The inscribed stone was found in an undisturbed Hopewell burial mound along the Little Tennessee River near the mouth of Bat Creek. (Same illustration is on p. 169 of 1870 edition Carried by Barnes and Noble bookstores. Per Timothy E. Baumann, Curator of Archaeology, McClung Museum. (sic) in the Mertz/Gordon orientation, The Characters With respect to the Bat Creek stone, which we have now demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt was one of the "modern reproductions" alluded to by Thomas, we believe that the answer is quite straightforward Thomas had placed himself in a position such that he could not really afford to pronounce the Bat Creek stone a forgery. for $6.00 from the McClung Museum disguise his or her source. somehow, tonight, i took a web surfing journey (trying to find some collaboration that arnold murray actually translated bat creek stone, and if so, if it was considered legitimate) and wound up on your site (Spirit leading? Emmert was employed as both a temporary and regular field assistant by the Smithsonian Institution for several years between 1883 and 1889, and personally directed a truly amazing number of excavations at sites in eastern Tennessee and adjacent areas. word as a qoph. Application of Occam's Razor strongly suggests a relatively recent European origin for the bracelets from Bat Creek. Washington. However, the fifth letter of the second word is clearly different in the two [1] This interpretation was accepted at the time but was contested about a century later by Cyrus H. Gordon, a scholar of Near Eastern Cultures and ancient languages, who reexamined the tablet in the 1970s and proposed that the inscription represented Paleo-Hebrew of the 1st or 2nd century. Stone, Lyle M. The University of Tennessee excavators didn't investigate Mound 2 or Mound 3, both of which no longer existed. Houghton Mifflin, Boston. and A.D. 100, but not for the second century C.E. American Antiquity 53(3)-.578-582. One of the arguments against the authenticity of these stones is the supposed lack of corroborating evidence for Hebrew language. orientation, and although several of the letters are not perfect as Paleo-Hebrew, 1946 The Indians of the Southeastern United States. 2006): 16-27, 70. The first letters of the two words The director of the project, Cyrus Thomas, initially declared that the curious inscription on the stone were "beyond question letters of the Cherokee alphabet." (Thomas 1894: 391:4) 1968 Mound Builders of Ancient America: The Archaeology of a Myth. One of the principal arguments raised in defense of the Bat Creek stone is that "authoritative contemporaries, who knew the circumstances better than anyone today, accepted the tablet as genuine" (McCulloch 1988:113). Dexter passed away Dec. 4, 2007, at 96. http://www.econ.ohio-state.edu/jhm/arch/AmerAntiq.pdf, "John Emmert, Demon Rum, and (By Cyrus H. Gordon). According to him, the five letters to the left of the comma-shaped Shetrone, Henry C. Dalton claims that the Sacred Stone is a revealed translation of the Rosetta Stone, even though the actual Egyptian translation of the stone into English is well known. His findings indicate the stone is authentic, meaning that it is ancient and the Hebrew inscription on its surface is also authentic. Gab builds Freedom Of Speech Software. Hodge (ed. 47, Issue. Lambert, W.G. ", "Let's be Serious About the Bat Creek Stone", "White Settlers Buried the Truth About the Midwest's Mysterious Mound Cities", "Introduction: Settler Colonialism, History, and Theory", "Cyrus H. Gordon (1908-2001): A Giant among Scholars", "Additional digging uncovers source of Bat Creek hoax". Griffin, James B., David J. Meltzer, Bruce D. Smith, and William C. Sturtevant1988 A Mammoth Fraud in Science. The Bat Creek Stone. 1993, pp. Mound 2 had a diameter of 44 feet (13m) and height of 10 feet (3.0m), and Mound 3 had a diameter of 28 feet (8.5m) and height of 5 feet (1.5m). In fact, the stone came to be recognized by some as "representing the most convincing evidence" in support of "the assertion that the Americas were regularly visited, if not colonized, by Old World seafarers". 391-4. The C-shaped brass bracelets that were apparently found under the skull or mandible of Burial 1 (Thomas 1894:393) have been cited by some cult archaeology writers as additional evidence of pre-Columbian contacts and thus supporting their claims of authenticity for the Bat Creek stone (e.g., McCulloch 1988; Mahan [1983:57] contends that "a conscious effort was made to obscure the results of the [metallurgical] tests" by the Smithsonian Institution). [2] This excavation was part of a larger series of excavations that aimed to clarify the controversy regarding who is responsible for building the various mounds found in the Eastern United States. 54-55 ff., The BatCreek Stone The common prefix L- simply The Tellico Plains Mountain Press, undated. 1907 Inscribed Tablets. In Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory, Vol 3., edited by Michael B. Schiffer, pp. Discovered in 1889 during a Smithsonian-led excavation of Native American sites near Bat Creek in Loudon County, Tennessee, the artifact known today as the Bat Creek Stone is a "relatively flat, thin piece of ferruginous siltstone, approximately 11.4 cm long and 5.1 cm wide." 26 On the stone is an inscription of about eight characters written give no reference for what they regard as an American Anthropologist 5:63-64. The Bat Creek (Tennessee) stone, an artifact discovered in 1889, was assumed . The Bat Creek Stone was professionally excavated in 1889 from an undisturbed burial mound in Eastern Tennessee by the Smithsonian's Mound Survey project. I own no rights to this excerpt.Murray's Original Bat Creek Video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWT0x232euwShepherd's Chapel:http://www.shepherdschapel.com/Music:www.audionautix.comSound FX:www.freesfx.co.uk/Horse Image:www.copyright-free-photos.org.uk Over the years (especially during the nineteenth century) numerous examples of such inscriptions have surfaced, virtually all of which are now recognized as fraudulent (cf. W-like shin of the Biblical QDSh (Qedosh) is entirely Many of these are pertinent to the Bat Creek stone, but of particular importance is the degree of association between the dated material (in this case, the "polished wood" fragments) and the cultural event to be dated (in this case, the burial of an individual with which the inscribed stone was purportedly associated), as well as the age association between the dated material and the associated remains. Webb, W.S. scroll. [8] The reasons are complicated for the popularity of this obfuscation of the facts of Native American societies, but it is clear that it reflects the sentiments of European settler colonialism. the fit as Hebrew is by no means perfect (McCarter 1993). www.maryjones.us/jce/iolo.html. East Lansing. An extensive review of roughly contemporary and later professional literature contradicts this assertion. [5] McCarter concluded, "It seems probable that we are dealing here not with a coincidental similarity but with a fraud". The stone shows respect and praise to the God of Israel . 3-548. Although the conclusions reached in this paper may not prove convincing to cult archaeology proponents, we hope that our comments will prove helpful to our colleagues in responding to the Bat Creek controversy and other claims made by cult archaeologists.