Joseph, F (2006). Discovering the mysteries of ancient America : lost history and legends, unearthed and explored. USA: Mark Book PressDrugs in Ancient America
It would appear that South America has been the world's supplier of narcotics far longer than assumed, according to this especially provocative article in the January/February, 1995 issue of Ancient American. Its author, a biology researcher in Austin, Texas, reveals a direct, surprising link between the Andes Mountains and the Nile Valley.
They Came for the Cocaine by A.J. Julius
Were South Americans providing drug-plants to inhabitants of the Nile Valley 3,000 years ago? Did trade-routes connect the ancient empires of the
Egyptians and the Inca? Not according to most modern historians, because theories of transoceanic contact and diffusion have suffered from a supposed lack of supporting hard evidence. However, a recent report from scholars in Germany is rekindling the debate.
Researchers at the Institute for Anthropology and Human Genetics at the University of Munich have detected cocaine and nicotine in the tissue of Egyptian mummies. These surprising results are difficult to explain. Cocaine and nicotine are members of a chemical class of compounds known as alkaloids. Plants containing alkaloids have been culturally and economically important for thousands of years. Nicotine is found in a number of plants around the world; the same cannot be said of cocaine. Coca plant (Erythroxylum) was unknown in the Old World until after the Spanish expeditions to South America during the 15th and 16th centuries. Since then, it has been cultivated in other parts of the world. Nearly a year after the report appeared in Naturwissenschaften (“Natural Science,” 1992), the journal published several controversial letters received from the scientific community. Some felt the editorial staff had been sloppy in reviewing the manuscript, and that the project was either a bizarre hoax or an experiment gone wrong. The researchers were attacked because they failed to include proper controls, and the possibility of instrumental error was not sufficiently ruled out. Dr. Franz Parsche, one of the mummy researchers, responded, “... our analysis provides clear evidence for the presence of alkaloids in ancient human remains.”
The investigators offered no explanation for how the drug compounds came to exist in the mummies but defended their results as correct, citing the known reliability of the analytical methods employed. Several explanations were offered by scientists. Some mummies might have absorbed tobacco smoke while being studied and displayed in museums. Perhaps the drug reactions resulted from residual pesticides used during preservation and storage. Several scientists noted that unknown chemical reactions might have occurred in the mummified skin, hair, and bone tissues tested. The composition of
Egyptian mummification chemicals is not well-known, but we do know that the procedure varied somewhat over time. This uncertainty supports the valid existence of these drugs in the mummies. Materials tested were dated from 1070 B.C. to 395 A.D., and all were positive for cocaine and nicotine.
On one hand, it is unlikely that the embalming techniques of the Egyptians were so static more than 1,500 years, so as to produce the same long-term chemical results. On the other hand, it is uncertain how long cocaine and nicotine are stable in mummified remains. Perhaps native plants (unknown today) that contained cocaine, nicotine, or related alkaloids, were used by the Egyptians. Such plants could have been medicinally important or consumed in the normal diet. Nicotine is found in many members of the plant family Solanaceae, which includes food and drug-plants such as tomato, potato, tobacco, and jimson weed.
If the drugs were not of local origin, and they are not “artifacts” in the mummies, only one possibility remains. The findings would be good forensic evidence for pre-Columbian transoceanic contact. Because the mummies tested covered a broad timespan, such contact would have been well established and regular, unless plants could be returned to Egypt and propagated. Coca is a well-known anaesthetic and stimulant. If the occasion should arise, it would be a likely candidate for transfer between ancient medical practitioners. The useful properties of the plant were known to South Americans before the Inca. Today, inhabitants of the mountainous regions of Peru and Bolivia use coca much as their ancestors did. Leaves are chewed with powdered lime (calcium carbonate, traditionally from crushed shells or ashes). The lime creates alkaline conditions in the saliva to extract the cocaine and other alkaloids more efficiently.
Egyptian medical writings go back 4,000 years and were advanced for their time. Egyptian doctors were in demand throughout the known world. Although they practiced surgery and had a diverse
apothecary, as far as we know, their understanding of anesthetics and stimulants was poor. There are no writings or artifacts that clearly refer to or depict New World herbs or procedures, such as coca leaf-chewing. Research suggests that dispersal of medicinal knowledge was slow in ancient times.
“We should not put our interpretation of these drugs as they are used in modern societies to the Egyptians,” argues Dr. Parsche, “further experiments are in progress to clarify some of these issues.”
Clarification is needed. Mummies are not rare and there is ample material available for testing. Further research may help us understand this biochemical enigma; until then, the mystery of the Egyptian drug-mummies remains unsolved.
Egyptians in pre-Columbian America
There is no physical evidence to support arguments for ancient Egyptian influence in pre-Columbian America, or so the advocates of cultural isolation insist. Among their most articulate, well-informed spokesmen was Eric Lurio, a prominent New York illustrator and artist/author of A Fractured History of the Discovery of America, a satire on cultural diffusionists. The “Davenport Tablet” he mentions in Ancient Americans January/February, 1995, issue was purported to depict an Ancient Egyptian Djed festival, the raising of a sacred column, allegedly found in western Iowa during the late 19th century. Most archaeologists condemn the “artifact” as bogus. That same characterization, according to Mr. Lurio, might be applied to all claims for overseas’ visitors to America before Columbus.
Point: No Egyptians in Ancient America by Eric Lurio
The main if not only reason the advocates believe in Egyptian contact with the Mexicans-Andeans is the existence of pyramids. Almost every book and article claiming that the Ancient Egyptians made contact with the Ancient Mexicans and Andeans use pyramids as their prime pieces of evidence. The sole exception to the rule was Barry Fell, who based his “proof” of Egyptian contact on the notorious Davenport fraud. The use of a proven hoax for evidence, as Fell did, tainted the rest of the evidence presented.
Gunnar Thompson, in his latest book, repeats this lie and those of others. The Maya and the Aztecs had pyramids, the Inca had pyramids, and the Egyptians had pyramids, they say, so there just had to be contact. The pros, except for Thor Heyerdahl, dismiss this out of hand, usually in a paragraph or two. Did they or didn’t they? In this article, we will examine the evidence to see which side is right.
In order to explore the question properly, we have to ask two others: Did the Ancient Egyptians actually get all the way across the Mediterranean, then all the way across the Atlantic, then all the way across the Caribbean, and the Gulf of Mexico, then all the way across Mexico and a goodly portion of the eastern Pacific to Peru? And if they did, did they arrive at the time the Mexicans and Andeans began to build pyramids? Let us survey the evidence.
First, there is wood. Advocates of contact, such as Thor Heyerdahl, claim that wood was, if not completely absent, then so rare that Egyptians used papyrus reed-boats almost exclusively for both trans-Nile and international travel. It was this assumption that inspired the failed “Ra-I” Expedition in 1969 and its successor a few years later. These expeditions, which are often cited as evidence of contact, are irrelevant, because, well, Egypt did have trees after
all. Akashia, pine, and juniper trees, though not that common, were not all that rare either, and akashia wood was the primary material for crafts larger than a personal rowboat, which were generally made of reeds. But akashia, although far superior than reeds, is not the best possible wood. So the Egyptians went to what is now Lebanon to get the cedar for which that country was famous.
The best known example of a cedar ship is Cheops’, which was found under the Great Pyramid itself. The ancient trade in cedar wood is extremely well documented and was a primary reason why Egypt conquered and reconquered Canaan over the millennia. More often, the Canaanites would deliver it by land across what is now Israel and the Sinai, or sometimes by sea in their boats. But once the Egyptians sent a fleet of their own all the way over to the Lebanese coast to get the valuable wood themselves. The Pharaoh at that time (Shahure, circa 2460 B.C.) was so proud of his achievement, that he put the whole story on the walls of his pyramid. Why would Shahure have been so proud of a mere trip to Lebanon, if Egypt had gotten all the way to Peru?
The question is even more puzzling when one remembers that Numidia, west of Lybia, had lush, extensive forests filled with cedar, spruce, and pine. Roman shipwrights used Numidian timber almost exclusively for centuries, destroying most of the forests and Hannibal’s elephants in the process. Had the wood-hungry Egyptians known of these Numidian forests, oh, the stories they would have told! But of any Egyptian colonies west of the Nile Delta, there is not a trace. Egyptian and Egyptian-like artifacts, which are found down the Nile Valley all the way to northernmost Kenya, are unknown west of easternmost modern Libya, prior to the Phoenician explorations in the 9th century B.C. As far as I am able to determine, the earliest Egyptian mention of Sicily and Sardinia occurred when the so-called “Sea Peoples” attacked Egypt during the reign of Ramses III (1184 to 1153 B.C). The question of how the Egyptians could have made it passed the Straits of Gibraltar without even knowing about such abundant, valuable resources so close to home is an important one that must be answered.
The other major problem is timing. Did the Andeans and Mexicans start building pyramids while the Egyptians were building theirs?
To explore that question, we have to know about their respective pyramid-building traditions. The first Egyptian pyramid is Zoser’s. It was built by his vizier, Imenhotep, no earlier than 2750 B.C., and most likely a century later. Ancient sources tell how he invented the pyramid as a series of “mastabas,” or tombs, one on top of another. There are none earlier in all of Africa. The Egyptian pyramid tradition continued for more than a millennium, until the end of the XVIlth Dynasty, around 1570 B.C. Later, the Egyptians began burying their pharaohs in artificial caverns in the Valley of the Kings. No pyramids were built in Egypt after that, although the XXVth Dynasty (715 to 660 B.C.) erected some in Meroe, Nubia. The XVIlth Dynasty ruled Upper Egypt, while the Hyksos, invaders from Asia, occupied Lower Egypt. Their royal pyramids are small, pathetic stuctures that compare to the Gizeh monuments as outhouses might with the Empire State Building.
Critics of ancient Egyptian influences in America are hard-pressed to explain objects such as this one on the side of a monumental statue at the Maya ceremonial city of Copan. The knotted loop depicted here, in Honduras, was also revered in the Nile Valley as “Sa," a stylized life-preserver signifying "protection" and associated with "the Great One, " Taurt, divine protector of the dead.
Now, what about Mexico? The Aztecs and the Mayas were not the first Mexicans to have pyramids. Mesoamerican Civilization began to flourish around 1200 B.C. Its earliest center at San Lorenzo was built on a huge artificial mound. Although the place was destroyed in 900 B.C., remains of pyramid mounds have been discovered there. Another major center was built at San Lorenzo about a century later. The pyramid there, more of a conical mound, is the oldest one still in tact in Mexico. Notice that the Olmec Civilization came into existence at a time when pyramids had not been built in Egypt for more than 3,000 years. A very long time for Egyptian architects to wait, don’t you think?
The Andean Civilizations of Peru present very different problems. For one thing, pyramid-wise, the Andeans got there first. Let me make that a bit clearer: The oldest Andean pyramids are older than the oldest Egyptian ones. The oldest Andean pyramid is located at Aspero, along the Peruvian coast, about halfway between Ecuador and Chile. It is called the Huaca de los Sacrificios. The structure is about 30 feet high and carbon-dating of its mud-bricks at the summit have an average date of 2857 B.C. The base is considerably older. The latest possible date given is 2800 B.C. This is a minimum of 70 years earlier than the earliest possible date of Zoser’s pyramid. (Zoser was king from 2638 to 2609 B.C.) The gap is most likely greater. The Huaca de los Sacrificios was built during a period archaeologists call “Pre-ceramic IV.” The reason it is called that is because the Andeans of the time didn’t know how to make pottery. The first pottery in the area dates from centuries later.
Egypt, however, had pottery almost 2,000 years prior to its first pyramid. This argument alone is enough to rule out the possibility of contact. The development of pyramidal architecture in the Americas could not have possibly been due to contact with Egypt, because of factors of distance, Egyptian ignorance of the Western Mediterranean and, most importantly, time.
Other alleged evidence of contact, such as Thor Heyerdahl’s “Ra Expeditions,” are irrelevant or, as in the cases of the Davenport
Stone, outright frauds. The worst of these frauds is a bogus word list that has appeared in such books as They Came Before Columbus and American Discovery, from which I quote: “...Mayas had their underworld kingdom called Mani. Mexican and Peruvian names for the sun-god (Ra) are phonetically the same as the Egyptian Ra, meaning ‘sun-god.’” For the record, let me state that the Maya underworld was Xibalba, the Inca sun-god was called Inti, and the solar deities of the Mayas and the Aztecs were known as Ki and Tonatiuh, respectively.
Sorry, folks! It just ain’t so.
Egyptians on American Shores
Gunnar Thompson’s response to the acerbic critique Eric Lurio published in the same Ancient American issue was, by contrast, good-spirited and generous. It nonetheless poked a great many holes in his arguments against all possibilities for a Near Eastern influence in pre-Columbian America. Dr. Thompson also opened fresh evidence that must cause even the most hard-bitten skeptic to wonder if the Dynastic Egyptians did not, after all, actually arrive on the shores of our Continent thousands of years ago.
Counterpoint: Egypt’s Role in Ancient America by Gunnar Thompson, Ph.D.
Mr. Lurio’s article against cultural diffusionism from Ancient Egypt to America has some good points. He is correct in stating that Peru’s earliest adobe pyramids predate stone pyramids in the Nile Valley. He is also correct in stating that Egyptians had wooden ships, hence, his criticism of Thor Heyerdahl’s selection of totora reeds for construction of Ra II, which made a successful voyage from Morocco to Barbados in 1970.
Mr. Lurio also mentions several well-known facts about pyramids in Egypt and America. However, his information is inadequate and his conclusions are erroneous. His insistence that Egypt’s sun-god, Ra, was unknown to ancient Americans is merely a false assumption; it is not a fact. Egyptian names for the Sun in ancient America are clearly established. Egyptian artifacts have been found in American archaeological sites under controlled circumstances, and Egyptian influence is apparent in the arts, architecture, writing, and religious practices of ancient America.
Mr. Lurio begins his argument with a claim that American Discovery relies on pyramids as the “prime piece of evidence” for Egyptian contact. After such a statement, I seriously doubt that he has read my book, American Discovery, the Real Story. Indeed, the Chapter on Egypt states, “Only two New World pyramids (Panche and La Venta) evoke images of Egyptian pyramids.” Two examples out of several thousand New World pyramids hardly support Mr. Lurio’s preconceived idea that pyramids are a central part of my argument for Egyptian contact. How is it that Mr. Lurio missed my statement on page 85 saying, “Native architectural traditions were well enough established to resist Egyptian influence”?
Contrary to Mr. Lurio’s claim, American Discovery, the Real Story details evidence of architectural inspiration for pyramid construction in the Americas coming via Indo-Sumer and China. Numerous native burial mounds and some earthen pyramids were probably indigenous phenomena. Mr. Lurio is correct in doubting Egyptian influence on Peruvian architects; at least we are in agreement in that respect. The evidence suggests to me that early adobe pyramids in Peru, as well as cotton textiles, bottle gourds, and reed boats, are most likely the results of contact with Indo-Sumerian travelers by the fourth millennium B.C.
Although it is true, as Mr. Lurio states, that Inti, Ki, and Tonatiuh were native names for the sun-god, they were not the only names. Isolationists must realize that “half-of-the-truth” does not constitute the whole story of native cultural development. Old World
The famous mid-14th century B.C. bust of Egyptian Queen Nefertiti depicts her wearing a hat decorated with the double-loop insignia representing a united kingdom.
The pre-Columbian statue of an unidentified, prominent Toltec lady shows her wearing a hat not only similar to Nefertiti's, but decorated with an identical double-loop emblem.
diffusion is a significant part of the story. We must seek the whole truth if we are going to begin to fathom what took place in antiquity. Mr. Lurio’s attempt to deduce what happened based on logic, limited information, and faulty assumptions is an entertaining but fruitless exercise.
There were many tribes in the New World, and they had many names for the sun-god. Some of those names have been lost because of the ravages of disease on native populations and the fading memories of passing generations. However, the Egyptian name of Ra (or Re) for the sun has survived the millennia as testimony of Egyptian cultural influence in ancient America. Archaeologist Curt Muser reported the “Re” glyph at Teotihuacan, Mexico, which is the site of the enormous Pyramid of the Sun. This important glyph includes a scroll and an eye motif inside a circle. Both Muser and Mexican archaeologist Alfonso Caso identified the “re” glyph through ethnographical research as ojo de reptil, or “eye of the serpent.” Native artists at Teotihuacan placed “re” glyphs at the center of solar symbols to represent “the eye of the sun.” Egyptian artists used a similar symbol consisting of the Udjat (“Hawk-Serpent Eye”) placed inside a symbol of the Sun. It was called Ra or Re, the “eye of the sun.” Presence of similar symbols with identical names is strong evidence of cultural diffusion. Thus, two reputable archaeologists, Curt Muser and Alfonso Caso, have established that some of the inhabitants of Teotihuacan knew their sun-god by the Egyptian name, Re, although later Mexicans chose different names for the deity.
Thor Heyerdahl perceived the Egyptian sun-god’s name (Ra) in the title of a Peruvian culture-hero, Kon-tiki Vi-ra-cocha. This name and Peruvian use of reed-boats led Heyerdahl to suspect cultural diffusion between Egypt and Peru. His goal in sailing a reed-boat across the Atlantic was to prove that Ancient Egyptians, using the most primitive technology, could have succeeded in reaching the Americas. Reed-boat technology was available to inhabitants in the Middle East by the 10th millennium B.C. Although most Egyptians used
wooden ships by the third millennium B.C., huge reed-ships were still in use on the Red Sea as late as the first century A.D. Smaller reed-boats are still popular among peasants in North Africa, Asia, and Peru.
Isolationists often complain about a so-called “lack of artifacts” to bolster their claims of “no contact before Columbus.” However, this complaint often cloaks overly restrictive admissions criteria and outright ignorance.
One of the most important finds of Egyptian artifacts occurred in 1914, in El Salvador. Since then it has been largely ignored by academicians in the United States. During the course of controlled archaeological excavations under the direction of Professor Miguel Angel Gonzalez, workers uncovered two Egyptian statuettes buried far below the surface. One of the statuettes is of a pharaoh’s sarcophagus (or mummy) wearing the crown of Osiris, god of resurrection. The other appears to be the Mother Goddess, Isis. An inscription on the male statuette approximates the cartouche of Pharaoh Osorkon (22nd Dynasty, circa 1000 B.C.). Photographs of these artifacts were published in Historia de la Nacion Mexicana (1940), that was written by the Jesuit priest-historian, Manuel Cuevas. He was convinced of the authenticity of the artifacts and their importance to ancient New World history. Yet, the bias of Yankee scholars against anything that might support pre-Columbian contact with the Old World resulted in a failure to consider this evidence.
Over the passing years, vital clues to the puzzle of New World cultures such as these have been virtually lost due to a conspiracy of ignorance fueled by academic arrogance among tenured professors. I “re-discovered” the artifacts inside Cuevas’s book during one of my many forays into the stacks of the University of Hawaii Library. The book had been sitting on a shelf unopened, gathering dust for the past four decades. Manuel Cuevas suggested in his Historia that ancient Mexicans had contact with Egyptians or with merchants who made voyages to the Nile. He believed that Egyptian inspiration
played a role in the construction of the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan. He compared the Mexican pyramid to the Pyramid of Khufu (Cheops) at Gizeh, which has the identical geographic orientation and the same base-dimensions.
However, the Mexican pyramid is not merely a replica of the Egyptian monument. It has unique characteristics that reflect the native tendency of adapting foreign ideas to better suited native culture. The pyramid was only half as high as its Egyptian counterpart, and it had stairways with a temple on top. It also played a more active role in native culture, as it was the center not just for rituals, but also for public markets. Presence of the “Re” glyph on ceramics at Teotihuacan lends support to Cuevas’s theory of some Egyptian inspiration behind the New World monument.
As do his colleagues, Mr. Lurio insists that the time lag of many centuries between construction of Egyptian pyramids and those of America is sufficient to preclude the possibility of diffusion. Although the theory of diffusion in this case is admittedly conjectural, it is presumptuous to suppose that Egyptian influence was impossible. Indeed, Khufu’s monument continues to inspire those who look upon its massive building blocks. Recently, one American entrepreneur built a pyramid-shaped hotel in Las Vegas as a result of his exposure to Khufu’s lingering legacy. So, the rulers of Teotihuacan might have decided in 300 B.C. to build a city of pyramids to rival those of Egypt after hearing about the Nile monuments, long after the original architects passed away.
Other evidence of Egyptian contact continues to accumulate. In 1994, George Carter noted the presence of tobacco and cocaine in ancient Egyptian mummies. These native American plants were tentatively identified by a team of German microbiologists. Other researchers found the American tobacco beetle in King Tutankhamun’s tomb. Barry Fell demonstrated a probable Egyptian influence in Micmac glyphic writing. My own American Discovery included an illustration of Libyan writing on priestly robes at the Maya ceremonial center of Bonampak, in the Yucatan. Libyans served as surrogates for Egyptian
interests in distant lands, such as Central America. Isolationist scholars have entirely over-looked this Libyan writing at Bonampak, because it does not “fit” into their preconceived notion about what Mayan writing is supposed to look like. Nevertheless, the foreign script is plain to see on Bonampak murals and in many textbooks having photographs of these murals.
The most enduring Egyptian influence appears to have been in native religious practices and the arts. Egyptian motifs on native art include the serpent apron of fertility seen on Maya statues, the Aztec sun-god (Tonatiuh) holding an incense burner in the same manner that Egyptian sun-gods (pharaohs) hold incense burners, and Mixtec serpent headdresses that parallel those of pharaohs and queens of Egypt. Some Olmec statuettes have stylized beards below their chins that mimic the false beards of Egyptian pharaohs. All of these artistic traditions have unique religious roots that defy isolationist assumptions of “independent derivation” or “coincidence.” They substantiate diffusionist theories of pervasive Egyptian cultural influence in ancient America.
Mr. Lurio is correct to point out inadequacies in the diffusionist position that have resulted from hoaxes, romance writers, and lack of research. However, what he refers to as “lies” seem to reflect his own dogmatic academic training and lack of understanding. Discovering the secrets of the past requires extra effort on the part of true explorers. Although academic scholars can rightfully boast of specialized field research, my own training in anthropology and exposure to the sacrosanct dogma of academia have taught me that some of the most thorough researchers are to be found among the ranks of the cultural diffusionists.
Meanwhile, vested academicians often exude an attitude of “ignorance is bliss,” as they toil in isolation from other scholars. Hopefully, Mr. Lurio will come to appreciate and celebrate the great beauty of America’s multicultural heritage. That heritage is abundantly evident from the artifacts, loan-words, traditions, physical
characteristics, symbolism, maps, writing systems, transoceanic epidemics, and agricultural practices of ancient peoples. Much of the evidence has been found by maverick scholars and non-professionals outside the exclusive club of orthodox American archaeology.
Keep your skepticism, Mr. Lurio. But cultivate an open mind.
Waubansee Sculpture
The industrial city of Chicago is not usually associated with the prehistory of our country. Yet, one of its foremost museums displays an absolutely unique work of art that may have been left by visitors from the Near East more than 2,000 years ago. If so, their monumental contribution to Chicago’s riverfront could be no less archaeologically enlightening than it was originally macabre, according to this article in the August/September, 1998 issue of Ancient American.
The controversial Waubansee sculpture.
Chicago’s Great Stone Face by Frank Joseph
In the heart of Chicago’s Loop, along the south bank of the Chicago River, once stood a large and curious stone. On one side was expertly sculpted the face of a man, his eyes closed and mouth open, with a chin-beard.
At the top of the stone was a depression like a small trough. Three inter-connecting holes bored through the hard stone linking the trough appeared on either side of the artwork and through the parted lips of the face. The relief sculpture measured 1 foot wide and 17-5 inches high, incised to a depth of 1.5 inches. Its top hollowed to 4.5 inches deep, 18 inches long by 9 inches wide, the three-thousand-pound granite block originally dominated a sand dune overlooking Lake Michigan. Geologists believe the pre-sculpted monolith was either deposited there by a glacier (which would date it to about 10,000 years ago), or part of the Canadian Shield, an area of rock at least 750 million years old.
In any case, this unique stone face formerly peered outside the stockade of Fort Dearborn, an early U.S. Army settlement that would eventually grow to become the Windy City. Daniel Webster stood on the stone while he harangued the fort’s inhabitants, in 1837. When the military outpost was torn down near the close of the 19th century, the one-and-a-half-ton object was removed from its original location at what is now Wacker Drive and Michigan Avenue to the Sanitary District’s headquarters on the near-north side. Some years later, it was freed from this undignified setting and found its permanent, far more appropriate home on public display at the museum of the Chicago Historical Society. It may be seen there today as part of the Fort Dearborn diorama recreation behind the main lobby on the first floor.
In 1881, a Mr. Henry Hurlburt became the first writer to describe this strange stone. He speculated that it had been carved by some unknown Fort Dearborn soldier with time on his hands and who wanted to sculpt the likeness of Waubansee, chief of the Potawatomi Indian tribe. With no real records or documentation of any kind at his disposal, Hurlburt had only aging hearsay on which to base his conclusions. The recess at the top of the object, he assumed, must have been used as a mortar in which maize was ground, although why anyone would need a 3,000-pound mortar was and remains unanswerable. Both his paltry explanations have long since been rejected, but the name stuck, and the massive artifact is still known as the “Waubansee Stone.”
Aside from the fact that granite is among the most difficult mediums in which to sculpt, the face is clearly the master-work of a very gifted stonecutter who devoted considerable time and labor to his task—hardly in keeping with the duties of a common frontier soldier. And given the mutual hostilities that existed at the time between natives and settlers, it seems unlikely any White man, particularly a soldier, would have felt inclined to spend so much effort memorializing an Indian chief. More likely than speculations about some nameless serviceman with nothing better to occupy his time, the scant source material about the Stone implies at least that it was already waiting on its sand dune for the soldiers who built Fort Dearborn. Also, a glance at the top depression is sufficient to show that the oblong, somewhat concave hollow makes for a most unsuitable mortar.
But if no 19th-century Chicagoan was the sculptor, neither was any Native American. The Plains Indians rarely worked in stone, certainly never in granite, nor on the scale and refinement displayed by the Waubansee Stone. Moreover, Amerindians are beardless, and the carved face appears to sport a goatee. But if some anonymous soldier did not fashion it to memorialize a chief, and the hollowed top was never used as a mortar, who was the superb artist responsible?
Why was it made? And just how long was the stone standing at the mouth of the Chicago River? Although to answer these questions we may possess no more documentation that did Hurlburt, evidence of another kind is available to us in the form of modern archaeology. And the object itself will speak to us in its own way, if only we have the patience to listen.
The Waubansee Stone on display at the Chicago Historical Society.
Let us first consider its original position on the south bank of the Chicago River, just in from the Lake Michigan shore. The spot represents, as it has since the earliest known voyages, a natural portage before sailing westward along the Illinois River system into the Mississippi. Louis Joliet and Pere Marquette stopped there in 1673, and Robert Cavalier, Sieur de la Salle, built a supply store at the same place nine years later. Ships still dock near the Michigan Avenue bridge, the original site of the Waubansee Stone. These historically affirmed the usage of the location as a point of landing. This fact comprises our first clue to the objects intended function. Its identification as a mooring stone is suggested by its former riverside
position, where so many vessels have been known to dock at least since the 17th century. The Stone’s two side holes are large enough through which to pass a ship’s line. At 3,000 pounds, the granite block could easily secure a large vessel tied to it.
Reinforcing its designed purpose as a mooring stone was the 19th-century rumor of a similar block (virtually identical in size but without any sculpted image) about one hundred feet west of the Waubansee Stone that also stood at the river’s edge. This companion piece was supposed to have been pushed over into the water during construction of the first Michigan Avenue bridge, during the 1850s. In any case, another, similarly massy stone a ship’s length down the river bank underscores its purpose as a mooring by which vessels were tied fore and aft.
But for whose vessel? Certainly, a pair of one-and-a-half-ton monoliths would not have been required to secure an Indian’s birch-bark canoe. Perhaps the answer lies in a closer look at the Waubansee Stone’s singular details.
In addition to its alleged function as a mortar, the hollow at the top of the stone was once assumed to have been a baptismal font, and, indeed, the oval depression naturally fits an object the size and dimensions of a baby. This speculation begins to approach the truth, which may be, however, a ghastly inverse of baptism. Following the function suggested by the Waubansee Stone, we begin to find its parallels a world away from prehistoric Chicago or its Amerindian natives.
The Phoenicians were an ancient Semitic people, also known as the Canaanites, whose origins were in what is now Lebanon. In the years following the Trojan War, during the first decades of the 12th century B.C., they began building what would eventually become a vast, mercantile empire created largely through their unquestioned abilities as the foremost sea-traders of their time. Their ships sailed around the African Continent, to every part of the known world and beyond, to areas of wealth they kept secret, such as Antiilia,
“the Farthest Land,” somewhere outside the “Rocks of Melchart,” today’s Straits of Gibraltar. The precise location and identity of this land—rich in all kinds of mineral wealth—has never been satisfactorily determined, although growing numbers of investigators, most notably the famous cryptoanalyst Cyrus Gordon, believe Antiilia was synonymous for the Americas, specifically, Brazil.
As we reported in a recent issue (number 17, “New Discovery of Ancient Map Puts Phoenicians in the Americas”), Dr. Mark McMenamin, professor of geology and paleontology at Mount Holyoke College, in South Hadley, Massachusetts, demonstrated last winter that the Phoenicians included representations of the Brazilian coast on some of their minted coins. Although these coins are physical proof that the ancients knew about South America, they are only the latest in an accumulation of evidence going back more than three centuries. A stone covered with Phoenician letters was discovered in Brazil about 120 years ago.
According to author Gunnar Thompson, the “inscription was found by Brazilian slaves during the early 1870s. Called the Parahyba Text, it recounts the voyage of Phoenician merchants, who traveled from Sidon in the 6th century B.C. The Parahyba Text was branded a fraud after its publication. However, subsequent research confirms that the inscription is authentic. Passages that were once thought to be erroneous have been verified from identical inscriptions on bone fide Phoenician artifacts. The inscriptions included ancient expressions and grammatical forms that were unknown during the 1800s. Cyrus Gordon, a Semitic language scholar at Brandeis University, has ruled out the possibility of forgery, because the archaic language was only recently decoded. In 1641, Jesuits living near Minas Gerais, Brazil, reported bronze figurines with strange writing. Antiquarians at the Vatican identified the inscriptions as Phoenician. In 1754, missionaries reported the ruins of a stone city in the Amazon jungle also having Phoenician inscriptions.”
That the Phoenicians knew of and traveled to Brazil seems clear. But what was to prevent them from sailing to North America, specifically, to Lake Michigan at the Chicago River? The same abundance of evidence for the Phoenicians’ presence in Illinois does not match their ancient landfalls in Brazil—except, perhaps, for one, very powerful artifact. Such a disparity is hardly to be wondered at, when we compare underdeveloped Brazil, where archaeological materials may be left undisturbed, with industrially over-developed Chicago.
An integral part of the Phoenicians’ religion was infant sacrifice to appease the gods, especially Molloch, their boon-granting deity, and win their favor. The child was taken to a tophet, a kind of rude sacred site often out of doors, featuring a stone altar with a depression at the top very much like a baptismal font. There, the baby’s throat was ritually cut, and the sacrificial blood allowed to run through the infant-sized hollow connected by a tunnel to the sculpted face of Moloch and to its open mouth. Then the blood of the ceremoniously murdered child would have spilled into a river or sea as an offering to the water-gods.
The Waubansee Stone’s resemblance to a tophet is suggested by its eyes, closed in death. Even this unusual, characteristic convention recurs in surviving Phoenician art, such as the bronze head of a man with his eyes closed from Ugarit. And as the sculptors of the Chicago find, Phoenician artists favored frontal, full-face portraiture. Outstanding examples are the so-called “Mona Lisa of Nimrud” and the ubiquitous ivory carvings of “the woman in the window” found at Carthage, the Phoenicians’ greatest city in North Africa. Interestingly, the face of the Waubansee Stone wears a chin-beard, a personal grooming detail of which Phoenician males were inordinately proud, but something certainly unknown to the beardless Native American Indians.
A possible scenario suggested by the Waubansee Stone includes a Phoenician sailing vessel loaded with timber, copper, and other materials— skirting the western shores of Lake Michigan on a southerly heading. The ship turns into the mouth of the Chicago River, where hawsers are thrown from bow and stern to hands waiting ashore at an improvised
portage. The lines, passing through holes in the two granite mooring stones on the south bank, secure her fore and aft. Later, at some auspicious moment, an infant, possibly purchased in trade with local Indians, is placed in the hollow at the top of the Waubansee Stone. There, its throat is cut. Sacrificial blood courses through tubular channels in the stone and out the open mouth of the sculpted face (possibly meant to portray Moloch himself), into the river. It is a most important ritual dedicated to the gods for safe passage home during the long, perilous voyage to the Mississippi River, down to the Gulf of Mexico, and out across the Atlantic Ocean toward Africa and Carthage.
Any precise dates for these conjectural events is impossible to come by. Phoenician power lasted about 1,000 years, from around 1200 B.C. to the Second Punic War (218 to 202 B.C.) Whenever such awful dramas may have taken place, the Chicago Historical Society might possess the most valuable artifact in the pre-Columbian history of North America. If only the face of the Waubansee Stone could speak, what wonders— and what horrors—it might tell!
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