Posted on 07/07/2010 6:22:09 AM PDT by Palter
Possum Creek Stone and Anomalous Cherokee DNA Point to Eastern Mediterranean Origins
In memoriam Gloria Farley
Donald N. Yates
DNA Consultants
Keynote address for Ancient American History and Archeology Conference, Sandy, Utah, April 2, 2010
SUMMARY Three examples of North American rock art are discussed and placed in the context of ancient Greek and Hebrew civilization. The Red Bird Petroglyphs are compared with Greek and Hebrew coins and the Bat Creek Stone. The Possum Creek Stone discovered by Gloria Farley is identified as a Greek athlete’s victory pedestal. The Thruston Stone is interpreted as a record of the blending of Greek, Cherokee, Native American, Egyptian and Hebrew civilization. Keetoowah Society traditions, as captured in The Vision of Eloh’, are adduced to confirm a general outline of the origins of the Cherokee people in a Ptolemaic Greek trans-Pacific expedition joining pre-arriving Greeks, Jews and Phoenicians in the Ohio Valley around 100 c.e. Recent DNA investigations showing Egyptian, Jewish and Phoenician female lineages and the Y chromosome of Old Testament Priests among the Cherokee are also touched upon. Greek words and customs in the Cherokee are reviewed as time permits. Slide projector requested.
A cave entrance overlooking the Redbird River, a tributary of the South Fork of the Kentucky River in Clay County, Kentucky in the Daniel Boone National Forest, has inscriptions which according to Kenneth B. Tankersley of the University of Cincinnati display a nineteenth-century example of writing in the Cherokee syllabary. A local resident (Burchell) recognizes Greek writing in one inscription (called Christian Monogram #2) but his reading is unsatisfactory for a number of reasons. Evaluation by experts in Greek and Semitic epigraphy identifies two distinct inscriptions, one in Greek and one in Hebrew. They appear to be contemporaneous with the Bat Creek Stone unearthed in the 1889 excavation of a tomb in East Tennessee by Cyrus Thomas of the Smithsonian Institution.
Another record of Greek-speaking people in ancient America is the Possum Creek Stone, discovered by Gloria Farley in Oklahoma in the 1970s. It is discussed by her in Volume 2 of In Plain Sight as proof that the man history knows as Sequoyah did not invent the Cherokee syllabary. The inscription can be read as Greek, HO-NI-KA-SA or ‘o nikasa, i.e. “This is the one who takes the prize of victory,” a common inscription for the pedestal upon which victors were crowned at athletic games. The use is Homeric, and the spelling Doric.
A third piece of evidence helps fill in the background of the arrival of Greeks and their intermarriage with Asiatic and other Indians in North America. In 1870, an engraved 19 x 15 inch limestone tablet was uncovered in a mound excavation on Rocky Creek near Castalian Springs in Sumner County, Tennessee (see Ancient American, vol. 12, no. 77). Dating to an earlier time than its Mississipian Period context, it commemorates a peace treaty between the Cherokee and Shawnee. The Cherokee chief wears a horse-hair crested helmet and carries the spear and shield of a Greek hoplite. His Shawnee adversary clasps hands in a wedding ceremony with a Cherokee woman who bears wampum belts as a pledge of peace, has her hair in a maidenly bun, wears a Middle Eastern-style plaid kilt, and displays a large star of David. In the Red Record or Walam Olum, we learn that before crossing the Mississippi, somewhere along the south bank of the Missouri, the Algonquians or Lenni Lenape (Delaware Indians), who are later allied with the Cherokee, encounter a foreign tribe they call the Stonys. Cherokee legends about Stone-coat demonstrate that the original Cherokee had metal armor and weapons. DNA studies confirm a mixture of “anomalous” East Mediterranean mitochondrial lineages such as Egyptian T, Greek U and Phoenician X with “standard” American Indian haplogroups A, B, C and D in the Cherokee and certain other Eastern Woodlands Indians.
To sum up, the Red Bird Petroglyph is a Greek inscription from the 2nd to 3rd century c.e., not a crude Cherokee scratching of around 1800 as announced recently by the Archeological Institute of America and the New York Times. It occurs above what is, in all likelihood, an inscription in Maccabean-era Hebrew. The Sequoyan syllabary for which these Greek and Hebrew inscriptions were mistaken originated in the Greek world of the Bronze Age along with other syllabaries like Linear A, Linear B and Cypro-Minoan. The Cherokee language, which today is Iroquoian, is the result of a relexification process in the distant past. It contains many relics of words of Greek origin, especially in the area of government, military terminology, mythology, athletics and ritual. Cherokee music also reflects Greek origins. The Cherokee Indians are, quite literally, the Greeks of Native America.
Possum Creek Stone and Anomalous Cherokee DNA Point to East Mediterranean Origins (PPT)
Greek Words and Customs in Cherokee
Greek |
|
Meaning |
Cherokee |
Meaning
|
alomenoidakosdasis
tynchanaetheloikeoi*gennadashuios Diosillo, illas*kakotechneo
kanonkaranoskateis*keruxmona*neika*
Ogygesouktennaoulountataskiastixtanawa*
(hoi en) teleitheatas*theatronThraxtypho
|
wanderers (in a hopeless sense)noxious, devouring beast, whalehairy, shaggy like a beastthings that befallvolunteer settlers
nobleSon of Zeus (title of Herakles)wrap, twist; ropebase arts, perjury, fraudstraight-edge used by athletesa chief
assemblyheraldstopping place, way-stationcontesttitan of Greek mythologyone not killed
declared healthyghost, shadeabominableastronomical instrumentthose in authorityspectator in a play
theater, assemblyThracianraise a smoke, make sacrifice
|
eloh’; elohi
dakwadachitikanoeshelokeekanat(i)Su-too Jee
kilohikaktuntakanugaKoranu**cahtiyisskarirosken**
monaanetchaOotschayeUktenaoolungtsataatchina
StichiTchlanuatilihitetchatatetchanuntchaskiri**
Tathtowe,Tistoe |
migrants, wanderers; earthmythic great fish
hairy water monsterhistoryCherokee; original peopledoctor, huntermythic strong mantwisted hair clan (cf. Hawaiian hilo)
taboo regulationscraper used by ballplayerswar chief titleassembly housespeaker, heraldland where the Elohi tarried
ballplayrival of Sutoo Jee (Herakles)name of a dragon or serpentdivining crystal for healthghost; cedarname of dangerous serpent
Great Hawkbrave, warriorPlayful Cherokee fairyceremonial enclosuresorcerer, Stonecladceremonial title; firecracker (smoke) bringer (Santa Claus) |
Donald N. Yates is a Georgia native of Choctaw-Cherokee and Sephardic Jewish descent. He earned a Ph.D. in classical studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill before teaching at the University of Notre Dame and elsewhere. In 2003, he founded DNA Testing Systems. His latest book, Old Souls in a New World, is about an expedition of Greeks, Jews and Egyptians that inadvertently founded the Cherokee Indian nation in the third century B.C. He lives in Phoenix. |
Possum Creek Stone and Anomalous Cherokee DNA Point to East Mediterranean Origins (PPT)
Huh. Now I know I’m right when I say “It’s all Greek to me”.
ping
From Utah with love. More LDS wishful thinking.
I'm guessing there is a Moromon connection behind the scenes pushing this somewhere.
The Book of Mormon says that a group of ancient people came to the America's from the middle east. The fact that zero middle eastern DNA evidence has been found in ancient Americans is a huge hole in Moromon history. All of the DNA evidence shows that ancient Americans came from the far eastern pacific rim.
Lots of stretching and leaps in logic here! I know everyone wishes they were Cherokee, this guy wants us to adopt the Greeks.
Huh. I skipped over that line about Keynote Address. If I’d noticed that I’d have been suspicious as well. We lived in Sandy, UT for 4 years. Good catch...
Of course they were Greek.
On the plus side, when you die you become a god and get your own planet. You just have to hope your planet is in a good neighborhood. Stay away from the south side of the galaxy - bad schools, crime, etc.
Unless you were black before 1978. Then blacks couldn’t be a Mormon and get their own planet. Or a Mormon at all.
But, suddenly, and without warning - ta-dah! A new revelation. It’s OK to be black after all.
Isn’t that special?
A lotta wishful thinking there, and little science.
Seriously, and with no offense to the LDS Freepers, I put my trust in the historians and ethnographers who agree that Linguistically, they are part of the Iroquoian-language family and are thought to have migrated south in ancient times from the Great Lakes region, where other Iroquoian-speaking peoples were located.
Who - besides a Mormon zealot - would take this seriously?
Opa! (how do you say that in Cherokee?)
So does that make us all caucasians?
This newly discovered portrait of Pocahontas indicates they may be on to something here.
Apparently, a handful of anti-Mormon zealots are taking this VERY seriously. :-)
I’m not Mormon so I don’t care. Personally, I think Phoenix was settled by Phoenicians. And they invented phoenics.
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