Newark Holy Stones

Last updated March 15, 2024

The Newark Holy Stones refer to a set of artifacts allegedly discovered by David Wyrick in 1860 within a cluster of ancient Indian burial mounds near Newark, Ohio, now believed to be a hoax. The set consists of the Keystone, a stone bowl, and the Decalogue with its sandstone box. They can be viewed at the Johnson-Humrickhouse Museum in Coshocton, Ohio.^[1]^[2] The site where the objects were found is known as the Newark Earthworks, one of the biggest collections from an ancient American Indian culture known as the Hopewell that existed from approximately 100 BC to AD 500.^[3]

The Johnson-Humrickhouse Museum originally presented these artifacts neutrally, but has reorganised its exhibit changing the way it interprets them after the Center for the Future of Museums wrote in a report that "'Trust, Truth, and Fake News' as among the most important issues facing museums in the coming years" and David Fleming director of the National Museums Liverpool wrote that "no museum is actually 'neutral,' ever." The museum's director and a former collection manager for the museum stated that it would be wrong to "be neutral with regard to the Holy Stones because what we say and even what we do not say has social and political consequences" and that "The Holy Stones are a prism through which we can gain a clearer view of Ohio in 1860 CE, not 100 CE. Yet they also shed a bright light on ongoing efforts to rob American Indians of their rightful heritage and the modern legacy of the nineteenth-century science that sought to deny African Americans their most basic human rights." The display now allows visitors to see the exhibits from all four sides, includes an iPad kiosk with close-up photos, Google Earth geolocations, and "basic facts surrounding the discovery of the stones, and their connection to the other exhibitions in the same gallery, which covers socio-economic changes in the United States, specifically in Ohio, during the late nineteenth century."^[4]^[5]

Discovery

The first of these artifacts, popularly known as the Keystone due to its shape, was excavated in June 1860. Unlike other ancient artifacts found previously in this region, the Keystone was inscribed with Hebrew. It contains one phrase on each side:

Holy of Holies
King of the Earth
The Law of God
The Word of God

The second find came later in November 1860 when Wyrick and his excavation team came across a sandstone box that contained a small, black rock within it.^[6] The black rock was identified as limestone by geologists Dave Hawkins and Ken Bork of Denison University.^[7] On this stone was carved Hebrew text that was translated as a condensed version of the Ten Commandments. The name Decalogue Stone comes from the translation of the Hebrew letters that outline the religious and moral codes described in Exodus 20:2-17 and Deuteronomy 5:6-21, which refer to the Decalogue or Ten Commandments. The inscription begins on the front at the top of an arch above the figure of a bearded man who is wearing a turban and robe, and appears to be holding a tablet. It runs down the left side, continues around all sides, and makes its way back to the front up the right side to where it began. This pattern indicates that the inscription was meant to be read repetitively. Right above the figure of the man is a separate inscription which translates to "Moses". This rock was carved with a unique form of Hebrew, which gave the appearance of ancient post-Exilic square Hebrew letters that later was shown to be derived from the modern Hebrew alphabet.^[7] Additional photos of the front and back can be found in an article published in the Epigraphic Society of Occasional Papers ^[8]

Radiocarbon date of wooden platform

In 2014, Bradley Lepper of the Ohio History Connection discovered that a fragment of the wooden burial platform underneath which the Decalogue Stone was found had been preserved at Yale's Peabody Museum of Natural History. This sample yielded a calibrated radiocarbon date range of CAL AD 85 to CAL AD 135 (95% probability). Since the platform had been made from an approximately 2-foot (0.61 m) diameter oak tree, the burial itself could have been several decades later than this tree growth. These dates are consistent with the Hopewell culture that would have constructed the mound.^[9]^[10]

Historical context

The Newark Holy Stones are an archaeological fraud used to support the "Lost Tribes" theory, which posits an ancient Israelite presence in Ohio.^[11] The idea that there is a connection between the ancient Hopewell mound builders and Jewish settlers that were in the Americas before Columbus is a form of pseudoarchaeology.

The first stone to be found was written in modern Hebrew. In July 1860 Abraham Geiger wrote in the New York Times that "the bungling work of an unskilled stone mason and the strangeness of some letters as well as the many mistakes and transpositions was his fault. The letters are not antique. This is not a relic of hoary antiquity".^[12]

Just over three months later, the second stone was found. This was not only considerably more elaborate, it was written in archaic Hebrew. Ken Feder compares this with someone today announcing that they had discovered a hitherto unknown play by Shakespeare which was then exposed as a modern forgery, then shortly thereafter announcing the discovery of a more plausible new play.^[13]

It is possible that the stones were forged to support a political viewpoint. Brad Lepper, of the Ohio Historical Society who has extensively studied the Hopewell culture, suggests that the artifacts might have been scientifically forged to help advance the theory on monogenism.^[14] In 1860, slavery was a subject of heated debate that was reaching a critical point in American society. Anthropology and other forms of science were often used in defense or opposition.^{[ citation needed ]} Discussions promoting monogenism, for example, were often used to oppose slavery and segregation.^{[ citation needed ]}

Evidence they are fraudulent

David Wyrick

One of the arguments that they are fraudulent is that Wyrick faked the artifacts and planted them at the excavation sites. Prior to his discovery, Wyrick supported the belief that the Lost Tribes of Israel were the ancestors of ancient mound builders in Ohio. Wyrick spent a great deal of time searching a number of excavation sites at various mounds attempting to find supporting evidence of this belief.

In 1861, Wyrick published a pamphlet that described his account of the artifact discoveries. The publishing included woodcuts of the inscriptions found on the stones. When comparing Wyrick's woodcuts of the Decalogue to the actual inscription found on the stone, Wyrick made at least 38 errors involving 256 Hebrew letters. Mistakes include illegible and omitted letters. Wyrick's depiction of Moses on the woodcuts had inconsistencies as well. Wyrick shows Moses wearing a beret instead of a turban. He also shows Moses in a 19th-century dress instead of the flowering robe shown on the stone.

Some believe that the person or group responsible for the inscription had to have an extensive knowledge of the Hebrew language. Given that Wyrick made a large number of mistakes on the woodcuts seem to indicate that he may not have been the stone's author. Beverley H. Moseley, Jr., former art director of the Ohio Historical Society, compared the carving of Moses on the stone to Wyrick's woodcut copy. He concluded that both images could not have been made by the same person. After Wyrick's death, Colonel Charles Whittlesey published a paper^[15] in 1872 in which he recalls discovering a Hebrew Bible among Wyrick's personal items. Whittlesey concludes at the time that the stones were a hoax, and assumed that the Bible was Wyrick's source of inspiration for the inscription. This theory was later discredited after it was determined that the letters used on the Decalogue did not represent a style that would have been consistent with the theory.^[16]

The Hebrew version used in the inscriptions is another point of contention. The version used was post-Exilic, which would not be from a "Lost" Tribe. Some believe this is another example that shows the artifacts were either a hoax or did not date back to the time of the mound builders. Wyrick also made a claim in a letter he wrote to Joseph Henry in 1863—one year before his death—that he might have been a victim of a hoax.

Rev. John W. McCarty and stonecutter Elijah Sutton

Rev. John W. McCarty and Elijah Sutton were both residents of Newark when the Decalogue Stone and the Keystone were found. Elijah Sutton was a stonecutter with no other direct link to the event other than his part in carving Wyrick's headstone when he died. However, it is asserted that because the Decalogue Stone is made from similar materials and is of the same width (thickness) as his headstones, he must have cut the stone. As for Rev. John W. McCarty, he played a more direct role in the artifact's discovery.

It was with the help of McCarty that the stone was translated. Upon receiving the stone McCarty was able to translate it within hours. However, "A few days later, McCarty published a second article, correcting some errors he had made his initial interpretation. In his first attempt, for example, he read the letters over the head of the carved figure as Mem-Shin-Heth, or Meshiach (Messiah), and concluded, as a good Episcopalian minister, that the figure was intended to represent Jesus Christ. In his second version, he read these letters correctly as Mem-Shin-He, or Moshe, and conceded that the figure in fact represented Moses. If he had composed the text himself, he would surely have gotten the translation right on his first try, particularly on such an important (and, in retrospect, obvious) point."^[17]

Source for the design

Archaeologist Brad Lepper believes that the inspiration for the Decalogue stone was Austen Henry Layard's book Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon. Layard's work had become a sensation at the time and McCarty had access to it and given his profession would have taken an interest in it. Lepper writes that a stone carving on a temple entrance "looked very familiar. In fact, it duplicated, in great detail, the form of the Decalogue Stone. Compare the images for yourself. Both have a tombstone-shaped frame with a bearded man shown in left profile and the left arm of both men is bent. Both men are wearing long gowns and have some sort of domed head-covering. Finally, there is an inscription arcing over the heads of both men."^[18]

Scholarly debate on the authenticity of the stones has continued for decades.^[19] Epigrapher Rochelle I. Altman believes that "The evidence is quite clear: the artifacts were indeed stolen from a European settler, as Fischel surmised, and deposited at these sites earlier in the nineteenth century."

Related discoveries

There were other stones found at the Newark site, like the Keystone. Two other stones were also found at Newark shortly after Wyrick's death (they have since been lost). These stones were quickly dismissed as fakes when the local dentist, John H. Nicol, claimed that he had carved and introduced the stones to the site.^[17]

A fifth stone was allegedly found at the same site as the Decalogue stone two years later by David M. Johnson, a banker, and Nathaniel Roe Bradner, a physician. Named the Johnson-Bradner Stone, it has since been lost. A lithograph of the stone, published in France, still survives. The letters on the lid and base of the Johnson-Bradner stone are in the same peculiar alphabet as the Decalogue inscription, and appear to wrap around in the same manner as on the Decalogue's back platform.^[17]

Additionally, a teacup sized bowl made from the same stone material was found nearby by one of the persons accompanying Wyrick.^[17]

Related Research Articles

An out-of-place artifact is an artifact of historical, archaeological, or paleontological interest to someone that is claimed to have been found in an unusual context, which someone claims to challenge conventional historical chronology by its presence in that context. Some people might think that those artifacts are too advanced for the technology known to have existed at the time, or that human presence existed at a time before humans are known to have existed. Other people might hypothesize about a contact between different cultures that is hard to account for with conventional historical understanding.

The Hopewell tradition, also called the Hopewell culture and Hopewellian exchange, describes a network of precontact Native American cultures that flourished in settlements along rivers in the northeastern and midwestern Eastern Woodlands from 100 BCE to 500 CE, in the Middle Woodland period. The Hopewell tradition was not a single culture or society but a widely dispersed set of populations connected by a common network of trade routes.

The Los Lunas Decalogue Stone is a hoax associated with a large boulder on the side of Hidden Mountain, near Los Lunas, New Mexico, about 35 miles (56 km) south of Albuquerque, that bears a nine-line inscription carved into a flat panel. The stone is also known as the Los Lunas Mystery Stone or Commandment Rock. The stone has gained notoriety in that some claim the inscription is Pre-Columbian, and therefore proof of early Semitic contact with the Americas. Standard archeological evidence contradicts this, however.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Archaeological forgery</span> Manufacture of supposedly ancient items

Archaeological forgery is the manufacture of supposedly ancient items that are sold to the antiquities market and may even end up in the collections of museums. It is related to art forgery.

The Great Serpent Mound is a 1,348-feet-long (411 m), three-feet-high prehistoric effigy mound located in Peebles, Ohio. It was built on what is known as the Serpent Mound crater plateau, running along the Ohio Brush Creek in Adams County, Ohio. The mound is the largest serpent effigy known in the world.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fort Ancient</span> Archaeological culture in the Ohio River valley

The Fort Ancient culture is a Native American archaeological culture that dates back to c. 1000–1750 CE. Its population lived along the Ohio River valley, in an area running from modern-day Ohio and western West Virginia through northern Kentucky and parts of southeastern Indiana. A contemporary of the neighboring Mississippian culture, Fort Ancient is considered a separate "sister culture", and mitochondrial DNA evidence collected from the area suggests that the Fort Ancient culture did not directly descend from the older Hopewell Culture.

Fort Ancient is a Native American earthworks complex located in Washington Township, Warren County, Ohio, along the eastern shore of the Little Miami River about seven miles (11 km) southeast of Lebanon on State Route 350. The site is the largest prehistoric hilltop enclosure in the United States with three and one-half miles (18,000 ft) of walls in a 100-acre (0.40 km²) complex. Built by the Hopewell culture, who lived in the area from the 200 BC to AD 400, the site is situated on a wooded bluff 270 feet (82 m) above the Little Miami. It is the namesake of a culture known as Fort Ancient who lived near the complex long after it was constructed.

Many pre-Columbian cultures in North America were collectively termed "Mound Builders", but the term has no formal meaning. It does not refer to specific people or archaeological culture but refers to the characteristic mound earthworks that indigenous peoples erected for an extended period of more than 5,000 years. The "Mound Builder" cultures span the period of roughly 3500 BCE to the 16th century CE, including the Archaic period, Woodland period, and Mississippian period. Geographically, the cultures were present in the region of the Great Lakes, the Ohio River Valley, Florida, and the Mississippi River Valley and its tributary waters.

Hopewell Culture National Historical Park is a United States national historical park with earthworks and burial mounds from the Hopewell culture, indigenous peoples who flourished from about 200 BC to 500 AD. The park is composed of four separate sites open to the public in Ross County, Ohio, including the former Mound City Group National Monument. The park includes archaeological resources of the Hopewell culture. It is administered by the United States Department of the Interior's National Park Service.

The Great Hopewell Road is thought to connect the Hopewell culture monumental earthwork centers located at Newark and Chillicothe, a distance of 60 miles (97 km) through the heart of Ohio, United States. The Newark complex was built 2,000 to 1800 years ago.

The Grave Creek Stone is a small sandstone disk inscribed on one side with some twenty-five characters, purportedly discovered in 1838 at Grave Creek Mound in Moundsville, West Virginia. If genuine, it could provide evidence of Pre-Columbian writing, but the discovery that the characters can be found in a 1752 book suggests that it is probably a fraud. While replicas have been made, the original stone has been lost. The only known image of the actual stone is a photograph of items in the E.H. Davis collection before the majority of the collection was sold to the Blackmore Museum.

The Bat Creek inscription is an inscribed stone tablet found by John W. Emmert on February 14, 1889. Emmert claimed to have found the tablet in Tipton Mound 3 during an excavation of Hopewell mounds in Loudon County, Tennessee. This excavation was part of a larger series of excavations that aimed to clarify the controversy regarding who is responsible for building the various mounds found in the Eastern United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Johnson-Humrickhouse Museum</span>

The Johnson-Humrickhouse Museum is a general interest museum within historic Roscoe Village, a restored Ohio & Erie Canal town in Coshocton, OH. It has four permanent themed exhibits within five galleries, including a Native American Gallery, Historic Ohio, Asian, and 19th and 20th Century Decorative Arts. There are more than 17,000 items in its collections.

The Oak Mounds is a large prehistoric earthwork mound, and a smaller mound to the west. They are located outside Clarksburg, in Harrison County, West Virginia. These mounds have never been totally excavated but they were probably built between 1 and 1000 CE by the Hopewell culture mound builders, prehistoric indigenous peoples of eastern North America. The larger mound is about 12 feet high and 60 feet in diameter. A number of burials of important persons of the culture probably occurred in these mounds.

Prehistory of Ohio provides an overview of the activities that occurred prior to Ohio's recorded history. The ancient hunters, Paleo-Indians, descended from humans that crossed the Bering Strait. There is evidence of Paleo-Indians in Ohio, who were hunter-gatherers that ranged widely over land to hunt large game. For instance, mastodon bones were found at the Burning Tree Mastodon site that showed that it had been butchered. Clovis points have been found that indicate interaction with other groups and hunted large game. The Paleo Crossing site and Nobles Pond site provide evidence that groups interacted with one another. The Paleo-Indian's diet included fish, small game, and nuts and berries that gathered. They lived in simple shelters made of wood and bark or hides. Canoes were created by digging out trees with granite axes.

Decalogue Stone may refer to:

Several kinds of archaeological remnants of the Jerusalem Temple exist. Those for what is customarily called Solomon's Temple are indirect and some are challenged. There is extensive physical evidence for the temple called the Second Temple that was built by returning exiles around 516 BCE and stood until its destruction by Rome in the year 70 CE. There is limited physical evidence of Solomon's Temple, although it is still widely accepted to have existed.

The Stubbs Earthworks was a massive Ohio Hopewell culture archaeological site located in Morrow in Warren County, Ohio.

Bradley Thomas Lepper is an American archaeologist best known for his work on ancient earthworks and ice age peoples in Ohio. Lepper is the Curator of Archaeology and Manager of Archaeology and Natural History at the Ohio History Connection.

References

↑ Robert Alrutz (1980). "The Newark Holy Stones: The History of an Archaeological Tragedy," Journal of the Scientific Laboratories, Denison University, 57: 1-57. Copies available from Johnson-Humrickhouse Museum
↑ "Newark Holy Stones". Johnson-Humrickhouse Museum. Archived from the original on Aug 16, 2015. Retrieved 11 July 2016.
↑ "Hopewell Culture". Ohio History Central. Retrieved 23 August 2010.
↑ Bush, Jennifer; Kocher, Reba; Lepper, Bradley T. (1 February 2022). "The Newark Holy Stones: Touchstones for The Truth". The Public Historian. 44 (1): 78–93. doi:10.1525/tph.2022.44.1.78. ISSN 0272-3433. S2CID 246499739.
↑ Lepper, Brad (17 Feb 2022). "Archaeology: Coshocton museum rethinks Newark Holy Stones exhibit". www.dispatch.com. The Columbus Dispatch.
↑ "The UnMuseum: The Decalogue Stones". The UnMuseum. Retrieved 23 August 2010.
1 2 Feder, K.L., Barnhart, T. Bolnick, D.A., and Lepper, B.T., 2016. Lessons Learned from Lost Civilizations. In Card, J.J. and Anderson, D.S. eds., Lost City, Found Pyramid: Understanding Alternative Archaeologies and Pseudoscientific Practices.University of Alabama Press, pp. 167-184.
↑ "An Annotated Description of the Ohio Decalogue Stone" (PDF).
↑ Lepper, Bradley T. (2016). "A Radiocarbon Date for a Wooden Burial Platform from the Reservoir Stone Mound (33LI20), Licking County, Ohio" (PDF). Journal of Ohio Archaeology 4:1-11. Ohio Archaeological Council.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) Retrieved 12 March 2017.
↑ Beta Analytic Inc., Radiocarbon Dating Result for Sample ANT.003744 YPM.02624, June 1, 2015.
↑ "The Newark "Holy Stones": The Social Context of an Enduring Scientific Forgery". Ohio Archaeological Council. Retrieved 17 August 2018.
↑ Lepper, Bradley T.; Kenneth L. Feder; Terry A. Barnhart; Deborah A. Bolnick (November–December 2011). "Civilizations Lost and Found: Fabricating History - Part Two: False Messages in Stone". Skeptical Inquirer. 35/6. Retrieved 11 July 2012.
↑ Kenneth L. Feder, Encyclopedia of Dubious Archaeology: From Atlantis To The Walam Olum, pages 192-193(Greenwood, 2010). ISBN 978-0-313-37919-2
↑ Hollon, Amy (20 August 2010). "Glenn Beck mention boosts Newark Earthworks". NewarkAdvocate.com. Archived from the original on August 23, 2010. Retrieved 30 August 2010.
↑ Whittlesey, Charles (1872). "Archaeological Frauds: Inscriptions Attributed to the Mound Builders. Three Remarkable Forgeries". Western Reserve Historical Society Historical & Archaeological Tract #9.
↑ Ohio History: Ohio Historical Society. Columbus, OH: Fred J. Heer. 1908. pp. 217–218.
1 2 3 4 "The Newark, Ohio Decalogue Stone and Keystone".
↑ Lepper, Brad. "A likely source for the design of the Newark Decalogue Stone". Ohio History Collection. Retrieved 15 May 2019.
↑ ""Newark" Ritual Artifacts | Bible Interp". bibleinterp.arizona.edu. Retrieved 2021-11-08.