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THE BURROWS CAVE AFRICAN GOLD IN ILLINOIS? CAVE THE BURROWS GOLD ILLINOIS? AFRICAN A cave that Russell Burrows claims to have discovered in 1982 allegedly contained inscribed gold and stone artefacts, human remains and a golden sarcophagus that has been linked to the Mauritanian king Juba II. The story of the Burrows Cave is more about human behaviour than archaeology. It is the story of an alleged cave containing the tomb of an African king who reached North America in the Ist century AD—and the subsequent controversy that the artefacts created. Dhilin On ne — Philip Coppens very discovery has its dangers. In version one of our story, Russell Burrows accidentally discovered a cave along a branch of the Little Wabash River near his home town of Olney, Illinois, USA, in 1982. Hunting for discarded archaeological relics, he found a shallow cave leading into a subterranean corridor, the likes of which you'd not expect to find in rural Illinois. The passageway was lined with oil lamps, the ceiling black from smoke. The 500-foot-long tunnel had several chambers along it—but what it contained, Burrows was unwilling to divulge. In version two, in 1982 Burrows created a hoax: claiming to have discovered a tomb, he then tried to sell faked stone artefacts of his own making, which he'd copied from various books. The so-called Burrows Cave is famous for its large numbers of inscribed stones, often containing profiles of people who look African, Egyptian and European as well as Native American. On first sight they look crude: the work of an amateur or someone meeting an imminent deadline. Furthermore, preliminary analyses of the writing on the stones revealed a mix, if not a mismatch, of various styles, words and languages that archaeologists and linguists quickly labelled as "obviously fake" ("obvious" being a preferred word that scientists use to underline what they can easily, obviously, see is fake, though amateurs are fooled by it, obviously). As early as 1983, Burrows did place a very small collection of the artefacts on sale in a local antique shop—but if he created the entire collection, it is clear he created so many that he could never have got rid of them all. Moreover, it was not until 1997 that he or anyone else would "cash in" on the stones themselves. If Burrows wanted to get rich from creating fake artefacts, his hoax was obviously ill executed. But the cave is more than just a collection of inscribed stones. Burrows allegedly found and removed many gold artefacts. These look genuine and contain the same mismatch of writing. You can only wonder why a fraud, if Burrows were indeed one, would use gold—which, to begin with, is costly to obtain. It is true that there are conflicting stories about this gold. Burrows at one point stated that some of the gold had been melted down and then sold. The Swiss author Luc Biirgin claimed that Burrows removed huge quantities of gold, had it melted down and then sold it, depositing a grand total of US$15 million into Swiss bank accounts. If true, this indicates that Burrows did indeed get his hands on tremendous amounts of gold and decided to sell for the gold's monetary value—not the archaeological value. But others have stated that Biirgin was merely told this "information" by a fellow researcher and possesses no evidence for his assertion. Some sceptics claim that the "gold" never existed, that it has never been seen. That's not true, because early researchers did see it. I have been shown colour photographs of apparently gold artefacts by Burrows himself; I still have some of these photos in my possession, and they are available for viewing on my website. Other critics argue that the "gold" was just metal, finished off with gold paint to make it look real. If they are correct, then Burrows merely created these artefacts to fool archaeologists, amateur by Philip Coppens © 2006 PO Box 13722 North Berwick EH39 4WB United Kingdom Email: info@philipcoppens.com Website: http://www. philipcoppens.com PO Box 13722 North Berwick EH39 4WB United Kingdom Email: info@philipcoppens.com Website: http://www. philipcoppens.com NEXUS +57 by Philip Coppens © 2006 AUGUST — SEPTEMBER 2006 www.nexusmagazine.com