Page Content (OCR)
More substantial evidence has been found in the form of ruins of a Viking longhouse on the Ungava Peninsula in northern Canada. A team from Laval University has dated it between the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Numerous other ruins and artifacts have been found all over North America. For example, two remarkably similar axes, both apparently of medieval European origin, have been discovered in Beardmore, Ontario, and Rocky Nook Point, Mass- achusetts. Archaeologists from the Smithsonian Institution uncovered a small slab of stone covered with ciphers in 1SS5 near Bat Creek, Tennessee. They decided it was probably the work of Cherokee Indians, but modern specialists such as Dr Joseph B. Mahan of the Museum of Arts and Crafts at Columbus, Georgia, have taken a second look at it and disputed the old Indian theory. Dr Mahan knows Cherokee and he persuaded the Smithsonian to re-examine the Bat Creek stone. You simply can't ignore evidence,’ Dr Mahan stated, "just because it doesn't fit current theory." A similar stone was found by Manfred Metcalf at Fort Benning, Georgia, in 1968. Metcalf was looking for stones to build a barbecue griU in his backyard when he unearthed the stone. It is nine inches square and covered with triangles, circles, and straight and wavy lines. He passed it on to Dr Mahan, who thought the markings appeared to be characteristically Mediterranean. Another scientist, Dr Cyrus H. Gordon, chairman of Mediterranean studies at Brandeis University, agreed. There were strong similarities between the Met-calf stone and sampled of Minoan writing dating back three thousand years to the Bronze Age civilization which flourished on the Mediterranean island of Crete from 3000 to 1100 B.c. Dr Gordon became the centre of another controversy a few years ago when he announced that a sample of Phoenician writing found on a stone in Brazil was authentic... after other archaeologists had denounced it as a fraud. After all, it was hardly possible that the ancient Phoenicians could have visited Brazil. Or was it? As for the Bat Creek stone, Dr Gordon thinks it might have been the handiwork of Hebrews from Palestine during the Bronze Age. Both scientists speculate that ancient Semitic tribes from the Middle East may have visited North America thousands of years ago. This, of course, revives memories of the lost tribes of Israel. Could they have somehow found their way to this continent: and become that-lost American culture described in the Mormon Bible? Dr Mali an believes that some Indian tribes can be traced back to seafaring Mediterranean peoples. The Yuchi, he points out, are racially and linguistically different from other North American tribes. Their legends state, 'We came as the sun came, and we went as the sun went.* Dr Mahan interprets this to mean that the YucM came from the east, across the Atlantic Ocean, and then moved northwards Some archaeologists tend to lump runestones together with the stones bearing Indian petroglyphs. Petroglyphs are designs carved into rocks as pathmarkers, and thousands have been found all over the Americas. Although innumerable isolated Indian tribes were obviously responsible for them, there are many interesting similarities in the symbols used. Some of these same symbols have been found carved on other ancient rocks in other parts of the world, * See Frederick Pohl, The VMng Explorers. from Florida to Georgia.