Posted on 11/17/2008 7:26:34 AM PST by SunkenCiv
Last month, at the annual meeting of the West Virginia Archeological Society, anthropologist David Oestreicher offered evidence to suggest that the Grave Creek stone can be dismissed as a fraud.
His arguments were summarized by Rick Steelhammer in The Charleston Gazette on Oct. 13.
Oestreicher found the source for the stone's confusing mixture of ancient alphabets in an 18th-century book on the "unknown letters that are found in the most ancient coins and monuments of Spain." According to Oestreicher, "everything on the stone," including "impossible sequences of characters with the same mistakes," can be found in this book.
Oestreicher thinks the perpetrator of the fraud was a local Wheeling physician, James W. Clemens. Clemens had borrowed a large sum of money to bankroll the excavations and was disappointed when nothing significant was found.
Planting the sensational artifact provided an opportunity to recoup his losses. But many scholars ridiculed the stone as a crude forgery, and Clemens' dreams of fortune and glory ended in financial ruin.
(Excerpt) Read more at dispatch.com ...
|
|
|||
Gods |
To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. |
||
|
· Mirabilis · Texas AM Anthropology News · Yahoo Anthro & Archaeo · · History or Science & Nature Podcasts · Excerpt, or Link only? · cgk's list of ping lists · |
|||
A fraud in West Virginia? Jay Rockefeller has competition?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.