File: <bronze.htm> Subjects Archeology Index <Home URL> <American
Archeology>
(low speed connections use <bronze1.htm>.] [Additional Websites and #2
]
|
EUROPEAN BRONZE AGE VISITORS IN AMERICA1/ E. F. Legner
NOTE: “Old
Norse” and “Old Gaelic” as used by Fell may
be equivalent to a northern dialect of the Saharan
language as discussed by Nyland. ----Please CLICK on desired
underlined categories [ to search for Subject Matter, depress Ctrl/F ]: Introduction
As of March 2005 there have been
few implements found in the Americas that date from the Bronze Age (Please
see Discussion). Nevertheless, there is considerable
evidence of a voyage or voyages of a Bronze Age Scandinavian king, Woden-lithi,
to North America around 1700 B.C. from texts found inscribed in the rocks at Peterborough, Ontario, Canada (Figs. 18 & 19 & MAP), and other North American sites. (Figs. 18 & 19 & MAP), and other sites.
These texts, written in Teutonic and Norse tongues, used alphabets
that have survived to the present in remote parts of the world. However, in Europe Roman script became the
predominant alphabet around the time of Christ as part of the general
occupation. They support the belief
that Europeans during the Bronze Age were literate, educated people. Harvard Professor Barry
Fell (1982) has attempted to translate the inscriptions to
about October 2000. Expected
widespread criticism of such new ideas flooded the archeological world (see Comments). Yet by the year 2005 there has emerged a
revolution in American prehistory that may finally remove antiquated biases
and enable concerted efforts at learning and dispelling myths about
colonization in America (please refer to Nyland’s
accounts). The evidence points to the
certainty that European colonists and traders have been visiting or settling
in the Americas for thousands of years, have introduced their scripts,
artifacts, and skills, and have exported abroad American products such as
copper and furs. The voyages occurred
just as the Iron Age was beginning, so that the explorers might have brought
with them implements of iron instead of bronze (see Picture), and most could
have eventually rusted away. Edo Nyland has examined the
Peterborough petroglyphs and especially what Barry Fell considered
Ogam, but he failed to see Ogam writing in it. Nyland noted that Fell took
some isolated characters that look like Ogam, then assigned English letters
to it, but none are connected into a sentence. If one looks at the Ogam
inscriptions that Nyland works with, you see that they form a series of
connected characters, a lineup of them, but that's not what Fell found..
Furthermore, Fell was using Gaelic to
translate but Gaelic did not exist until about 700 AD. The early Gnostics
used Basque exclusively. Nyland wishes that he could be more positive about
Fell's work. As far as he can see his true strength is in transliteration,
not translation. According to Fell, Woden-lithi's main
purpose for visiting America was apparently to barter textiles with the Algonquian Indians in return for metallic copper ingots (Fell 1982). He left a detailed record of his visit at Peterborough where he
established a permanent-trading colony.
To critics who argued that there was no writing among the
Scandinavians until about the time of Christ, Fell (1982) pointed to two
alphabets as shown in Fig.
1. One alphabet,
"ogam
consaine" was employed by the ancient peoples of Ireland and
Scotland (often erroneously referred to as Celts—see Celts). They were recorded and explained in detail
by Irish monks during the Middle Ages.
A detailed description of this writing was given in Barry Fell's books
America BC and Saga America. The other
alphabet, called "Tifinag",
is the special way of writing of the Tuaregs, a race of Berbers living in the Atlas Mountains of North Africa. Both ogam consain and Tifinag use only
consonants in nearly all words, leaving the vowels to be inferred, as do writers
of Hebrew, Arabic and other ancient scripts.
Sometimes, where doubt may exist as to the word intended, a vowel sign
is added, or a pictograph, to help recognize the word (Fell 1982). [ Ogam Script details] It is apparent from evidence provided
in the following text that Bronze Age Irish and Norsemen colonists in
America showed strong feelings about their pagan gods
and the power that they had over daily events. Therefore, the numerous inscriptions found in America on rocks,
implements and bone regularly connected these gods with whatever the people
were trying to show, whether it be gathering wool from wild sheep or
recounting their travels. With his
wide knowledge about Bronze Age mythology and religions in Europe, Professor
Fell noted close similarities in the American inscriptions. He interpreted these as cultural
extensions from Europe, following colonization by explorers crossing the
Atlantic in ancient times. (Pleases
refer to Figs. 20, 21, 22, 23 & 24 for more illustrations to this
section). As of 2005, we have come to
recognize the ancient language as Saharan from
which all other Indo-European languages were derived. The following text reconsiders the
detailed account by Professor Barry Fell in Bronze Age America, 1982,.with
new knowledge accumulated since its publication. Particularly, his erroneous references to Celts have been
changed to coincide with knowledge acquired by 2004. Although Fell’s reference to Celts often
includes peoples of both Ireland and Scotland, I have generally used the word
Ancient Irish for both (Please see Celts). The Bronze Age Alphabets
These alphabets enable an examination
of the famous Bronze Age sites where rock-cut inscriptions are
preserved. One famous site occurs at Hjulatorp, Sweden, the name meaning "Wheel Village."
There exist numerous Neolithic or
early Bronze Age rock carvings that
resemble chariot wheels and others that look like disks or globes (Figs.
3). Fell (1982) discussed the significance of
this site as follows: Examine the fernlike inscription on
the lower part of the rock face, beneath some circular carvings. There is little difficulty in recognizing
this as ogam consain, and that the letters are as shown on Fig 3. They spell K-UI-G-L, which, as all Norse- and German-speaking readers will immediately recognize,
is just an archaic way of spelling the general Teutonic root that means a
ball or globe. Glance now to the
upper right, where, beside the same circular images, we now find a series of
engraved dots that match letters in the Tifinag alphabet. The letters are, as shown in Fig. 4, K-G-L--, again,
just an archaic rendering of the same word, this time in a different
alphabet. There are more of the
Tifinag letters. Look at the chariot
wheels ..." in Fig. 5. "Beneath
them are letters that spell W-H-L-A,
obviously an archaic spelling of the Old
Norse
<= Saharan?> word for wheel. Farther to the right we find a Tifinag
word spelling K-L. Now the writer of that last word may have
been an ancient Swede, already casting out from his pronunciation of kugl that internal g, for whereas Danes and Germans
retain the internal consonant, the Swedes now spell and pronounce kugl as kula. But, it may appear, there is not
supposed to be any writing at all on these Bronze Age monuments! Well, that was not Fell’s opinion, and he
suspected that it would begin to
occur to the reader that perhaps our earlier ideas may have erred on these
matters. Now let us take a look at
another Bronze Age carving, first recorded by Dr. G. Halldin in the 1949 volume
of the yearbook published by the Swedish Sjöfartsmuseum. It shows a ship of the characteristic
Bronze Age form, with the keel projecting fore and aft below the
upward-turned bow and stern pieces.
Along the upper and lower borders of the....ship (Fig.
6a) we see two
lines of Tifinag letters, and a third line curves around the lower edge of
the rock slab. In the Bronze Age (and
also among the Berbers in modern times), when two or more lines of text
occur, they are read as if they were a continuous "tape:": that is,
with each line alternating in direction, so that no break occurs in the line
of symbols. Here we read the top line
from left to right, the next line from right to left. The letters prove to be K-GH H-W-L. Now take a glance at an American rock inscription, also
depicting ships of the Bronze Age type
(Fig.
6b). This particular
carving, at Peterborough, Ontario, can be visited easily by Canadians living
in that area, As can be seen, the letters K-GH occur at the beginning of the first line, too, which also is
to be read from the left to right, just as in the Swedish example. Reference to any Old Norse <= Saharan?>
or Old Icelandic dictionary will disclose that kuggr, often anglicized in Viking times as cog, is an Old Norse word meaning a seagoing trading ship. On the Swedish example the next word, H-WL, can readily be recognized,
since it still occurs in all Norse tongues, as meaning whale, or, in the older sense, any
sea monster or leviathan. Thus the
Swedish example is telling us that the monument is dedicated to "The seagoing ship Leviathan." As for the Canadian examples, merely note
that kuggr is only one of several Old Norse words for ships
that we find represented by Tifinag letters beside carvings of Bronze Age
ships. Returning to Sweden, we now visit at Backa, Brastad, another site, considered by Swedish
archaeologists, to be Neolithic (around 2000 BC). The word baca does
not occur in modern speech, but in Old Norse <= Saharan?> it meant, according to the Oxford Dictionary of Old Icelandic,
"a kind of blunt-headed arrow."
The rock inscription that occurs at Baca depicts just such a
blunt-headed arrow, together with an image of the sun god and human figure,
apparently dead, plus some letters of the Tifinag alphabet (Fig. 7 ). These, if read from right to left, yield
the words S-L B-K-S, solbakkas, translating as "of the
sun's blunt arrow." The precise
reference may be obscure, but it seems clear enough that the letters are
indeed Tifinag, and that the subject under discussion is indeed the blunt
arrow that is depicted below the letters and that gave its name to the place where
the inscription occurs. The examples cited so far come from
the eastern parts of Sweden and comprise very simple texts, using only a few
letters of the Tifinag alphabet. If
we transfer our attention to the rock inscriptions found on the southwest
coast of Sweden, immediately adjacent to Oslo Fjord and
along the strip of coast to the north of Göteborg, we
find much more extensive and varied inscriptions at localities in the
Bohuslän region. Here the texts are
longer and more interesting and, in many cases, they show the same obvious
relationship to the accompanying carvings of men, animals, and ships. What have hitherto been incomprehensible
"lines of dots" now assume quite clearly and unmistakably the
character of commentaries in a very ancient kind of Norse language that
was evidently spoken during the Bronze Age.
Since there was at that time no differentiation of the ancestors of
the future Angles and Saxons from the
general stock of Teutonic speakers that later gave rise to the tribes that
spread from Denmark to England, herein shall be used the terms Norse and Ancient Norse for the language
that is represented in these Bronze Age inscriptions. it was Fell’s impression that English,
German, and other Teutonic languages, including the Norse or Scandinavian
tongues, may all be traced back to the Bronze Age dialect that is the subject
of this account. The inscriptions in western Sweden seem to fall broadly into three main
categories. These are (1) short didactic
statements that appear to be school lessons for young scribes, very much
resembling the Irish (noted as Celtic) school inscriptions reported from
British Columbia in Fell’s book Saga
America, (2) prayers for the safety of ships at sea and for victory in
impending attacks upon foes, and (3) narrative material depicting and
identifying important events, such as the pagan festivals with their
associated rituals and entertainments.
In deciphering these Tifinag texts, from which the vowels, of course, are
usually lacking, Fell used as his
reference the known vocabulary of Old Norse and Old
Icelandic. However, in many cases
dialects such as Old English or Old High German could equally well be used as
the reference guide, with the same translation resulting, and with little
more than the substituted vowels to distinguish the various dialects. Since the vowels are lacking we are left
without any certain indication as to which of the Old Teutonic tongues is the
closest to the speech of these ancient Norsemen people, and it is possible
that all are equally related, as was suggested above. But to provide a uniform nominal
vocabulary Fell selected Old Norse or Old Icelandic as the base. Any literate community has to provide
a means of instructing the young in the arts of reading and writing;
otherwise, the skills would die out.
it appears that in Bronze Age times the schoolmasters used much the
same kind of didactic material for their lessons as did teachers in later
ages. The subject matter ranges from
simple identifications of depictions of objects of daily life to more
sophisticated proverbs and adages, each illustrated by appropriate pictorial
carvings. Fig 8 illustrates two inscribed petroglyphs from
the Bohuslän district that suggest that they were
intended for younger readers. The
first imparts a moral lesson on cooperation; the second is of the familiar
grade-school type, in which people are related to their daily environment, in
this case two fishermen who are "on the water." Fig.
9 shows more of
the same type of illustrated statement, in which a warrior holds his buckler
in such a manner as to show how the word is
spelled. A bull and a cow are
introduced, each illustrating how its name is spelled; and the sun god
carries the image of the sun, thus showing how the letter s
(for sol, sun) originated. Fig. 10 could also be used in teaching youngsters, though the
context from which these ship details are taken suggests that it is a record
of a naval episode. The ships' names
are given, sometimes (as in the upper example) with a helpful hieroglyph added--
the vessel is called the Serpent,
and a serpent is shown between the letters that spell the word. Fig. 11 shows part of an
inscription at Vanlös, Bohuslän, in which a
winding strand of Tifinag letters weaves through a series of carvings of
Bronze Age ships. The decipherment,
as given in the caption, shows that the work was intended as some kind of
charm to enable seagoing cogs to remain together, with a fair wind, and to
arrive at their destination all at the same time. Fig. 12 shows two charms
or prayer inscriptions intended to cause fish to take the hook. The upper illustration has the Tifinag
letters laid out in a vertical column; it is a rebus simulating a fishing
line with a hook at the lower end.
Analogous inscriptions in Irish (noted as Celtic) dialects commonly
form rebus arrangements of ogam letters, so we must conclude that texts of
this type were part of the whole Norsemen culture during the Bronze Age and
were by no means confined to Scandinavia. Figs. 13, 14, 15 & 16 illustrate a portion of a series of petroglyphs that
occur on one rock face at Fossum, Bohuslän, all depicting various aspects of
the events that occurred during the celebration of the Thorri festival, held
during January and February. Fig. 13 shows the symbol
of the festival, a sign made up of reduplicated letters of the name Thorri,
resembling a thunderbolt symbol.
There follows a scene in which the trumpeters, the lur-blowers, hold
these curved instruments to their mouths, and an appropriate text tells us
that this began the day's ceremonies.
Below, in Fig. 13 we see a scene
from what appears to be a hockey game appropriately labeled "ball
game." Dueling with maces is the
subject of Fig.
14, the competitors each wearing a sword, all as usual in
this period displaying their phalluses.
Fig.
15 shows petroglyphs of sorcerers performing feats of
juggling, the balls that they throw into the air being the letters of the
inscription itself. Fig. 16 depicts hunting
with the bow and arrow and an archery contest held in connection with the
Thorri festival. Notable in these
texts is the use of ship symbols to provide punning words that suggest the
actual word intended by the consonants or even that replace spelled-out
words. The captions to these figures
explain the points of interest. With these introductory examples, it
is now appropriate to leave the Swedish scene, where our readers have perhaps
some questions to pose to the archaeologists of Stockholm. As for us here in the Americas, we too
have matters to settle with our own archaeologists. But the epigraphers, who study
ancient inscriptions, have some explaining to do. How is it that a Berber alphabet can occur in Scandinavian
Bronze Age contexts? Why does an
Irish (noted as Celtic) script also occur there? Why do both scripts (and may others) occur as rock-cut
inscriptions in the Americas? These
are matters that have been the topic of Fell’s earlier books and research
papers. A few brief answers may be
inserted here, for readers new to the subject. In regard to ogam, it is easy to
demonstrate the untruth of the claim mentioned above that it is a local London
invention dating only from the fourth century AD. If those who make this claim (British archaeologists) should
take the time to visit the numismatic department of the British Museum they
would see examples of the silver coinage of the Aquitanian Gauls, struck in
the second century BC and lettered in ogam consaine. They would also see Iberian and Basque
imitations of these, lettered in ogam.
If they should look at the artifacts excavated from the Windmill Hill
site occupied around 2000 BC by the builders of Stonehenge, they would see
ogam consaine engraved on these, too. As regards the Tifinag alphabet of
the Berbers, ..... Fell’s thesis was that Tifinag is in fact an Ancient Norse script, and that
it was taken to North Africa, probably in the twelfth century BC, when the
pharaoh Ramesses III repelled an attack by Sea Peoples (who appear (in
his bas-reliefs) to be Norsemen (See Nyland’s account). The invaders took refuge in Libya, and it
is suspected that the Old Norse <= Saharan?> runes went with them, and survived as the
Tifinag. During Fell’s work in North
Africa he met Berbers who had no tradition of the origin but who were
obviously Europoid, with fair hair, blue, gray, or hazel eyes, and typical
European features. And as for how European skippers
could have reached the Americas in the early Bronze Age, their own spokesman,
King Woden-lithi himself, may be left to handle that question. he does so in the words he had
inscribed on limestone in Canada
3,500 years ago, during the five months he spent in Ontario. And so for why Europe chose to forget
about America, that is a matter primarily for European historians to explain,
but it should be pointed out that the earth's climate became colder at the
end of the Bronze Age, when the north polar icecap came into being [See Climate]. Sailing
westward by the northern route became hazardous until the amelioration of
climate that took place just before the onset of the Viking period. Perhaps, when the study of rock
inscriptions in Scandinavia is pursued more widely, new evidence may be
discovered that could help to fill in some of the missing pieces of the
record of humans upon the high seas.
The increasing frigidity of the North Atlantic as the warm Bronze Age
ended would not have been the only factor that might have tended to
discourage transatlantic trading. There were also changes occurring in
the pattern of commerce in Europe, as the Bronze Age advanced, and these,
combined with gradual exhaustion of available upper-level deposits of
metallic copper in Canada, probably turned the attention of Scandinavian
skippers more to the south and less to the remote lands across the Atlantic. By 1200 BC, when the Scandinavian
Bronze Age was reaching its peak, traders from the Carthaginian
settlements in Spain and Tunisia were reaching the Baltic lands. They brought with them another alphabet,
the Iberian, itself a development of the Phoenician way of writing. .Scandinavian inscriptions now assumed the
character of commercial documents, engraved on small pieces of bone, written
in the Iberian script, and recording business transactions. It was probably at this epoch that
Scandinavian leaders decided that the time had come to discard the old
Tifinag letters of King Woden-lithi's day and to modernize their business
records by adopting the new Iberian script.
So only, the religious inscriptions preserved the Tifinag in the
northern lands. On the southern
shores of the Mediterranean, roving Norsemen raiders also preserved their
Tifinag, which ultimately became the inheritance of the Berber peoples. The alphabet may not have been the
only bequest these Norsemen made to their successors who settled in the Atlas
Mountains. When Fell was working in
Libya he noticed among Berbers some words still in use that had familiar Norse sound, made
even more recognizable now that we can see how King Woden-lithi would have
written these same words." (see Table I for examples). On the basis of evidence gained from
translations of Ogam script in North America, Fell (1982) proposed the following
hypothesis: "Some seventeen
centuries before the time of Christ a Norseman king named Woden-lithi sailed
across the Atlantic and entered the St. Lawrence River. He reached the neighborhood of where
Toronto now stands, and established a trading colony with a religious and
commercial center at the place that is now known as Petroglyphs
Park, at Peterborough. His
homeland was Norway, his capital at Ringerike, west of the head of Oslo
Fjord. He remained in Canada for five
months, from April to September, trading his cargo of woven material for
copper ingots obtained from the local Algonquians (whom he called Wal, a word cognate
with Wales and Welsh and meaning "foreigners."). He left behind an inscription that records
his visits, his religious beliefs, a standard of measures for cloth and
cordage, and an astronomical observatory for determining the Norsemen
calendar year, which began in march, and for determining the dates of the
Yule and pagan Easter festivals.
having provided his colonists with these essentials, he sailed back to
Scandinavia and thereafter disappears into the limbo of unwritten Bronze Age
history. The king's inscription gives
his Scandinavian title only and makes no claim to the discovery of the
Americas nor to conquest of territory.
Clearly, he was not the first visitor to the Americas from Europe, for
he found that the Ojibwa Algonquians were already
acquainted with the ancient Basque syllabary. When Woden-lithi set sail for home, an Ojibwa scribe cut a
short comment into the rock at the site, using the ancient Basque script and
a form of Algonquian still comprehensible today, despite the lapse of time
(See Nyland’s account) Fell (1982) then continued with
evidence supporting such sweeping claims.
He suggested, "The primary physical evidence comprises a series
of inscriptions cut in the Tifinag and ogam consaine alphabets, using an
early form of the Norse tongue, scattered around the outer margins of the
petroglyph site at Peterborough [Ontario, Canada] (Fig. 18 & Fig 19). Except for the central sun god and
moon-goddess figures and certain astronomical axes cut across the site, the
numerous inscriptions are the work of later Algonquian artists, who used King
Woden-lithi's inscription as a model for their own, more conspicuous,
carvings. The site has been since
1972 under official government protection, and instructions for reaching it
are given by the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources in various guide
booklets and pamphlets available to the general public. Readers of this book will find most
helpful the ministry's book Petroglyphs
Provincial Park, Master Plan; also valuable for its treatment of the
Algonquian art at the site is the work by Joan M. and Romas K. Vastokas entitled Sacred
Art of the Algonkians (Mansard Press, 1973). The latter work is meticulous in the accurate portrayal of the
inscriptions, in their present eroded state, though the authors did not then
recognize the inscribed alphabets or record them as such. The important fact is that professional
anthropologists such as the Vastokas team found and recorded the inscriptions
and reported that they must date back to a period before the historical
occupation of the region by the Hurons and later by Iroquois. In other
words, the inscriptions could not be modern features, and must date back to
the era of Algonquian occupation, which came to an en some five centuries
ago. Joan and Romas Vastokas recognized apparent
Scandinavian and Bronze Age features in the art style. They pointed out that the ships depicted
in the inscription are shown in the European manner, with animal figure heads
and stern tailpieces, features totally unknown to Algonquian, or indeed in
any American Indian, art. They, and
other archaeologists, noticed the strange similarities of the central sun-god
figure. and associated motifs to corresponding solar deities of Europe,
especially the Bronze Age petroglyphs of Scandinavia. Other characteristic Scandinavian features
that their photographs and drawings record are such elements of Norsemen
mythology as the maiming of the god of war by the Fenrir wolf....., the
conspicuous short-handled hammer, Mjolnir, of Thunor (Thor of the Norsemen),
and Gungnir, the spear of Woden....., both of which were imitated many times
over by the Algonquian artists who later occupied the site. Thus, the purely objective reports made by
the Vastokases who sought only to record what they discovered, without
attaching any interpretation other than that appropriate for Algonquian art,
have an added value and importance for us now, for they observed the material
as it was uncovered from the soil and placed it on permanent record in their
photographs, charts, and descriptions.
As a result of the initial discoveries, the whole site was set aside
as a public part and protected by an enclosure. Thus, the primary evidence still
exists and is open for public inspection under circumstances that prevent the
possible vandalization of the site.
The only disturbing feature is that, since the inscriptions were
exposed to the air, after removal of the covering soil that had protected
them, the action of frost and acid rain has caused a
gradual deterioration of the surface of the
limestone. Unless steps are taken to
impregnate the bedrock with a stabilizer, such as silicone, the precious
record may soon melt away into unreadable markings, as part indeed already
had before the site had been found. The actual discovery should be noted
here. It occurred on May 12, 1954,
and was made by three geologists, Ernest Craig, Charles Phipps, and Everitt Davis,
in the course of fieldwork on mining claims.
The following day, "Nick" Nickels, a photographer-journalist
of the Peterborough Examiner,
visited the site, and so began the first modern records of it. Paul Sweetman of
the University of Toronto undertook the first research at the site in July
1954, recording nearly a hundred petroglyphs. Sweetman's report indicated a possible age as great as 3,500
years or as young as 400 years. His
upper limit, 3,500 years, is in agreement with the epigraphic evidence as
given in this book. Tens of thousands
of visitors now come to the site each year, using the access road and other
facilities that have been erected for their benefit. it has become a major center of
archaeological interest for the whole of North America, and all Americans are
grateful to the Canadian authorities for having seen to it that the ancient
petroglyphs are protected yet open to all visitors. The Vastokases, like most
archaeologists in North America, felt obliged to explain all American
petroglyphs as being the work of native Amerindian artists. Despite their, and others' perception of
the similarities to Scandinavian petro9glyphs of the Bronze Age, the idea
that any connection might have existed between North America and Scandinavia
in the Bronze Age, some 3,500 years ago, seemed preposterous. So they were faced with remarkable
parallels, yet they elected to explain them as no more than chance
similarities brought about by a shamanistic view of the sky as a kind of sea
on which the sun and the moon sailed their ships to cross the heavens each
day. In treating the inscriptions in this way,
they were following the example of other distinguished anthropologists and
archaeologists who had investigated North American petroglyphs. The leading researcher during the last
several decades had been Professor Robert Heizer of
the University of California. He was
vehement in his rejection of all theories that America had been visited in
pre-Columbian times by voyagers from Europe, Africa, or elsewhere, and he
chose to view all American petroglyphs as the products of Amerindians. He did take account of age-determination
techniques, such as those dependent on carbon-dating of materials found in
caves where petroglyphs occur and the evidence provided by the oxidation of
rocks, especially in dry climates such as eastern California, Nevada, and
Arizona. These methods enabled Heizer
to set dates of up to five thousand years ago for some petroglyphs. As for me, at the time when the Ontario
petroglyphs were discovered, Fell had just completed a comprehensive
Scandinavian journey and had visited many of the famous inscriptions of
Sweden and Denmark, though he was still a long way from recognizing the
Tifinag alphabet at any Bronze Age petroglyph site beyond the shores of North
Africa. Fell’s subsequent work on Tifinag led
to the gradual decipherment of the ancient language of Libya and, after
various Libyan scholars visited me at Harvard, Fell was invited to lecture on
the Tifinag inscriptions at the universities of Tripoli and Benghazi. Just before leaving for North Africa in
1977, Fell had received from Otto Devitt the first of
what were to be a continuing series of photographs he made for me of the
petroglyphs at Peterborough. Although
he could see that the site included Tifinag letters, the words they formed
seemed to have no discernible connection with the language of ancient Libya,
and he was forced to put the slides aside while undertaking other
assignments. In the interim Fell read some of
Heizer's reports on the petroglyphs of eastern California and Nevada, and
recognized that they included Tifinag and Kufi (early Arabic). A particularly striking case is the
petroglyph in Owens Valley, California, that depicts
the entire zodiac, in the form it had before the third century BC, together
with a Kufi inscription explaining that the New Year is determined at the
time of the vernal equinox, when the sun enters the constellation of the
Ram. One of Dr. Fell’s former Harvard students, Dr. Jon Polansky,
was now doing research at Berkeley, and he made the acquaintance of Professor
Heizer and showed him the decipherment Fell had done on his Owens Valley
petroglyphs. Consequently Professor
Heizer invited me to visit him; this came about in May 1979. We became friends and, putting aside his
former opposition to the notion of pre-Columbian visitors, Bob Heizer now
carefully checked each element of the decipherment and confirmed that Fell
had rendered his original published diagrams correctly tin the version in
which In inserted the sound values of the Kufi signs. We planned a joint publication, but
illness prevented him from accompanying me into the desert that year. Instead, he arranged for one of his former
Berkeley students, Dr. Christopher Corson, to
take me to some of the inscription areas.
Dr. Corson, an archaeologist in the Bureau of Land Management, ahs the
best knowledge of petroglyph sites in northern California and northwest
Nevada. He led a party that included
John Williams, Jon Polansky, and me, together with Wayne and Betty Struble
and their son Peter. Bob Heizer
planned to take part in Fell’s next field trip, but to his great regret he
passed away, struck down by the illness that had already prevented his
participation in the 1979 fieldwork.
Fell was obliged to publish the Owens Valley zodiac without the
benefit of his contribution, though the illustrations of the paper had been
checked by him for accuracy and had his approval. Dr. Heizer's contribution to American
petroglyph studies had been immense, and Fell’s colleagues and he knew that a
significant point had been reached when Heizer recognized the true nature of
the Owens Valley zodiac and opened his mind to a new view of American
prehistory in which pre-Columbian visitors and colonists would now play a
role. Heizer, an archeologist and
anthropologist, filled an intermediate position between those archeologists
who devote their research to excavation of ancient sites and epigraphers,
those linguists who give their energies to the decipherment of ancient
inscriptions. By 1979, the same season in which
Heizer and Fell had begun to influence each other, the epigraphers of Europe
had already begun to analyze by work on ancient inscriptions in America, and
soon authoritative publications began to appear, giving strong support and
conformation. Professor Pennar Davies,
a leading Welsh scholar, and in America, Professor Sanford Etheridge, editor
of Gaeltacht (an Irish-language
publication), had both written in support of Fell’s finding ogam inscriptions
in America. In Spain, the leading
Basque scholar, Dr. Imanol Agiŕe, advised me
that he too confirmed Fell’s reports on Basque inscriptions in Pennsylvania,
dating from about the ninth century before Christ. In 1980 the volume he contributed to the Gran Enciclopedia Vasca (Great Basque Encyclopedia) contained
letter-by-letter analyses of Fell’s papers, and in a technical paper
published in 1982 Agíre acknowledged that his decipherment of the ancient
Basque syllabary was correct. These
and other published papers, such as those of the Swiss linguist Professor Linus Brunner, provided competent scholarly approval of
our American studies on the alphabets and syllabaries that are represented at
the site in Peterborough. Their
opinions, therefore, together with the detailed analyses that they have
published, must be taken into account when some archaeologists, both in
America and Britain, attempt to discredit the research on American
inscriptions. The claims of the
latter that epigraphers in America are deluded by forgeries, or even forge
the alleged inscriptions themselves, have to be dismissed as ignorant remarks
made without personal knowledge of the scripts or the language involved, and
generally without any knowledge of the sites at which the inscriptions occur. From the information given herein it
is obvious that the petroglyphs at Peterborough cannot be forgeries, and that
they are ancient. From the
information given previously and those that follow, it is easy for any person
who so desires to check the statements and conclusions, and as in previous
books that Fell has written. Only by
such methods can we eventually persuade Americans to realize that American
history extends far into the past, and that America and Europe interacted
through trade and cultural contact for over three thousand years before
Columbus made his first voyage. Since Fell’s first book on ancient
voyages to America, some important advances have been made to archaeological
research bearing out that topic. In
New England James P. Whittall and members of the
Early Sites Research Society have discovered and excavated a site (a disk
barrow) that was first occupied seven thousand years ago. Some of the skeletons show the
characteristics of Europeans, yet their age by carbon dating is at least
1,600 years. One of the skulls
matches closely the skulls of the ancient Irish. These facts have been determined by an anthropologist,
Professor Albert Casey, whose research has been
devoted to skull and bone characteristics of Old World peoples. His computer is programmed to recognize
Old World characteristics in New World skulls not being discovered. The tumuli of northeastern America show
great similarities to those of Europe.
The radiocarbon dates indicate similar ranges to time. The artifacts excavated from American
burial sites, sometimes in actual contact with the skeletons of their
presumed former owners, have been discovered in some cases to have
inscriptions carved upon them, in ogam and Basque script; to Dr. William P. Grigsby we owe this observation, based on
his own extensive collections of artifacts from the southeastern states. We are faced, therefore, with what
amounts to conclusive evidence that the artifacts (including written
inscriptions) of European peoples of the Bronze Age are found at American
archaeological sites, and with these artifacts skeletons are occasionally
found that conform to Europoid criteria.
The recognition and confirmation of the inscriptions are due to
epigraphers who have published their findings and who, in most cases, teach
courses in linguistics or epigraphy at reputable universities. Thus, whether or not we can comprehend the
sailing techniques of Bronze Age peoples, the fact seems inescapable that
Bronze Age Europeans reached North America.
Fell’s personal view was that the mild climate of the Bronze Age
permitted navigation to take advantage of the westward-flowing currents and
westward-blowing winds of the polar regions, and thus made the natural
northern route to North America much easier to use than is the case today,
when polar ice intrudes and savage weather occurs [See Climate]. Fell had sailed
that route and appreciated its discomforts.
They would have been much less severe in the Bronze Age, while the
attraction of North America for Scandinavian skippers would have been much
enhanced by the availability of copper in metallic form, at a time when
Europe was demanding copper for bronze alloys on a
larger scale than ever before or since...... Salient aspects of the Bronze Age are
now described by Fell. "In
northern Europe bronze weapons and implements first began to replace the
stone artifacts of the Neolithic inhabitants when trade routes to the Mediterranean
lands permitted imports from the south.
The change from stone and malleable copper to the more durable and
more valuable bronze equipment is dated to about 2000 BC." At this time, which marks the opening
of the Bronze Age, the most numerous and conspicuous man-made features of the
landscape were the massive drystone monuments that had been erected during
the last phases of the Neolithic, from about 2200 BC onward. These great monuments, called megaliths (from Greek roots meaning huge stones) have remained an
impressive feature of the European landscape ever since, and today tens of
thousands of tourists visit the megalithic sites every year, to gaze with
wonder at these mysterious works of our ancestors. When the English
Pilgrims began to settle northeastern North America in the early 1600s
they found that the forests and open hillsides carried similar ancient stone
monuments. Governor John Winthrop (the Younger) of Connecticut had become
during his student years one of the first Fellows of the infant Royal
Society, and after his arrival in America was regarded by the colonists as a
fount of information on all matters to do with natural history and
antiquities. hew wrote papers for the
early volumes of the Philosophical
Transactions (published by the Royal Society in London) and thus drew
attention to the salient features of scientific interest in his new world
across the Atlantic. Among his papers
is found evidence of inquiries from settlers as to what could be the meaning
of the strange stone "forts" they were encountering. it was noted that the Algonquian Indians
did not use stone in their constructions (save for some rare instances), and
the Indians themselves shunned the stone chambers and could throw no light on
their origins. Toward the close of the nineteenth
century the opinions of a few influential archaeologists in North America
were that no European had set foot in America until the time of
Columbus. Since such opinions
precluded any possibility that the stone monuments of new England might be
related to the megalithic monuments of Europe, the entire subject fell out of
favor. Americans were sent to Europe
to study Stone Age and Bronze Age archaeology, and few, if any, though to pay
attention to the problems raised by the New England megaliths. So deeply ingrained is this view of the
age long isolation of America that when in 1976 Fell published his reasoned
thoughts on the parallels between American and European archaeological sites,
his book America BC was dismissed
by most archaeologists as ignorant rubbish.
In reality, much of Fell’s reasoning was based on a careful comparison
of engraved inscriptions found on the associated stonework, both in European
sites (especially Portugal and Spain) and in American contests. Fell recorded, for example, well-known
Iberian scripts of the late Bronze Age, found on hundreds of rocks in
Pennsylvania, and his decipherments, utilizing Professor David Diringer's
tales in The Alphabet (Hutchinson,
1968). Such works as Resurrección
María de Azukue's Diccionario
Vasco-Español-Frances (Bilbao, 1969) enabled me to recognize and report
Basque gravestones and boundary marker stones, apparently dating from about
the era of 900 BC. European epigraphers and linguists,
such as the foremost Basque scholars, carried out detailed checks on Fell’s
findings, confirmed most of them, and, as already noted, in the latest volume
of the Gran Enciclopedia Vasca [a
discussion is] now given over to matters raised by these American Basque
inscriptions, and the analysis by Imanol Agiŕe in his Vinculos de la Lengua Vasca gives a
virtual total confirmation of his findings:
the inscriptions, in Agíre's opinion, do date from about 900 BC, and
they do carry Basque phrases in the appropriate Iberian alphabets of that
period. These findings have been the
object of much discussion by archaeologists.
For a current summary of the subject, reference may be made to the Occasional Publications of the
Epigraphic Society, Volume 9 (1981), where some fifty opinions, pro and con,
are set out. In general, it can be
said in summary that linguists and epigraphers agree that the American
inscriptions are genuine and ancient, and that many of them relate to the
Bronze Age. Since linguists and eipgraphers
concur that the American inscriptions do include genuine products of Bronze
Age scribes, and that the scripts and languages used show that the scribes
came from European and North African lands, there is no longer any basis for
doubting that the monuments of North America that resemble megaliths are
indeed just that--megaliths. By this
it should be understood monuments produced by colonists from Europe in Bronze
Age times. Now, a popular book is not the proper
place to review the tedious details of various scripts and various languages
employed and inscribed by these visitors, who came from so many different
lands. Besides, Fell already wrote
about these matters in America BC and
Saga America, as well as in around
a hundred or so technical papers. The
most entertaining and attractive entrance to the subject is through visiting
some of the sites where American megalithic monuments can be seen, and also
through visiting the corresponding sites in Europe where, of course, there is
no dispute at all as to the authorship or antiquity of megaliths. Visual presentation rather than written descriptions form
the best introduction to the monuments, and in the atlas of photographs that
are presented here. European and American
examples of each of the major categories of megaliths are arranged in
comparable groups of similar structures. Radiocarbon and amino-acid dating has
only recently been applied to the determination of dates of American
megaliths [as of 1982 here], but analogous features suggesting early European
penetration into North America include the low circular burial mounds that
are called disk
barrows. Already noted
previously the investigation of one of these, presently under way in New
England by James Whittall. it has so
far been learned that Whittall's site was under continuous occupation, at
least for ceremonial purposes, from about 5000 BC (amino-acid date 7200
Before Present), until about 500 BC.
Over that span of time a number of burials occurred and, as noted....
these include a Europoid skeleton. Associated stone artifacts resemble tools
of the era called Archaic in
America (8000 to 500 BC), corresponding to the entire span of the Neolithic
and Bronze Age in Europe. Sometime
before, AD 900,m stonework structure was added around the margins of the
barrow. These findings by Whittall
point strongly to European arrivals in North America long before Bronze Age
times. Other radiocarbon dates show that
some of the megalithic chambers in New England are of later date, one in
Vermont, for example, yielding charcoal from the foundation layer that gave a
carbon date of about AD 200. As for those megalithic monuments
that contain no artifacts or charcoal, dates can only be guessed at from
indirect evidence. The guesses made
in that way suggest that most of them were probably built during Bronze Age
and Iron Age times, as indeed many of the European megaliths can be shown to
postdate the Neolithic period also.
So massive and enduring are megaliths that, whenever they were built,
the affected the living space of later peoples, and certainly Bronze Age
Europeans utilized the Neolithic megaliths. ........" ”.....further
comments will be restricted to the actual megalithic monuments, merely noting
here that the disk barrow, with its contained female skeletons lying in
flexed positions, is regarded in Europe as a feature of the early Bronze Age
and that therefore it is relevant to note here that similar features occur in
New England in districts where megalithic monuments occur. Fell’s own opinion, of course, remained
unaltered; it is that the megalithic monuments of northeastern North America
were used during the Bronze Age and therefore may have been constructed
either shortly before or during the Bronze Age. The term dolmen is a Breton word meaning a stone table. it aptly describes many of the smaller
examples of the megalithic monuments that go under this name. Such smaller examples, a meter or less in
height are shown in Figs. 25, 26, 27, 28., 29. & 30. As can be seen,
they comprise an upper, horizontal slab of stone, the capstone, which is supported on several vertical slabs, like a
table, with an internal cavity.
European archaeologists believe that the central cavity originally
contained a burial and that the entire structure was originally buried in
earth that has subsequently disappeared through erosion. it is known that some examples had partial
earth cover still intact a century or so ago. Such bared burial chambers are often distinguished from other
dolmens under the name cromlech. Of the examples shown, Figs. 25 & 26 are European, Fig. 25 from Carrazeda,
Portugal, and Fig. 26 from the Orkney Islands. The remaining four examples are all
American. Fig. 27 shows an example at Gay Head, on the island of Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts; a faintly visible
ogam inscription occurs on one of the stones at the entrance to the small
chamber within.... The others, Fig 28., Fig 29. & Fig. 30, are all located
at Westport, Massachusetts. Similar ones occur in the Boston area. Nothing is known of any former burial
relics in these small cromlechs."
[Please see review of structures in <Megaliths>] Very much large examples, with
massive capstones and relatively shorter vertical supports, form conspicuous
dolmens. These seem unlikely to have
been covered by earth at any stage. A collapsed dolmen was found in
Vermont. The finder, John Williams,
also found a remarkable sculpted ax and halberd that are cut into one end of
the squared capstone (detail in Fig. 31). "A similar
occurrence has been reported from an early Bronze Age burial cairn at Nether
Largie North, in Scotland, ax heads being engraved on one end of the capstone
and a halberd with streamers on another upright stone of the same burial
cist. it is difficult to conceive of
any Amerindian carving such devices and, as stated, the Algonquians of the
New England region have no knowledge of the authors of these stone monuments. The example from Scotland cited above
postdates the Neolithic period, to which megaliths are customarily assigned,
and suggests that dolmens are not restricted to a single period. Still more striking evidence is seen in
examples from France..... The
elaborately carved Tuscan columns that serve as the supports for the massive
capstone indicate that this dolmen cannot antedate the Roman era. Also, dated Roman coins have been found
under dolmens in France, and other evidence proves that they served as sites
for some kind of ceremony even as late as the Middle Ages, when the church
authorities regarded such assemblies s the practice of witchcraft. By analogy, then, there are no grounds for
insisting that dolmens are restricted to the archaeology of the Neolithic
period, as do some British authorities. The largest of the dolmens utilize natural
boulders, sometimes weighing up to 90 tons, supported precariously, so it
would seem, on the underlying peg stones, yet their duration through 4,000
years shows their builders to have had a fine sense of stable construction. An example is depicted in Fig.
33, from Ireland, and another in Trelleborg, Sweden, is shown in Fig. 34. Corresponding examples from North America
are illustrated in Fig. 32, Fig. 35, Fig. 36 & Fig. 38. , Fig. 35 shows the dolmen
at Lynn, Massachusetts, locally known as the Cannon Stone. Fig. 32 is an example
from near Lake Lujenda, northern Minnesota,
discovered recently by David Harvey, and the first to
be reported from that state. The
other examples are from Bartlett, New Hampshire (Fig. 36), and North
Salem, New York (Fig. 38). It difficult to distinguish the North
American examples from the European ones and believe that both sets were
produced by ancient builders who shared a common culture. When the evidence of inscriptions is taken
into account, ..... the relationship of the American examples to those of
northern Europe becomes undeniable. A second category of megaliths is supplied by the
underground stone chambers, and on some of these, too, the American ones
included, inscriptions are found that use European scripts appropriate to the
Bronze Age, as well as later graffiti, which have no bearing on the date of
construction. They fall in several
categories, according to the mode of construction. Some are in the form of rectangular chambers, up to twenty feet
in length by ten feet in width, often with the long axis pointed toward the
sunrise direction for either the equinoxes or for one of the solstices. One at Danbury,
Connecticut, carries engraved on a fallen lintel stone the ancient symbol of
the equinox, a circle divided into equal halves, one half deeply engraved to
represent night, the other left clearly visible; this chamber, as John
Williams and his colleagues proved, faces the sunrise on the equinox days:
that is, it is oriented due east and points to a notch on the horizon within
which the sun appears on the days of the vernal and autumnal equinox. The mode of construction follows patterns appropriate to the type of stone naturally available. Where large slabs can be obtained, these are used as capstones to form the roofing, as in the Danish chambers called Jaettestuer ("giants, salons") Fig. 39 shows an example at Aarhus, Denmark. North American examples include a large chamber at South Woodstock, Vermont (Fig. 40). The entrances commonly have a massive lintel stone supported on either two vertical slabs (called orthostats), as [one found at Mystery Hill, North Salem, New Hampshire] or on a drystone vertical column of slabs on either side (Fig. 41, Mystery Hill). Alternatively, the construction may utilize natural features of the environment, as at Concord, Massachusetts (Fig. 42 |
