposition and rounding, that would be fabulous, since it would be a direct date on the inscription itself. We would no longer have to rely entirely on the pretentions of the Smithsonian (vintage 1880s) as being a legitimate scientific institution and on the honesty of its staff for the association between the inscription and other datable artifacts. Rea continues, >Read the BAR articles if you can get hold of them. Excellent suggestion! For those who missed my original posting, BAR's address is 3000 Connecticut Ave NW, Suite 300, Washington, DC 20008. Back issues are available for $4 (US) and should be $5 elsewhere (prorating from the overseas subscription rate). Subscriptions are $24/yr (US) and $30 (elsewhere), and they would surely start yours retroactively to Jy/Aug. But also read my Fall 1988 and Spring 1993 _Tennessee Anthropologist_ articles, along with the critique by Mainfort and Kwas in the Spring 1991 issue, for full details. Contact Dept. of Anthropology, 252 S Stadium Hall, U. Tenn, Knoxville, TN 37996-0720, (615) 974-4408. Gega. Hu McCulloch Economics Dept. Ohio State Univ. (614) 292-0382