From: hmccullo@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Huston McCulloch)
Subject: Re: Pre-Columbian Jews?
Keywords: Bat Creek Stone, Cyrus Gordon
Organization: The Ohio State University
Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1992 20:04:23 GMT


In my post of July 20 concerning the Bat Creek Stone, I inadvertently
gave reference numbers that are specific to my site.  The correct
Message-IDs are:

  1992Jul8.134813.3409cbnewsl.cb.att.com (Seth Rosenthal)
  1992Jul8.111516.18375@hellgate.utah.edu (Jay Windley)
  92190.142439GRV101@psuvm.psu.edu (Gregson Vaux, 8 July)
  n67163q@lynx.unm.edu (swells@triton.unm.edu, 8 July)
  13212ns-mx.uiowa.edu (Doug Jones, 8 July)
  1992Jul8.203555.21784@cb.att.com (Seth Rosenthal)
  2221@israel.nysernet.org (Warren Burstein, 8 July)
  1281#3+@lynx.unm.edu (Zoe Johnson, 9 July)
  1DPNNB1w164w@uuisis.isis.org (Doug Thompson, 9 July)
  4VPNNB2w164w@netlink.cts.com (Jim Bowery, 9 July)
  1992Jul16.181128.4140@eve.wright.edu (Lawrence Wolpert)

To these I now add:

  srutt.711681732@beagle (Steve [Rutt?], 21 July)
  2296@israel.nysernet.org (Warren Burstein, 21 July)


Steve Rutt (21 July) writes, "Assuming the inscription was intended to
be Hebrew (by the author), I find it difficult to dismiss fraud.
Weren't there rumors that the site was tampered with?  Certainly an
over-zealous Mormon might have thrown in the stone while the Smithsonian
crew wasn't looking.  I find it much easier to believe fraud or
mistaken Hebrew identification than I do the idea of first millennium
Jews landing in Tennessee!"

No, there were no indications or rumors that the Bat Creek site in
Tennessee had been tampered with.  Doug Jones (July 8) does claim that a
Davenport, Iowa mound had had tablets planted in it, but that is
another, rather lengthy story (see *The Davenport Conspiracy Revisted*,
by Doug's neighbor, Marshall McKusick, 1991).  The Davenport stones,
whatever they are, are not Hebrew.

The Bat Creek Stone was found in systematic excavations by the
Smithsonian's Mound Survey project in 1889, and not by amateurs who
might have been hoodwinked, as is said to have been the case in
Davenport.  McKusick stresses this contrast of method:

     "In 1894 the Bureau of American Ethnology finally issued the
long-delayed report on mound explorations by Cyrus Thomas.  This
monograph described the findings at hundreds of mounds excavated by
assistants working for the Bureau, research carried out in almost all
major regions of eastern North America and the Midwest.  The importance
of the report lay in its method of dealing with the vexing question of
mound origins.  Speculations about lost races of Mound Builders had run
almost unchecked for a century, and Thomas evaluated the controversy
with scientific evidence.  Other studies had appeared previously, but
the 1894 monograph was seven hundred pages long and so detailed that it
convinced professional anthropologists and archaeologists that the
matter was finally settled."  (p. 103)

The Bat Creek Stone, which appears on p. 392-94 of the 1894 report, is
part of this very mass of hard "scientific evidence," upon which
professional anthropologists and archaeologists like McKusick feel so
comfortable basing their conclusions.

Yes, identification is a problem.  Although Paleo-Hebrew is the
best match for the peculiar characters on the stone proposed to date,
Cyrus Gordon can only positively read five of them, as lyhwd or "for
Judah", and readily admits that the other three letters are hard to nail
down.  Look in the appendix to Gordon's *Before Columbus*, or better
yet, order photo #74-7821 (cat # 134902) from the Smithsonian, and see
what you think for yourself.

However, even if there had been no inscription, the Bat Creek burial
turns out to contain positive proof of some kind of an Old World contact
with the New World.  A pair of bracelets, originally identified by Cyrus
Thomas as (native) copper, were found under the same skull as the
engraved stone and carbon dated wood fragments.  In 1970, the bracelets
were analyzed and found in fact to be heavily leaded yellow brass, viz.
copper alloyed with approximately 27% zinc and 3.3% lead.  Brass existed
in the Old World since 45 B.C., but (unlike native copper), was unknown
in the New World prior to Columbus.  (See my 1988 *Tennessee
Anthropologist* article.)  The bracelets, together with the carbon date
(32 AD - 769 AD) are therefore proof of a pre-Viking, not to mention
pre-Columbian contact, even without the inscribed tablet.  The
inscription itself is our only clue as to what type of a contact this
was, however.

We thus know the approximate date of the inscription, that it could be
Old World, and that it is as solid "scientific evidence" as McKusick
could ask for.  What is it, then, if not Paleo-Hebrew?  Note that if
Gordon had never identified the script as Hebrew, the bracelets would
have remained "copper" to this day, and the wood fragments would never
have been carbon dated.

Like Steve, Gregson Vaux (8 July) is worried by the possibility of a
Mormon presence, and asks "Are any of the posters Mormon?  Were the
original discoverers of the artifacts Mormon?"  Seth Rosenthal
(Jul8.203...) has already "pleaded innocent", nor is Cyrus Gordon or
myself Mormon.  As McKusick points out, the whole point of the Mound
Survey was to debunk once and for all the "speculations about lost races
of Mound Builders" that "had run almost unchecked for a century."  The
Book of Mormon was only one version of these speculations, but
politically the hottest potato.  We may thus rest assured that the staff
of the Mound Survey was devoid of any taint of Mormonism, and that the
agent who actually found the stone (John W. Emmert) was not a Mormon;
it was clear that Mormons Need Not Apply, at least not on this
project.  Furthermore, the vegetation on the mound demonstrated that
it had not been disturbed in over 100 years (p. 714), which makes it too
early to have been built by stray Mormons (who would indeed have been
pretty far afield in eastern Tennessee).  And even supposing that it
were somehow a Mormon plant, why would the perpetrators have been
content to allow the stone to stand misidentified as "Cherokee" for over
80 years? This makes no sense.

It is circular to argue that the Bat Creek Stone surely must be some sort of a
fraud if it is indeed Hebrew.  The valid issue is, is this (only one) authentic
Hebrew inscription, or is it not an authentic Hebrew inscription at all? The
preconception that there are no authentic ancient Hebrew inscriptions at
all in the New World cannot be used as evidence for the latter
conclusion.

                                   -- Hu McCulloch
Newsgroups: soc.culture.jewish