Joseph, F (2006). Discovering the mysteries of ancient America : lost history and legends, unearthed and explored. USA: Mark Book PressMural Questions King’s History
An accidental discovery made in an obscure English town brought back to life the image of a royal personage being killed in North America. What made the old painting special, however, was its seventh-century origins and the renowned identity of its portrayed victims as revealed in Ancient Americans October, 2001 issue.
Was King Arthur Murdered in America? by James Michael
In 1972, in the little town of Stoke Dry, England (near the Welsh border), workers removed the whitewash from an old church’s wall. There they found the
mural of a young king shaven in the British, now called “Welsh,” tradition. It depicted the king struck by the arrows of savages whom the townspeople referred to as “Native Americans.”
Discovery of the perplexing mural was a surprise to the townspeople, who knew nothing of the events it portrayed. Some of them jumped to the conclusion that “It is proof the Vikings made it to America, came back to Britain dressed as Native Americans, and killed King Edmond!” But Edmond died in 860 A.D., 140 years before the Icelandic Sagas tell us the Vikings sailed.
Centuries ago, Stoke Dry occupied an area controlled by the sons of Madoc, the seventh-century Welsh monarch and their descendants. The young king depicted in the discovered mural was Arthur II, Madoc’s brother, who was killed on the North American continent. His corpse was mummified, then shipped to his Welsh homeland for burial.
Although these events have long been generally forgotten, the name “Stoke Dry” still preserves something of their memory. No one would give such an evil, dastardly name to a town, unless they wanted to memorialize a particularly important incident. “Stoke Dry” translates from Old British as the “Evil Bow.”
Language of the Dark Ages
Sixth century men had both motive and means to escape their European homelands, then falling under the deepening shadow of the Dark Ages. Some of them did so by sailing in leather boats to the other side of the Atlantic Ocean; the proof of that voyage was documented in a stone inscription until its recent vandalism. With its ignorant
destruction, future generations have been deprived of a valuable treasure from their country’s prehistory. The Ogam mentioned in this December, 1999 article from Ancient American refers to a written language used mostly by Irish monks from the sixth through 14th centuries.
Throughout America, inscriptions carved on rock shelters and in caves are still being found. Known as petroglyphs, they were once thought to have been made by American Indians. But recent studies by leading experts in ancient Old World languages discovered that not all the carvings were the work of indigenous people.
An outstanding example from the Laurel Branch of Goose Creek, in Clay County, Kentucky, appears to have been etched by Irish monks who arrived in North America about 500 or 600 A.D., nearly 1,000 years before Columbus re-discovered America. One such monk may have been St. Brendan. Known in his own time as “the Mariner,” he was an Irish Christian monk, who founded the monastery at Clonfert County, Galway, about 560 A.D. During the reign of Pope Pelagius (555 to 561 A.D.), Brendan was said to have completed two transatlantic crossings, and monastic records of the period document that he discovered a new land far to the west. His voyages were said to have lasted several years, with as many as 17 men accompanying him. Religious strife at the time inspired many Europeans to seek escape from their homelands, even faced with the perils of the ocean. Irish monks, anxious to preserve the dying embers of civilization from an encroaching Dark Age, would have been the first to entrust their fortunes on the gamble of overseas’ expeditions.
The Lost Ancient Irish Inscription of Kentucky by M.C. Edwards
Although suggestions that anyone completed voyages to America before Columbus are anathema to conventional scholars, the transatlantic crossings undertaken by Dr. Thor Heyerdahl in his authentic replicas of Egyptian reed boats established that such journeys were not beyond the capabilities of sea-farers during ancient times. More pertinent to the story of our Clay County inscription, archaeologist Timothy Severin sailed across the North Atlantic 23 years ago in a leather boat identical to the coracles employed during the sixth century Irish monks. He showed that St. Brendan and his followers did indeed possess vessels capable of successfully completing round-trip voyages to North America. Severin’s expeditions were described by the National Geographic Magazine's “The Voyage of Brendan,” December, 1977.
Their message nevertheless appears to have been carved in Gaelic and a Keltic script known as Ogam under a rock cliff at the Clay County site. In 1987, Dr. John Payne of Berea, Kentucky, sent his photographs and drawings of the site to California’s Epigraphic Society, for analysis by Dr. Berry Fell, Professor Emeritus at Harvard University, and author of several books describing pre-Columbian contacts in the Americas. He interpreted the incomplete inscription as follows: “Do not sulk nor be downhearted, singing joyous carols more suitable to a monk.”
Kentucky’s Keltic inscription differs only slightly from the Ogham of Old Irish manuscripts. Another Gaelic inscription at Boone County, West Virginia, may be the longest such inscription written in Ogam anywhere. It seems to be a statement about the birth of Christ. Yet another, briefer specimen at Wyoming County, West Virginia, similarly deals with Christmas and is reportedly aligned with the winter solstice. The Kentucky and West Virginia sites were originally featured in a series of articles published by Wonderful West Virginia, March, 1983. Since then, opposing investigators have wrangled back and forth over their authenticity. But Professor Robert Meyer, an authority on Old Irish dialects and Professor
of Keltic Studies at the Catholic University of America, confirmed in an interview with West Virginia Public Television, that the American Ogham was the work of Irish monks of the sixth century A.D.
Tragically, the Goose Creek text was obliterated in 1994 by chisel-wielding vandals. Their mindless destruction demonstrated the vulnerability of unprotected sites to willful cretins, while pointing up the awful fragility of our past.
Despite official skeptics still unable to prove the inscriptions were hoaxed, it is not difficult to imagine a monk having come all the way from Ireland sitting in his primitive shelter, a thousand years before Columbus, not knowing what the future could possibly have in store for him. Perhaps during some lonely Christmas, he began to think of home and loved ones left behind, realizing that he would probably never see either again. He sings a joyous carol to recover from the depression that has come over him. His melancholy dispelled, he writes a little message, lest he forget his purpose for being here. For the next fifteen hundred years, the brief inscription existed as testimony to the triumph of his faith.
Europeans in West Virginia
Robert L. Pyle taught classes in archaeology at the Smithsonian Institution (Department of Energy), Carnegie Mellon University, Waynesburg College, and other higher educational institutions throughout West Virginia, Ohio, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. But nothing in his academic career prepared him for the discovery of a lifetime, when evidence for a European presence in America was clearly dated to 1,200 years ago.
An 8th Century Irishman Visited West Virginia by Robert L. Pyle
The March, 1983 issue of Wonderful West Virginia Magazine published an article about a possible transatlantic quest undertaken by St. Brendan from Ireland to West Virginia nearly 1,000 years before the official discovery of the New World. Mainstream scholars scoffed at the suggestion of any pre-Columbian voyages to North America, but were nonetheless forced to re-consider their skepticism in the light of suggestive human skeletal remains found in a Wyoming County, West Virginia rock shelter. It seems the bones were recovered very near a site already controversial for its non-Indian, premodern inscription.
The skeleton had the brachycephalic skull of an adult male. Brachycephalic, or “round headed,” cranial forms imply possible European origins. More certain was the skull’s pre-Columbian provenance. Just how old it was could not be determined, however, until DNA and radio-carbon testing could be brought into play to determine its specific age and racial origins. Funding was finally made available as recently as 2001, thanks to a private supporter intrigued enough by the find to subject it to laboratory testing. Mitochondrial DNA was extracted from the roots of the skull’s teeth and compared to previously cataloged DNA sequences from ethnic groups around the world. Although no association was found among North American groups, the closest DNA matches were indeed European, complimenting the skull’s brachiocephalic type. Radiocarbon dating established its age at 1,292 +/-40 years Before Present, or circa 710 A.D. (+/- 40 years).
The West Virginia find thus established positive identification of the earliest date for a European on the North American continent. For the first time, physical evidence suggests with at least some degree of certainty that a man from the Old World visited our continent in pre-Columbian times.
Two decades before the skull’s startling testing results were known, I was intrigued by additional petroglyphs found in the mountains of southern West Virginia. At first glance, the “rock letters” resembled archaic runes, those written symbols and characters used by the Norse during the European Dark Ages. They were certainly unlike other Native American rock art with which I was familiar. Particularly intriguing were the petroglyph sites in Wyoming County, where the skeleton was found, and in Manchester, Kentucky. Closer examination revealed that the markings belonged to an ancient alphabet known as Ogam, used in the British Isles, especially Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, more than 1,000 years ago. Resemblances were so comparable to this old script, the West Virginia and Kentucky specimens could be identified with a specific variation of Ogam, referred to as “stem type,” familiar in early Christian Ireland.
Their recognition suggested a possible connection to stories of St. Brendan, the sixth century cleric who supposedly set out with a crew of fellow monks across the North Atlantic. In support of a conjectured relationship, the West Virginia and Kentucky petroglyphs were examined by university-trained scholars in Keltic linguistics. Dr. William Grant, from Edinburgh University, Scotland, and Dr. John Grant, of Oakland, Maryland, confirmed that the Wyoming County petroglyphs were indeed authentic archaic Ogam.
In 1998, and again during 2000, I was in Ireland to compare European Ogam scripts with their possible American counterparts. Dr. William Grant was kind enough at the time to invite my participation in research investigating the earliest known Irish Ogam panel. It is located in the remote and rugged mountains of southern Ireland. There I learned that Ogam is commonly found on the corner edges of tombstones, not on rock formations. To my surprise, the Irish Ogam panel, although larger (8 feet high and 20 long) and more complex than its North American versions, comprised many characters virtually identical to the West Virginia and Kentucky petroglyphs.
Wyoming County’s eighth century European skull and its proximity to contemporary Irish script combine to make a strong case for the arrival of Old World visitors to West Virginia in the pre-Columbian past.
Knights Templar
For nearly 200 years, the Templars controlled a massive fleet that carried commerce and warfare across the Mediterranean Sea and along the Atlantic coasts of Europe.
With their proscription by a French king and an Italian pope, the Templars sought refuge in Scotland. But many of their ships vanished. Could at least some of them have sailed as far as North America? According to Michael Kaulback, a Fitchburg, Massachusetts library technician and historian, in the January/February, 1999 Ancient American, the faded image of a 14th-century knight on a New England rock-face may be the answer.
Knights Templars in the New World by Michael Kaulback
Shortly after World War II, a local amateur archaeologist made some photographs of a peculiar, weathered engraving on the side of a boulder near the town of Westford, Massachusetts. Published in The Ruins of Greater Ireland and New England, author W.B. Goodwin speculated that the faint outline depicted a broken Norse sword of the 11th century. Afraid the faded image might be ruined by vandals, Goodwin never revealed its exact location. But his book continued to attract the attention of other investigators determined to find the site, even after Goodwin’s death.
Among them was Frank Glynn, who, after much difficulty, discovered it covered under a mat of moss. He was able to determine that the image had been created by a series of punch-holes made with a hammer. The portrayed sword was identified by British antiquarians as a large “hand-and-a-half wheel pommel blade” of the 13th or 14th century. Careful cleaning revealed what appeared to be the memorial effigy of a helmeted knight-at-arms, complete with sword and shield. It was this shield, or the arms it bore, that identified the depicted knight as James Gunn from Caithness, Scotland. At its bottom was a galley; a star and crescent appeared at top-right, a configuration traced to Gunn.
In life, he had been an associate of Henry Sinclair and was known to have followed him on his sometimes extensive sea voyages. Earl William St. Clair (Sinclair), the last Earl of Orkney, was the Grand Master of Craft-masons in 1439. He was also the Grand Prior of the Scottish Knights Templar and fought along side Robert the Bruce at the battle of Bannockburn with a large contingent of fellow knights. Their victory made Robert a king. Some Masonic scholars believe that “the Bruce” formed their Royal Order of Scotland to reward the Knights Templar for their invaluable services. He knew it was money and military training from the Templar Knights that made the difference at Bannockburn.
The Templars were originally known as “The Knights of the Poor Fellow Soldiers of Christ” and had long before comprised a military-monastic fighting order founded in the Holy Land during 1118 by just nine officers. Provided with living quarters in Crusader King Baudoin II’s palace near the remains of Solomon’s Temple, they were henceforward known as “Knights of the Temple,” or the “Knights Templar.” Eleven years later, four of them traveled back to France, where they met with a churchman, Saint Bernard, who introduced them at the Council of Troyes to the Pope. The papal blessing they received from him likewise assured their official recognition from the chief political authority of the time.
Thereafter, the knights grew very rich and influential, particularly excelling in the precarious art of high finance.
As part of their modern legacy, today’s banking system was created by Templar economists. Consequently, as their wealth naturally attracted numerous supporters, it likewise created for them many enemies. In 1307, King Philip (known as “the Fair” of France), abetted by the Pope, set out to destroy the Templars in order to seize their vast wealth. In a large-scale military raid, he had all the Templars in France arrested on Friday the 13th of October, from which that unlucky day persists in modern superstition. Although Philip seized their lands and burned thousands of knights at the stake, the Templar fleet, made up of several treasure-ships loaded with centuries of accumulated riches, sailed away from his grasp. The entire armada vanished without a trace. The Pope then issued an international order to seize the knights, but his demand was not obeyed in England and Scotland, where the Order found refuge, and continues to this day. At the 1314 Battle of Bannockburn, a large force of Templars was alleged to have fought under a flag known as the Beauseant. Their participation in this engagement is the last known reference to Templars in battle.
The Westford Stone may be connected somehow through these events in Templar history to an ancient stone tower in Newport, Rhode Island. Its architecture displays northern European influences from the High Middle Ages, and employed a unit of measurement remembered as the “Scottish Ell.” Known in England until Shakespeare’s time, ells were based on Norse fathoms, hence the understandable misidentification by modern Viking enthusiasts who regard the Newport Tower as the work of Northmen. It really more resembles Templar and even 14th-century Scottish counterparts, and is similar to round churches built in the Holy land; examples being the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. Interestingly, it was mentioned in documents of London’s public record house, dating back to 1632, seven years before Rhode Island was founded.
Another structure on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean also suggests a Templar presence in late pre-Columbian America. Rosslyn Castle, near Midlothian, was begun by Sinclair in 1446. Yet, a surviving carving of maize or Indian Corn and another of an aloe cactus (neither known in Scotland until after the return of Columbus from the New World 46 years later) may still be seen there. The sculpted representations of these foreign plants is believed to have been ordered by William Sinclair to commemorate the voyage of his ancestor, Prince Henry, to “a new country.”
In 1365, during a stop-over in Venice during a crusade for the King of Cyprus, Prince Henry was introduced to the Zeno family, Italy’s outstanding navigators and cartographers. Nicolo Zeno, it so happened, had been shipwrecked on Fair Isle between Orkney and the Shetland Isles, so Prince Henry put him to working on his fleet of 13 ships. Brother Antonio was eventually sent for, and through these two extraordinary navigators, the Prince became well-versed in the leading maritime theories of the day, one of which involved speculation about a rich, unknown land on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. In May, 1398, an expedition was financed and mounted by Henry Sinclair.
Outfitting a fleet of 12 Viking-style long-ships, they supposedly made their way west across the Atlantic ocean making landfall in Nova Scotia. Their arrival appeared to have been confirmed by the discovery earlier this century of a cannon of the same kind displayed at the Naval Museum in Venice and typical of the ordinance aboard Zeno’s ships. The Nova Scotia cannon is presently housed in the fortress of Louisberg, on Cape Breton Island. Such artillery was obsolete by the end of the 14th century, so the American find dates to the period of Prince Henry’s expedition. The Scottish Templars probably wintered in Nova Scotia with the Mic-Mac Indians. In the spring, they traveled down through what would become Massachusetts and into what we now know as Newport, Rhode Island.
Perhaps somewhere around Westford one of the party died and was buried. To mark the site an effigy was etched into a rock outcropping. The image is weather-beaten, badly faded, yet barely perceptible. It was first documented in 1883, when a Reverend Edwin Hodgeman described the rock and included the following comment: “Rude outlines of the human face have been traced upon it, and the figure is said to be the work of Indians.”
Why did Henry Sinclair set off with 12 ships and more than 300 men, a rather large force for an exploitative mission, across the sea? The Prince may have been looking for a place to start a colony far away from the suppression that still raged in Europe. His coat of arms was in the shape of a sea-beast or dragon, topped by an engraved a cross above a coronet. This was the symbol of the keepers of the Holy Rood, a reliquary allegedly containing a large portion of the true cross that had long since vanished. Such symbolism may be, at least partially, suggested in the Westford effigy. It could memorialize a unknown man—one of the Knights Templar—who arrived and died in New England some 70 years before the birth of Christopher Columbus.
Lamps from Prehistoric Times
Skeptics attempting to debunk any possibility of Old World influences in pre-Columbian America are largely unaware of hard evidence in the form of common, household artifacts found in Ohio and Wisconsin. In his article for the December, 2004 issue of Ancient American, publisher Wayne May told how ancient European oil-lamps are throwing new light on the prehistory of our country.
Mediterranean Lamps: Anomalies of the Midwest by Wayne May
There are thousands of objects that crowd the museums of antiquities packed away in the various storerooms and cities across Europe and Asia, but scarcely any are smaller than the terra-cotta lamps used by the ancients. However, from their artistic shape and the innumerable subjects treated on them by way of ornamentation, they are extremely interesting clay objects. The Egyptians and Greeks manufactured lamps very early, yet there is evidence to show that they were not familiar in general among the many other cultures until about 300 to 250 B.C. Pliny says that a lack of oil until about this time prevented their use.
Before its introduction, candles (candelae) made of wax and tallow; torches; bits of pine wood or a sort of cornucopia filled with flax, or tow, and covered with resin, oil, pitch, or wax, were used for illuminating purposes. The candelabra commonly mentioned in literature was a support originally intended for candles, and then afterwards for lamps. These were made of wood, bronze, or precious metals, and have been found in large numbers throughout the Mediterranean area. In form, these lamps were usually large, boat-shaped receptacles containing oil, with one or more beaks or nozzles, and were divided into four parts: the reservoir; a circular top, or discus, with rim, sometimes ornamented; the nozzle with a hole for the wick; and the handle, a part not always found in excavations.
In the discus was a small, round hole through which oil was poured. This hole, in the case of bronze lamps, was often covered with a stopper, but terra-cotta versions were not always so equipped. As many as three nozzles have been found on a single lamp. Lamps for carrying were commonly provided with a ring handle, and those without a handle were intended to be stood on a candelabrum or other support. Others were provided with chains of bronze and
hung from the arms of candelabra, from a hook, or from the ceiling. The oil used was vegetable, usually olive, though mineral oils are also mentioned in the ancient texts. Wicks were made of tarrow from the pith of various kinds of reeds or rushes. The lamps themselves were fashioned from gold, silver, bronze, or bronze sometimes encrusted with gold, glass, lead, clay alabaster, amber, stone, and clay.
The ancient Old World oil lamp found in Wisconsin.
A Near Eastern oil lamp was recovered near Southpoint, Ohio, last fall (2004). John Hudnall found it in his front yard while digging to replace a sewer line at his Lawrence County home. The lamp, estimated at more than 1,000 years old, presents a real dilemma for area archaeologists. Hudnall showed his find to Charles West, owner of the Indian Relic Museum in New Richmond.
After examining the artifact, West said, “It’s beautiful. The only problem is, it’s not Indian.” Hudnall later sought help from Bob Price of the Lawrence County Historical Society, who found similar lamps described in an illustrated encyclopedia of the Bible. West’s next contact was the Institute of Archaeology at Andrews University, in Berrien Springs, Michigan. Assistant Director David Merling, said the lamp could have been made between 400 and 800 A.D., somewhere in the Near East or eastern Mediterranean. He went on to say that the lamp was of common origins, but could not pinpoint a specific country. Merling translated an inscription on the lamp to read, “The light of Christ shines for all.” An article in the Portsmouth Daily Times did not specify the Near Eastern language from which the translation had been made. Hudnall said he would probably lend the artifact to the Huntington Museum of Art in West Virginia for exhibition, then place it permanently with Michigan’s Andrews University for study and preservation.
The Hudnall discovery was not the only one of its kind made in the American Midwest. Wisconsinite Robert Freed tells of a similar find that came to light in the western part of his state. “I contacted the individual who sold me the lamp,” Freed said. He asked to remain anonymous; his concern was for the privacy of his family who still farm in the area where the artifact was found, although I did get a little more information from him. “The lamp was found during 1969 in Crawford County, Wisconsin, Freeman Township, on a hillside field overlooking the Mississippi River. The plow got hung up on a root, and when they went to clear the plow, the artifact was found face down in the furrow. He (the former owner of the object) told me his brother also found a ten-inch copper spear-point; it had a hole in one side for a place of attachment. There were two barbs on the top, flat base; no socket. Anyway, he had the lamp, spear, and other Indian artifacts in his collection for 35 years.”
Exactly one year prior to our introduction, another artifact collector bought his whole collection except for the lamp. Destiny somehow allowed him to hang on to the lamp, and again destiny struck when I was fortunate enough to purchase the lamp from him. “I have attended Indian artifact shows seeking help as to its origin or just to identify what it was. The insinuation of fake or hoax was a common response. But I knew the fellow I purchased it from, and he did not make this thing. It is genuine. Both the artifact hunter and I were under the impression it was an engraved smoking pipe. How excited I was to contact you,” Freed told me, “and learn of its true identity. Especially, the area it was discovered is the concentrated area of southwest central Wisconsin, where a large settlement of Hopewell (300 B.C. to 400 A.D.) have left their mark. Could this be a Hopewell artifact? In any case, it is a most remarkable piece of history found here in Wisconsin.” It is indeed!
Roman Treasure Unearthed
Dozens of ancient Old World coins have been picked up throughout the Americas since the first English colonists arrived in the 1600s. But few have been so competently authenticated as a cache found with the help of a modern metal-detector on the banks of the Wisconsin River. The story was told by their chief investigator, Dr. James P. Scherz, Professor Emeritus from the University of Wisconsin, in Madison. During the last decades of the 20th century, he was a leading archaeo-astronomer, who discovered the hitherto unsuspected celestial orientations of numerous ancient earthworks across the Upper Midwest. With his article in Ancient Americans September/October, 1994 issue, however, Dr. Scherz turned his attention to establishing a Roman impact on our Continent, more than 1,700 hundred years ago.
Wisconsin’s Roman Coins by Dr. James P. Scherz
One spring evening in 1994, the phone rang as I was almost out the door to attend our monthly meeting of the Ancient Earthwork’s Society held in a classroom at the Engineering Hall of the University of Wisconsin, in Madison, where I work. On the line was Fred Rydholm, a retired schoolteacher in Marquette, Michigan, where he is a renowned expert in the region’s ancient copper mines that were operating at a time when Pharaonic Egypt was young. “There’s a guy from near Wisconsin Rapids who claims to have found some strange, old coins,” he said.” Will you check them out?”
One of the Roman coins found by Fred Kingman while searching the banks of the Wisconsin River with a metal-detector in 1993.
Long-distance traders, the Kushanas controlled a powerful dynasty along the Silk Roads, uniting various Asian peoples nearly 2,000 years ago. Their commercial network disintegrated concurrently with the collapse of the western part of the Roman World, beginning about 300 A.D. The Kushana Empire was serviced by a people
who lived on the coast of the Indian Ocean, the Satavahanas, who sailed in large, sea-going ships represented on their coins, before they too went into decline around 230 A.D., a few generations before the Kushanas. The Satavahana were subservient to their Kushana overlords, but they engaged in separate warfare with another people, the Saka, also known as the Sahkya or Sac. The Kushana themselves were a branch of a larger tribe, the Yueh-ches.
These unfamiliar names belonging to various peoples in control of far-flung trade between China and Rome were repeated along the river networks of North America. Near the Wisconsin River were the Sauk or Saka, and the Yuchi resided between the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers, in what is now southern Illinois. Old memories of visitors from the other side of the world, remembered as the “Keshenas,” are preserved in the verbal traditions of the Hopi Indians. Interestingly, “Keshena” is a place-name associated with an Indian reservation in Wisconsin.
A prominent elder amongst the American Yuchi (now in Oklahoma) told of his people, who possessed cows and chickens before the Spanish arrived, “coming to this land in boats.” The Sauk, once in Wisconsin and now also on a reservation in Oklahoma, have stories of their ancestors visiting China by way of Alaska.
Considerations such as these perked my interest in the coins Rydholm spoke of, particularly when he mentioned their possible Kushana identity. I told him I needed to see clear photographs of them before undertaking any research. When copies arrived at my office a few days later, I was far from disappointed, although naturally cautious. In any case, I had the photos made into slides as part of a lecture Mr. Fred Kingman was scheduled to make before the Ancient Earthworks Society, in May, about his unusual finds. He told us that the coins had been found the previous fall while searching the banks of the Wisconsin River for antique trinkets with a metal detector. At the time of their discovery in a group, his device registered a “halo,” a signal from the surrounding soil attributed to
corrosion migrating into the ground over a very long time. The coins were originally found grouped together, as though they had been collected into a bag of perishable material that disintegrated over the years since they were buried.
Although the slides presented enlarged views of them, more impressive were the 10 coins themselves which Mr. Kingman allowed audience members to handle. Most of us were favorably impressed with the realistic art work and the uniformly tiny size of the pieces. Facial features of male profiles they depicted were extremely fine, quite distinctive, and well executed. Interestingly, many of these portraits wore rayed headdresses, as though symbolizing the Sun, reminiscent of similar head decorations occurring among the so-called “Redhorn” wall-paintings in southwestern Wisconsin, at the Gottschall Rock Shelter.
The Kingman coins appeared to have been made by the “die” method, wherein a piece of hot, soft metal was placed on a lower die, then struck with another die from the top, thereby creating an impression on both the top and bottom of the piece. Metal is consequently pushed out near the edges. The dies that produced the Wisconsin coins were obviously created with an extreme amount of artistic and die-making skill. Apparently, no two were made by the same set of dies. Therefore, 20 different dies had been required for their production. Most of the coins appeared to be copper. At least one was a yellow alloy and deeply corroded. A faded inscription could be discerned around the edges of some pieces. Its translation, if possible, could determine the coins identity. It was speculated that they had been minted somewhere in the Old World—perhaps Greece or Rome—a very long time ago.
Not one of us had difficulty. A professor representing the Humanities and Social Sciences faculty on campus, responded to a request from one of our members that someone from the History or Anthropology Departments be present to also hear Fred Kingman’s story. For convenience, I refer to this learned gentleman “Professor William.”
While we were taking turns scrutinizing the coins, he suddenly blurted out, “They are fake!” I was flabbergasted that a professional colleague, prior to the analysis of basic data, could come to such a hasty and confident conclusion. Worse, I was quite embarrassed for the sake of Fred Kingman and his wife, who, logically assumed, would have done the faking.
“What are the things that led you to this abrupt conclusion?” I asked him. He hesitated, then declared the portraits were facing the wrong way. And the writing had to be read from the inside of the piece, when it should be read from the outside, or vice-versa. Perhaps he was right, although Mr. and Mrs. Kingman, genuinely shocked and hurt by Professor William’s implied accusation, were obviously honest people no less interested in finding out the truth about their discovery. If they had not faked the coins, a most unlikely alternative, then maybe the pieces were modern reproductions, perhaps commemorative medallions from a circus or promotional scheme of some kind dating back to the late 19th century, but not before.
No one at our AES meeting, including the skeptical professor, was expert in numismatics, so I initiated my own quest through the research stacks of the University library. In the following weeks, I consulted some 1,300 volumes on Roman Imperial history and numismatics, all the while searching for additional clues that would link the Wisconsin coins with Old World parallels. I learned that coins produced during the reign of Caesar Augustus portrayed his face pointing both left and right, and inscriptions read from either the inside out or the outside in—thereby negating Professor William’s contention that the Kingman coins were fake, because the depicted profiles faced the wrong direction and the letters read the wrong way. Even so, I found no matches between them and anything comparable from the world of Augustus, 2,000 years ago.
Moreover, the Wisconsin pieces featured representations of men with decidedly un-Roman, up-turned noses. They reminded me
instead of facial features from members of my own family, with deep roots in Germany. The human profiles on the coins struck me, therefore, as less Latin than Teutonic. A numismatic text I found did, in fact, reproduce a Roman Era coin depicting a man with an up-turned nose, his head (similar to those appearing on the Kingman coins) surmounted by a rayed crown. The coin was “of unknown origin,” from Bactria, an ancient, Greek-speaking kingdom in the northeastern part of modern Afghanistan, although the “sun-ray” type of cap portrayed was commonly worn along the Danube River Valley during Classical Times. I was troubled, however, by the Greek letters found on the Bactrian examples, because they were wholly unlike those on the Kingman coins, which compared more favorably with Latin.
I went on to learn from my library research that the ruler’s name, as it appeared on Roman coins, was often preceded by IMP, the same “imperial” designation on one of the Kingman coins, which read, IMPTETRICUS, or “Emperor Tetricus.” Excitedly, I checked several listings of every Roman emperor from first to last. But according to these indexes, no such person ever existed. Hoping “Tetricus” might have been a royal nickname of some kind, I took up the laborious investigation of a German-language tome that reproduced the complete inscriptions of every Roman Era coin in the possession of the Hamburg Art Museum, which owns one of the largest collections of its kind in the world. While painstakingly examining every numismatic inscription, I found what I was looking for. There, emblazoned on number 1503, the words IMP C TETRICUS P F AUG stood out in bold relief. He was not, after all, a Roman emperor, as I assumed, but the ruler of Gallien, a kingdom along Germany’s Rhine River from 270 to 273 A.D.
The elation of discovery faded somewhat, however, when I found what might be part of another title, IMP C CLAUDIUS, on the same Wisconsin coin. The famous Emperor Claudius was in power from 41 to 54 A.D., two centuries before Tetricus. It would
be unlikely that coins separated by this period of time were carried together, unless in the hands of a coin collector. And I knew that the famous Claudius was not normally shown wearing a sun-symbol headdress, with a beard or sporting a Germanic, up-turned nose. Hoping to find some resolution of these disparities, I resumed my research in the huge German book until I came to a photograph of coin number 1511 with the inscription, IMP CLAUDIUS AUG. This was not the same Claudius of the first century, but a much later emperor, Claudius II, who sat on the throne from 268 to 270 A.D., immediately prior to Tetricus. Both rulers had reigned for a very short period, suggesting troubled times. As later analysis would show, they were very troubled times indeed.
The Emperor Gallienus had been assassinated, and Marcus Aurelius Valerius Claudius chosen by the mutinous army as his successor. The murder created a deep split between the military leaders, who were appalled at the violent death of their Emperor, and the Senate, whose members so reviled Gallienus, they began executing his friends and family. As Roman society was being deeply divided, a serious rebellion in Germany, where Gallienus had been killed, grew yet more dangerous. As the well-known modern historian, Michael Grant, has written, “these Germans had broken through the Brenner Pass and penetrated as far as Lake Benacus (in northern Italy)”. Claudius II inflicted a stunning defeat on them, however, capturing or killing half the invaders.
Although he saved Rome, a pretender to the throne had set up a secessionist empire in the west, in Gaul, today’s France. Even so, Claudius II went on to win important victories that preserved civilization against constant outside attack by barbarian hordes. These political and military crises were compounded by massive inflation back home and sectarian strife stirred up by religious fanatics. In the midst of external pressure and internal chaos, Christian in-roads against traditional spirituality were contributing to the social confusion. As the ordained protector of Roman values, Claudius II affirmed
his allegiance to the imperial cult of Sol, going so far as to have himself portrayed on his coins wearing the rayed-crown of the sun-god. Elements of the old mystery schools of high learning, as well as the philosophies, were incorporated. Aimed at uniting the various religious factions in a popularized belief-system, his sponsorship generated a surge of new adherents, and sporting such solar headgear became fashionable among contemporary monarchs in many parts of the Empire.
But the troublesome, victorious reign of Claudius II was cut short after only two years in power, when he died of a plague in Germany while on campaign. Before his untimely death, he had set up a form of local government to work out differences between the Romans and the Germanic tribes west of the Rhine. This local-based government was called the “Gallic Empire.” Its leaders ruled from the city of Trier, home of Tetricus. Taking advantage of the disorientation and uncertainty following the death of Claudius II, Tetricus, a former Roman senator, set himself up as the head of the Gallic Empire to crate a breakaway Gallo-Roman state.
Former political contacts saved his life when the short-lived rebellion was put down, and he brought in chains to Rome. After this public humiliation, he was allowed to retire “in affluence and honorable repose,” according to the author of the Hamburg coin book, instead of being executed, as was otherwise the penalty for treason, probably because Tetricus purchased his life with an immense donation to the imperial sun-cult. In the same year he was captured and released, 273 A.D., Rome’s Temple of the Sun received no less than seven tons of gold.
The “Gallic Empire” he left behind did not fare as well. Beset by famine, it was ruthlessly dismantled by the Roman legions, its population enslaved or dispersed. But the natives were not with means of escape. Grant writes of the large navies used by the Germans to evacuate as many displaced persons as possible using the mighty Rhine River to find new lives far from trouble.
These historical events seemed to be reflected in the Kingman coins, which were apparently minted at a time of mass-flight from Europe. Could some Roman-era Germans have ventured as far as America? Or were the coins carried here by contemporary Kushana merchants, who, by either accident or design, arrived in North America, where their name was indelibly imprinted in the folk memory of its indigenous people? However they came to rest near the Wisconsin River, the coins found by Fred Kingman are authentically Old World in origin. As such, they are 10 more pieces in the puzzle of our country’s mysterious prehistory.
Roman Influence in America
The Kingman Coins are not the only material evidence for ancient Romans in the New World. According to an article in the December, 2000 issue of Ancient American, artifacts of an entirely different kind, in a state far removed from the Upper Middle West, were unearthed under the kind of controlled circumstances insisted upon by critics of possible Old World influences during pre-Columbian times. Despite their excavation by professionally trained teams of certified archaeologists working for a state university, the metallic objects were condemned as fraudulent by cultural isolationists, and their enormous potential to revise Americans’ understanding of their past was lost.
Roman Relics Found in Arizona by Earl Koenig
On the morning of 13 September 1924, Charles E. Manier was working in a lime kiln gravel pit off the Silverbell Road, almost 7 miles east of Tucson, Arizona. Unexpectedly, his shovel revealed a metallic shape. Pulling the heavy object free, he noticed at once that it comprised two parts stuck together. He pried them apart and was surprised to see both were lead plates covered with long inscriptions of some kind; one plate was shaped in the form of a crucifix weighing 90 pounds.
That afternoon, Manier did the right thing by taking the strange items to Dr. Frank H. Fowler, at the University of Arizona. The congenial Professor of Classical Literature was fluent in Latin and translated both inscribed plates without difficulty. When he learned where Manier, an uneducated but honest man, found them, he organized an archaeological dig for the next day. Under scientifically controlled conditions, a professional team of excavators began to unearth more buried objects almost at once. They found another inscribed object, this one a foot-long plate.
Digs continued throughout the year, each time bringing to light
Three inscribed crosses excavated from the Silverbell gravel pit in 1924.
more materials. These began to include additional crucifixes, swords, lances, large spatulas, batons, arrow-heads, spear-points, and ceremonial standards, all manufactured in lead. They were encrusted with a hard, crustal coating of caliche that had formed between the reaction of chemical salts and water in the desert soil matrix. Such a process is very gradual, and caliche deposits on the Silverbell finds undoubtedly required several centuries, at least, to accumulate.
Over the next several months, more than 30 such objects were taken from the lime kiln. On 28 November, Thomas W. Brent, who owned the property on which these discoveries were being made, found a second crucifix, this one at 25 pounds. Two days later, Manier brought up another one, likewise inscribed, weighing 10 pounds. On 5 December, hired diggers made the Silverbell Road site’s most important find, when they uncovered a 25-pound crucifix emblazoned with the single longest inscription found on all the items.
By year’s end, five crosses and nine plates had been found within a radius of 6 feet. The latter objects were manufactured in halves riveted together, their inscribed surfaces coated with an artificial waxy substance chemists were unable to positively identify, “but were unanimous in their opinion that it had served its purpose of preservative with utmost efficiency” (Tucson Citizen, 1 February 1925). Their analysis revealed that the crosses and plates were made of a cast led and antimony alloy with traces of copper, tin, silver, and even gold. These ores had been crushed and smelted, then cast and shaped by hammering and smoothing. Workmanship was poor, but understandably so, given their manufacture in the Arizona desert, where natural materials for fine tools would have been scarce.
Dr. Fowler, Charles T. Vorhies (also of the University of Arizona), A.E. Douglas (Directory of the Steward Observatory), Dean Byron Cummings (Director of the Arizona State Museum), and the Museum’s Assistant Director, Karl Ruppert, were present when the heavily inscribed crucifix had been excavated under their professional supervision. Later, Dean Cummings verified that all the objects had
been removed directly from the gravel pit at the lime kiln under scientifically controlled conditions. A personage no less than the Dean of the College of Mines and Engineering at the University of Arizona, Dr. Gordon M. Butler, personally excavated two halves of a leaden spear-shaft from the lime kiln (Arizona Star, February 17, 1928).
“Even if we accept the hypothesis that the soil was washed down by the rains,” he declared, “it is ridiculous to contend that the objects were buried there within recent years. There is no evidence of burial or of recent disturbance. To have ‘planted’ the soil in place would have necessitated moving tons of it at a time.” Dr. Alexander A. Stoyanow (Professor of Geology), Dr. T.T. Waterman (Associate Professor of Anthropology), and no less than 10 other professional colleagues concurred with Dr. Butler’s assessment of the spear parts’ genuineness. He was soon joined by other leading academic figures of the day, including Phoenix archaeologist, Dr. O.A. Turney; Tucson science writer, Clifton J. Sarle, Ph.D.; and Wade H. Ellis, of Washington,
D.C.’s National Archaeological Society. The experts were unanimous in their conclusion that the Silverbell Road materials were authentic artifacts belonging to overseas visitors from Europe at least six centuries before Columbus arrived in America.
Translation of the combined Latin text told a surprising story: “In Memoriam Romani Actius: In memory of Romans Actius and Theodore, Consuls of great cities. We are carried forward on the sea (to) Calalus, an unknown land (and) a people ruling wildly (Indians?). Toltezus (and) Silvanus are won over. Theodorus brings his forces from the city, Rhoda. And more than 700 are captured. No gold. They are (or shall be) banished from the city. Theodorus, a man of the greatest valor, rules during 14 years. Iacobus rules during (after Theodorus) six years. God helping it is not to be feared. In the name of Israel, Iacobus born again (in) the city. With God’s help, Iacobus rules with mighty hand after the manner of his ancestors, and sings to his Lord. May his fame live forever!
“Benjamin was king of the people. He came from Seine to Rome, the bravest of the Gauls. He came to the assistance of the people, to lay the foundation of the city. He built a wall around the city to resist the enemy. Benjamin, mighty in strength. He filled the multitude with religion. He was slain by the Thebans. I heard this from my father five years after, behind the mountain, in memory of his father, Joseph. 880 Anno Domini.
“Israel-Ill was banished, for he had liberated the Toltezus. He was the first to break the custom. The Earth trembled, fear overwhelmed the hearts of mortals in the third year after he had fled. They betook themselves into the city, and kept themselves within its walls. Thou shalt not burn a dead body in the city. Before the city extended a plain. Hills encompassed the city. It is 100 years since Iacobus was king. Iacobus was busy in the front line. He attended to everything, fought much in person, and often struck down the enemy.
“Israel (Israel-Ill?) gave his attention to the appointment of priests. Life has been granted to us, a people of extensive sway... to serve the king. It is uncertain how long life will continue. There are many things which may be said. While the war was raging, three thousand men were slain. The leaders without their chiefs were taken. Nothing but peace was sought. God ordains all things.”
Some of the text seems to have been “signed” with the initials, O.L., although marked differences in the grammatical construction of the various inscriptions indicate that more than one person composed them. “Albion, Iacobus” appeared on the left branch of a crucifix; on the right, “Seine, Israel” perhaps signifying the leaders of Jewish communities in Britain and France, respectively, from which they came to North America. Though the majority of the plates and crosses were inscribed with Latin, some Hebrew was also included.
Dr. Cyclone Covey (Professor of History, Wake Forest University, North Carolina), whose expertise concerning Western European
Mid- to Late Classical Period is formidable, focused on the name Calalus mentioned in the Silverbell inscription. As the author, David Hatcher Childress, explains, “Various Jews had sailed from the Portuguese port of Porto Cale, and founded a city in Florida, naming it Cale. This city is now modern-day Ocala, in north-central Florida.” Covey believes that other Jews escaped Rome, and also left Porto Cale, Portugal, for the New World. The Latin form of Porto Cale was Calalus, which became a Jewish-Roman outpost, in 775 A.D. “The city, situated where modern Tucson lies today, was then named Rhoda. One of the leaders, or captain of one of the ships, Covey believes, was born on the island of Rhodes”
(pp. 293, 294).
A complete interpretation of all the Silverbell scripts is difficult, because they are themselves incomplete. Moreover, the message of the fragmented text itself is confused. What are we to make of it? The written language is primarily Latin, and Romans (Actius, Theodore, and Silvanus) appear in the beginning as “Consuls of Great Cities,” presumably, built in North America after their arrival from overseas—all of which compliments the Roman-style sword blades found in the gravel pit. Moreover, the Romans were great and busy workers in led, the metal used to cast the Arizona artifacts. Some investigators speculate the “Toltezus” cited in the tablets were the Mexican Toltecs. But the text does not confirm their identity, and even suggests, at least once, that “Toltezus” is the name of a man, apparently a military commander of approximate rank to the Roman, Silvanus.
A “Benjamin” is mentioned as having come from Gaul, but his is an incongruous Jewish name one would not expect to encounter in a time and an area of Europe were Jews were not found. “Seine” appears at least twice in the inscriptions, but it implies (through its association with Albion, or “Britain”) a place-name, not the famous river in France. The various peoples cited in the Silverbell tablets: Roman Christians, Gauls, Britons, and Jews, comprise an unlikely
lot, because European history tells of their mutual animosity. They would hardly seem to have made common cause in some joint venture across the sea to America. But given the time when they supposedly arrived in Arizona, just such an undertaking could have indeed taken place.
The author (or, more likely authors) of the inscribed plates once (“O.L.”) wrote in the year 880 A.D. that “it is a hundred years since Iacobus was king.” Because Iacobus ruled for six years and was preceded by Theodorus, who ruled for 14, we may deduce that these strangers arrived in Arizona during the mid-700s, making Dr. Covey’s date for their founding of the port city, Calalus, about a quarter-century too late. But chronologies developed from the artifacts’ internal evidence are unsure. Theodorus and his followers would then appear to have landed in Florida, before moving on to the American south west, sometime after 700 A.D. If so, their transatlantic voyage and resettlement in North America coincided with a period of widespread chaos in Europe.
The armies of Islam swept as far as the Alps, badly shaking the already shaky Byzantine Empire, the debilitated inheritor of Imperial Rome. The Dark Ages, which had already descended upon Europe, were getting darker. And a mixed bag of Christians, Jews, and Keltic pagans were being herded together by a common enemy that threatened them all with conversion by the sword, the Moslem invaders. Faced with trying to survive in a collapsing civilization, they opted for the great dangers and terrible uncertainties of crossing the broad sea to a land perhaps known to them only in oral traditions. But they successfully landed in Florida and built a port there. Then, at least some of them fought their way against native peoples across North America into what is now Arizona.
Their Roman leaders became “consuls of great cities,” perhaps a reference to Tuzigoot, Chaco Canyon, Hovenweep, or other monumental ceremonial centers associated with the prehistoric Anasazi and Hohokam in the American south west. Indeed, the brickwork at many of these sites (particularly Wupatki) suggests Roman
masonry. But Roman leadership under men such as Actius, Silvanus, and Theodorus began to die out. By default, the Jews replaced them, beginning with Iacobus and Israel-Ill. At the time their final inscriptions were being made, however, the power of these disparate foreigners appears to have been in steep decline, probably under the hostile pressures of outnumbering native tribes: “It is uncertain how long life will continue. While the war was raging, 3,000 men were slain.” The anonymous scribe wrote resignedly, “God ordains all things.”
Soon after, the evidence suggests, he and his people were forced out of existence, leaving behind a memorial to their adventure in the led plates found outside Tucson, about 1,000 years later. Incessant battling with numberless tribes of native enemies mentioned in the texts likewise coincides with the onset of the Mississippian Culture. This major transition to a far-flung ceremonial society, although concentrated in the Mississippi Valley, was generated by new peoples pushing up from the south, who dislodged native populations all across North America above the Rio Grande.
Complimenting these historical parallels with the ancient Arizona text, the scientifically controlled circumstances of excavations at the Silverbell site were beyond question. Many professional observers were in attendance. On occasion, they personally excavated some of the led inscriptions themselves, as did Dr. Butler. Describing the inscribed plates 70 years after they were discovered, archaeologist Dr. Gunnar Thompson pointed out that “the texts include numerous quotes from well-known Mediterranean manuscripts, such as Vergil’s Georgies. Some phrases used in the texts, such as Dei gratia (By the grace of God) were common mottos in Medieval Europe.” He mentioned Professor Covey “explains that the semi-literate script on the tablets is similar to inscriptions found in ancient Jewish catacombs”
(p.181).
Authenticity of the Silverbell artifacts was confirmed by their original discoverer’s and present research conducted in both eras by university professionals. Why, then, have so few Americans even
heard of the 1924 discovery? And how is it that no U.S. history textbook published since then so much as mentions it?
Certified, university-trained experts who established the lead plates’ pre-Columbian identity agreed that their importance went far beyond local significance, with dramatic consequences for American and even world history. Seeking broader recognition for the artifacts, Dean Cummings brought them to Washington, D.C.’s prestigious Smithsonian Institution. But their appearance at the nation’s capital immediately called down the ire of archaeology’s Eastern Establishment, whose leading figures tolerated no proposition suggesting overseas contacts from the Old World before Columbus arrived. F.W. Hidge at New York’s Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation, dismissed the Arizona relics as transparent fakes. He was seconded by Bashford Dean, Curator of Arms and Armor at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, who said they ranked among the poorest of forgeries. The New York Times blasted the Silverbell inscriptions as obvious frauds, in which the led plate text had been taken entirely from three Latin language books: Rouf’s Standard Dictionary of Facts, Harkness Latin Grammar, and Latin Grammar of Allen and Greenough. But names such as Toltexau, Iacobu, or Calalus featured in the Arizona inscriptions do not appear in these standard Latin grammar textbooks of the 19th or early 20th centuries. Not withstanding this fundamental objection, the Eastern press blew up the Arizona discovery into a heated, nation-wide controversy many scholars were afraid might expand into a scandal. Dean Cummings’s presentation describing the excavated plates at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Kansas City was met with a stony silence.
Reported the Arizona Wildcat, “The attitude of the scientists indicated that they did not consider the artifacts of particular moment.” The meeting, representing contemporary American scientific thought, ignored Cummings to award its $1,000 prize to a
Professor Dayton Miller (Cleveland, Ohio), for his paper, which “invalidated some of the major principles of the Einstein Theory.”
The AAAS attendees who snubbed Dean Cummings, as with virtually all his critics, never visited the lime kiln in person. Many refused to even look at photographs of its excavated objects, condemning them out of hand.
Soon after the Kansas City rebuff, The New York Times fairly exploded with vindictive glee, when it headlined that one Leandro Ruiz, a Mexican immigrant describing himself as “a retired cattleman,” was quoted as saying that the Arizona plates were probably forged 40 years before by another Mexican, Timotio Odohui, a sculptor, who lived near the Silverbell Road site. Odohui was allegedly well-versed in Classical literature and executed numerous art objects, mostly in stone, but some (such as a model horse) in lead. No one ever saw him making led crosses or inscribed plates, however, and whatever reasons he may have had for fabricating a hoax were unknown.
Odohui disappeared before the turn of the century, when he might have gone back to Mexico. Other than Ruiz’s testimony, no information could be connected to a “Timotio Odohui,” who may or may not have even existed. Nonetheless, on this incredibly flimsy, entirely circumstantial, hearsay evidence from a dubious source, the Arizona discovery was loudly condemned as a Mexican forgery.
Unconvinced by the Odohui theory, Dr. E. C. Getsinger, in a front-page story for The California Jewish Review, wrote that the inscribed plates were fakes planted at the lime kiln during the previous century by the founder of Mormonism in an attempt to lend historical credibility to his creed. “I believe these Lost-Tribes-of-Israel crosses were planted,” Getsinger insisted, “awaiting the time for Joseph Smith to have a ‘revelation’ concerning them.” This despite Dr. Butler’s conclusion that geological circumstances did not permit planting the Arizona finds within the previous 500 years.
E.S. Blair, a New York attorney, never saw the Silverbell Road artifacts. But that did not prevent him from receiving lavish newspaper publicity when he declared that they were “fakes planted by some practical joker, or perhaps for a more sinister purpose. Such a result would tend to put a lasting stigma on Tucson, on the University of which we all can be proud, and on the scientists involved. Can it be possible that the learned geologists, archaeologists, and classicists who have vouched for this discovery have been imposed upon?” With this well-publicized outburst from a lawyer, who implied some “sinister purpose” behind the Silverbell Road finds, any scientists who had earlier championed the discovery now felt seriously threatened.
So did Tucson politicians, who cut the University of Arizona’s financial support for all further excavations or research of the questionable site. Eventually, even Arizona newspapers joined its nationwide condemnation long after all the principle players had distanced themselves from it. The public campaign to discredit the artifacts found outside of Tucson was stopped only by the economic crash of 1929. But the damage to their credibility through paltry evidence and weak (though vociferous) counter-arguments had been done. Writing about the led artifacts in 1968, E.B. Sayles (a professional archaeologist and curator of the Arizona State Museum) observed, “Had I known about them when the controversy raged, my sympathy would have been with the Star (The Arizona Star newspaper, whose editor stood up for the object’s authenticity) and those who worked to determine their origin and meaning, rather than with those who set out to condemn them before they could be investigated.”
At the height of the acrimonious campaign, the Star wrote, “Wherever the relics are placed in history, their worth cannot be deprecated by hasty decisions.”
Contrary to the accusations of their severe critics, no one ever profited from the discovery, nor implicated in a hoax of any kind. Conveniently forgotten in all the preposterous theories to explain away
the artifacts as the work of mysterious Mexican sculptors or even Joseph Smith were the geologists’ original test results. They demonstrated that caliche crustal deposits on these objects had taken many centuries to develop, very possibly a thousand years, thereby corresponding to the date of the plates’ final inscription, 880 A.D.
Chemical analysis further showed that the objects were made of lead with traces of copper, tin, silver, and gold, hardly the minerals one expects to find in a hoax, especially one from which no one ever profited. But not even the presence of dozens of certified professors in the company of their university-trained staff members at archaeological digs conducted under scientifically controlled conditions were sufficient to silence academic skeptics in absentia, who had long before convinced themselves that such objects must be fraudulent, to the exclusion of all other considerations. Tragically for America, that prejudice still dominates official archaeology. The deniers scoffed that inscriptions on the lead plates were simple Latin phrases obviously “cribbed” from popular language textbooks. Yet, is it possible that (not one, but all) leading language scholars at a major American university, with departments specializing in the Classics, could not have come to the same determination made by out-of-state lawyers and journalists?
Brow-beaten into submission by a hostile press, University of Arizona authorities washed their hands of the whole affair and returned the objects to their original discoverers, Charles Manier and Thomas Brent. Sixty years later, they were again showcased by the University as part of its “Special Collections,” less as material proof of Old World visitors to pre-Columbian America, than evidence of a 20th-century hoax. Despite Academia’s persistent opposition to their ancient authenticity, the inscribed plates and weapons taken from a gravel pit outside Tucson are elements of one of the most shameful episodes in American archaeology. They wait for a more open-minded time, when impartial scholars will have an opportunity to examine the artifacts for their real identity and significance.
Minoan Civilization
The Minoans built a sophisticated civilization on the Aegean island of Crete, from whence they culturally and economically dominated the Eastern Mediterranean World beginning in the early to second millennium B.C. until the 16th century B.C. Power lay primarily in their expertise as shipwrights and skill as long-distance sailors. Unconventional investigators have long suspected that commercial ambitions may have lured these redoubtable sea-farers across the Atlantic Ocean in search of rich trade goods. But physical evidence of their arrival in America seemed lacking, until a tiny object accidentally found in New England seemed to prove that the Minoans had found their way to our shores after all. The report of its discovery was an Ancient American “exclusive” in the January/ February, 2002 issue.
Maine Minoans by Frank Joseph and Wayne May
In 1975, Michael Rose was digging a house foundation on the banks of the Penobscot River, near Old Town, 10 miles north of Bangor, Maine. At about a dozen feet down, his shovel unearthed a curious, little metallic object. It was a flat rectangle approximately 1 inch long by three-quarter-inch wide and thin as a dime. The obverse shows what appears to be a woman standing in a doorway. She wears a flounced shirt and a high, pointed cap, with a large necklace hanging to her midriff. Her right hand is extended beyond or in front of the doorway, and in her left she cradles either a snake or a fan with serpentine handle. The reverse displays the punch mark that created the female image on the opposite side. The object may be made of a silver-nickel alloy.
Writes Mr. Rose in his correspondence with Ancient American, “It was far enough in the ground that we thought it had to be real old, so I just put it away, and recently decided to try and find out what the heck it really is. Beyond that, I’m lost.”
Mr. Rose’s tiny discovery may be the best evidence yet found on behalf of visitors from Minoan Crete to North America, not centuries before Columbus, but millennia. The Minoans derived their name from an early king, Minos, who later became part of the Greek mythic world, reigning as one of the three judges of the Underworld. The Minoans transformed the eastern Mediterranean island of Crete into one of mankind’s most brilliant centers of early civilization. Long before, beginning sometime in the mid-third millennium B.C., their unique society evolved gradually from relatively primitive Cycladic Cultures that flourished in the Aegean.
By 1700 B.C., Minoan Civilization was fully developed, with two great cities, Knossos and Phaistos, dominating the northern and southern coasts, respectively. The Minoans were a literate people, with three written languages: a hieroglyphic syllabary, together with Linear-A and Linear-B. Only the latter, later script, an early form of Greek, has been translated. Minoan religion was filled with the imagery of bulls and serpent-bearing women, symbols of male and female energies. The national emblem was a labrys, or double-headed axe, usually made of copper, in the export-import business of which the Minoans were skilled. As such, they were renowned sea-farers, proficient in the design production and navigation of sea-going vessels that plied Minoan trade from Pharaonic Egypt to Britain’s Stonehenge, when that megalithic astronomical computer was still functioning.
For at least three centuries, Ancient Crete was an opulent maritime state, whose sophisticated people used technological innovations from movable type to flush toilets. Their ladies were great lovers of fashion (archaeologists refer to the painted representation of a Minoan beauty at Knossos as “La Parisien”), and everyone thronged to enjoy spectator sports, particularly bull-jumping. Fabulous palaces, with huge courts and fabulously adorned walls, were open to the Aegean sunlight. The Minoans
were more mercantile than military, as evidenced by the lack of any defensive walls on the island. Their peacefulness led to their eventual downfall, however, when the Bronze Age kings of war-like Mycenae, Homers “Heroic” Greeks, rose to power on the Peloponnesus. By the 13th century B.C., all vestiges of Minoan influence had vanished, subsumed in a foreign cultural domination. The small object dug up by Michael Rose a quarter-century ago on the banks of the Penobscot River speaks eloquently of the lost people of King Minos. They invented, as mentioned, a kind of movable type, not for printing newspapers or books, but for astrological purposes. The famous Phaistos Disk is the only complete survivor of many such items used by the Minoans to calculate the positions of certain stellar phenomena, particularly the predicted appearances of certain constellations, such as the Pleiades or the Eagle. The Disk was a simple tablet, into which embossed metal images of the desired stars or constellations were pressed when the clay was soft, before the Disk was baked hard.
The image on a small metal type unearthed by Michael Rose in Maine (right) belongs to the Earth-goddess worshiped in Minoan Crete, 4, 000 years ago.
The Maine artifact is just such a piece of movable type, matching its Cretan correspondent in size. Moreover, Mr. Rose's find is embossed; its features are prominent enough to distinctly impress themselves into soft clay. The Minoan snake-goddess, invariably portrayed as a woman wearing a flounced skirt, is identically portrayed on the Old Town object. It must have been dropped and lost more than 3,000 years ago by a Minoan visitor who owned his equivalent of the Phaistos Disk, which, researchers believe, was a very common commercial good, probably manufactured in the hundreds (at least) for use by the general public.
But what could have possibly inspired him to brave a treacherous transatlantic crossing so long ago? The answer is simple: copper. The Minoan economy was based on the import-export of the metal. Their own society was thoroughly out-fitted in bronze (manufactured by combining high-grade copper with tin and zinc), from tools to sacred items. At Crete’s Iraklion Museum, the salvaged wreck of a Minoan vessel bearing several tons of copper ox-hide ingots is on display. Outside of Cyprus, supplies of high-grade copper in Europe were scarce. Source for the world’s highest grade copper is in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Here, a prodigious mining enterprise was undertaken by unknown miners, who removed a minimum of half-a-billion pounds of copper from 3,000 to 1200 B.C.
This huge operation represents one of the greatest archaeological mysteries, because the ancient copper vanished from North America, just as the Near Eastern and European Bronze Age blossomed. The Minoans, with their able seamanship and sea-going ships (to say nothing of their commercial appetite for copper), were obviously part of Bronze Age efforts to grow rich on Upper Michigan’s mineral supplies. Copper was the equivalent of atomic fusion during pre-Classical times, and enterprising copper barons would have gone to any lengths to obtain it for their multi-national clientele.
These considerations are underscored by Mr. Rose’s discovery of the piece of ancient movable type near Old Town, just 35 miles from the Atlantic Ocean, on the banks of the Penobscot. In Minoan times, it was a more extensive river than at present, and connected directly with the
Saint Lawrence, which could carry a ship directly to the ancient copper mines of Upper Michigan. But the Maine find is by no means the first discovery of its kind. Representations of the Minoan labyrinth, or ritual maze, have been found as far away as New Mexico and Arizona.
An inscription in Linear-A, dating to 1500 B.C., was found by a trapper, Bernardo Ramos, in Brazil. Another Brazilian find was made in the Amazon Valley by the 1920s Fawcett Expedition, which recovered the Cretan statuette of a human figure holding a tablet covered with Minoan hieroglyphs. Particularly intriguing are Minoan ox-hyde ingots of mined copper used as currency by various Native America tribes as late as the 16th century A.D. These complimentary finds support the authenticity of the Old Town artifact. Even so, it stands on its own as clear evidence of a Minoan arrival in Maine more than 30 centuries ago.
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