Upper left is the Proto-Shiva seal found by Sir John Marshall in Mohenjodaro (courtesy Wikipedia). The dancer is from the same site. Asko Parpola reported the seal’s Corpus designation as M304. Upper right the seal has been flipped to show its “impression” which demonstrates the right to left reading direction. The center image (in “impression” format) has been ‘healed’ using Photoshop (taking part of the lower right and flipping it to partially complete the image). This seal is estimated to date between 2550-1900 BCE.Susquehanna Stones The Susquehanna Stones — An Enduring Enigma by Robert W. Lebling Inthe early 1940s, while distant battles raged in Europe and the Pacific, alone scientist wandered the fields, ridges and forests of the quiet countryside southwest of Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. The world was in the grip of global war, the second of the 20" century. But Dr. William Walker Strong, professor of physics, was Oblivious of the world and its crises. He was focused instead on a quixotic search for strange, rust-colored rocks, covered with what looked like inscribed markings, perhaps alphabetic letters. Dr. Strong carried hundreds of these stones from the wilds of the Susquehanna Valley, convinced that they told an amazing story, one that would shed important light on the history of ancient America, William Strong was the discoverer of the Susquehanna Stones, sometimes known as the Susquehanna Steles or the Mechanicsburg Stones. He collected more than 400 of them during his wanderings through the fields and farmland south of Mechanicsburg as far as Yellow Breeches Creek near Dillsburg. Strong believed these chunks of rock proved that ancient Phoenician voyagers —probably from the Phoenician colony of Carthage in North Africa— visited the New World and explored the Mid-Atlantic region thousands of years ago. Strong could point to a famous passage in one of Artistotle’s lesser works to support his claims: “In the sea outside the Pillars of Hercules [the Straits of Gibraltar] they say that a desert istand was found by the Carthaginians, having woods of all kinds and navigable rivers, remarkable for, all other kinds of fruits, and a number of days voyage away... the Carthaginians frequented it often owing to its prosperity, and some even lived there...” —Aristotle, On Marvelous Things Heard, 84. Aristotle's “island” could be America, couldn't it? And one of th of the grand Chesapeake Bay estuary? ‘navigable rivers” the Susquehanna, tributary ‘According to Wester tradition, the Americas were discovered by Italian explorer Christopher Columbus, who sailed three tiny ships across the Atlantic on behalf of the Spanish crown. Columbus's first ocean crossing ‘was the crowning achievement ofa long and often hazardous learning process: Civilized man had finally mastered the art of long-distance open-sea navigation. No one could have done it before him. If, by some fluke of history, others had preceded him, what evidence had they left behind? Where were their descendants, their settlements, their artifacts? American archaeologists, unable to perceive any evidence of pre-Columbian crossings, turned their attention to the American indians. Any archaeological finds that could not be identified as Indian were either branded as hoaxes or shelved without comment. Scholars were salisfied with their interpretation of American, prehistory; Carthaginians, Iberians, Celts or Egyptians just didn't fit into the picture. But eventually the wall of certitude began to crack. Archaeologists were finding evidence of Viking crossings to the North American mainiand more than 500 years before Columbus. Once the primacy of Columbus was undermined, experts began to entertain even more far-fetched possibilities. Alleged parallels between the cultures and customs of the Mesoamerican Indians and the peoples of the Eastern Mediterranean —noted centuries ago by Spanish explorers and missionaries— were re-examined for ‘authenticity. The British historian Amold Toynbee, in his Reconsiderations, seriously discussed the probability of trans-Atlantic crossings in antiquity. One of America's most respected linguists, Dr. Morris Swadesh, spent his last years exploring the word parallels between the Mayan Indian language and early Semitic, and found correspondences which he believed were statistically too high to be coincidental 138 ESOP * The Epigraphic Society Occasional Papers * Volume 28‘Susquehanna Stones But its not enough to say that ancient voyagers could have crossed the Atlantic. Scholars rightly insist on {Brae evidence of such crossings: artifacts, sites, inscriptions that would prove trans-Atlantic erossings beyond a shadow of a doubt, Fortunately for researchers on the fringe, there appears to be far more potential evidence available than one jnight expect. America is a veritable treasure-trove of unexplained archaeological finds: stone structures, inscriptions and artifacts —oddities that generally end up in museum storerooms or are used as doorstops, mantelpieces and lawn decorations, unreported, unrecorded and forgotten. Perhaps some of these artifacts Could provide the substantive clues that will someday answer the question of pre-Columbian visitations From the Smithsonian's Bat Creek Stone (a thin slab with Hebrow-like writing excavated from a Tennessee jatial mound) and the enigmatic Newport Tower in Rhode Istand to the “megalithic: complex at Mystery Hil in New Hampshire, America has more than its share of archaeological question-marks. Some of these finds have been dubbed frauds, or described as inconsequential. Many camo to light —and were dismissed more than coniury go, ata time when scientific dating methods were primitive and the study of ancient languages and inscriptions —epigraphy— was stil in its infancy. Unofficially, many archaeologists find these enigmatic artifacts and sites as fascinating as the layman does. But officially, ite is done about them. Old habits are decidedly hard to break. Universities are generally unwilling to commit themselves to unorthodox research, particularly when that esearch could undermine a hundred and fifty years of painstakingly constructed conventional theory about ‘American prehistory. As a result, pre-Columbian contacts {are normally the province of amateur researchers, who, no ‘matter how competent they are, lack the authoritative stamp needed to transform theory into fact. ‘Agood example ofthis dilemma is the 60-year, on-again- off-again investigation into the Susquehanna Stones. These grooved — perhaps inscribed ~ diabase rocks were thought ene OMna Re RGonie on by thei discoverer o be the relics of a Phoenician mining — ‘expedition that sailed up the Susquehanna River some 2,500 years ago William W. Strong was a respected physicist and ‘amateur archaeologist from Mechanicsburg, just west of the capital Harrisburg. Fora period of several years during the early 1940s, Strong made numerous field trips to the rocky, wooded diabase ridges of the Susquehanna Valley, collecting strangely marked stones, roughly cubical or blocklike in shape, ranging in size from softballs to pillows, all covered with the powdery orange crust which is Characteristic of the surface weathering of diabase. Strong divided his stones into two distinct types: “x "gta stones,” consisting of ravures or abrasions, ‘some 6 much as an inch deep,” which resembled primitive 2. A fquahsains Siene bistiteton lettering: and XX stones," which bore “straight-groove v. FUE shaped marks.” ‘Strong's collection gained local notoriety, particularly when Joseph Ayoob, a local postman of Lebanese extraction, suggested that the markings on the “x stones” looked like Phoenician letters. The Phoenicians were co seafaring, trading population of ancient Lebanon, who established colonies in far-off Spain and North Africa (Carthage) and circumnavigated Africa, Perhaps the Phoenicians’ greatest claim to fame was their development of the earliest known form of the alphabet we use today, ESOP * The Epigraphic Society Occasional Papers * Volume 28 139‘Susquehanna Stones Figure 3. Letters or plow marks? Intrigued by Ayoob's suggestion, Strong sent photographs of his best stones to the Ecole des Langues Anciennes at the University of Strasbourg in France. After studying the photos, the school said it could not rule out the possibilty that the lettering might be Phoenician. Encouraged by this “verdict,” and even though late in life William Strong plunged into a self-instruction course in ancient Phoenician and Punic (Carthaginian), and set about trying to translate the inscriptions. Ayoob, meanwhile, had founded the Phoenician Historical Society, to investigate the Susquehanna Stones and gather other evidence pointing to Phoenician landings on the American East Coast. Correctly noting that the Phoenicians were the most accomplished metallurgists of their day and were in constant pursuit of raw materials, Strong and ‘Ayoob became convinced that Phoenician voyagers (probably Carthaginians) had crossed the Atlantic, sailed up the Chesapeake Bay and penetrated the Susquehanna Valley in search of iron, copper and tin deposits. Strong's attempted translation of the “inscriptions” resulted in his Replicas Canaan Stelae, a homemade text written in longhand and featuring blueprinted “rubbings” of the clearest markings on the stones. A rare copy of this curious document is held by the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. [Facsimiles of Strong's drawings of the inscriptions on the stones can also be seen in the rare books section of the Smithsonian's library—Ye Ed] Strong claimed to have identified 22 Phoenician letters, and found combinations corresponding to the names of some 70 rabs, or captains, deities such as the Carthaginian goddess Tanit, and numerous Mediterranean ities, including Citium (on Cyprus), Tyre, Sidon and Aleppo. Most of the stones bear one or two such letters; others have up to five, sometimes scattered over three sides of the rock. Strong's enthusiasm for his theory eventually got the better of him. His demands for recognition and authentication of his work were incessant and often irritating. He quickly alienated professional archaeologists in his own state and elsewhere. Scholars were unimpressed by Strong's casual and sometimes reckless approach to archaeological methodology. In an effort to a Figure 4. Another stone from Mechanicsburg enhance the lines of some of the “letters,” for example, he applied white paint to some of the stones, and may ‘even have chipped away at the groovesn the orange-crusted diabase. He did not photograph any of the stones, in situ before carting them off to Mechanicsburg, and even failed to note the locations of his finds. ‘Strong received his first epigraphic critique from Dr. Raymond Bowman of the University of Chicago's Department of Oriental Languages and Literatures.in 1944. In effect, Bowman politely but firmly advised the new cepigrapher that he was far off-base. Commenting on Strong's photos and accompanying translation, Bowman said: 140 ESOP * The Epigraphic Society Occasional Papers * Volume 28‘Susquehanna Stones j1.can understand your identifying these letters as Semitic characters, but some of them are Phoenician forms observed as early as the 12" century [B.C.], while others are characters that had not evolved unti the fith or fourth centuries.” Sowman believed the markings to be man-made, but he saw them as random combinations of lines rather than part ofa structured alphabet, a characteristic he said dated back to the potters’ and masons’ marke athe Borramote Periods ofthe development of civilization, e.g., at Gezer, and the first Egyptian dynasty at Abydos Bowman believed Strong's letters should be similarly classified. Geologists whio made perfunctory examinations ofthe stones said the marks were probably caused by farm achinery, tree roots or natural faults in the rock. As Strong pressed harder for his ease, his reputation oe o man when he died in 1955, Afier his death, the stones were left lying in heaps in the family bam in Mechanicsburg. The physicist's son, Dr. Albert Strong, made an effort to Straighten out the disorder his father had left behind, and seek a final resolution of the question of the Susquehanna Stones. He compiled a ‘synopsis of the stones’ history, and welcomed interested visitors to Mechanicsburg. Dr. Cyrus Gordon, a Semitic language expert, came to inspect the inscriptions, but as far as he could tell, they were not Semitic. Instead, he told this writer, "they probably represent a native local writing, there is no reason to think that they are in an Old World script or language.” Interested amateurs, scientists and even representatives of the Mormon, Church came to view the stones and examine the elder Strong's work. In 1961, Albert Strong conducted a seminar on the stones for about a dozen individuals, including representatives of local universities, But like is father —perhaps because of him— the young Dr. Strong failed to make any progress in winning acceptance of the stones. His attempts to place them with several universities proved fruitless, even at igure 5. Dr. Cyrus Gordan — Johns Hopkins, where both he and his father had studied, ane at nearby Dickenson College. Jn 1964, the coup de grace was delivered by state archaeologist John Witthoft, writing in the journal Pennayivenia Archaeologist. His subject was the Strong collection, and his conclusion was that the strane Wrath ete cither produced by weathering along natural faults in the diabase, or carved by hand revert: Wiltthoft cited the presence of “fresh steel dust” in some of the grooves. an was obvious.” Witthoft said, that the blocks had not been exposed tothe elements since the grooves had peen cut, and that the letters were therefore perfectly modem frauds.” He concluded by saying t seuld be Impossible to determine the identity of the culprits since everyone connected with the case was deceased. sine Problem with Witthof's debunking is that itis faced with errors and misrepresentations. To support his praument. Re cites three “authoritative” studies of the stones by the National Bureau of Standards, Franklin and Marshall College and the Pennsylvania Geological Survey. No records of such studies exist at either the National Bureau of Standards (NBS) or Franklin and Marshall College. A spokesman for the Bureau of Standards said in 1975 that Witthoft had been mistaken, that NBS had ‘ever sean ~ much less studied — the Susquehanna Stones. Geologists at Franklin and Marshall remembered viewing the stones, but could not recall studying them in detail ‘The Pennsylvania Geological Survey (PGS) did undertake a study, but Witthoft's article misrepresented its conclusions. Witthof said the study had shown that the grooves (the “ltters") were unweathered —-withest ‘he orange crust— and therefore recent. The PGS report in fact didnot discuss the weathering ofthe grooves ESOP * The Epigraphic Society Occasional Papers * Volume 28 141‘Susquehanna Stones but dealt instead with the natural fractures in the diabase itself, saying that these bore no relationship to the letter-like marks on the surface. “The presence of metal flakes in the grooves,” the report said (Witthoft had written “fresh steel dust’), “is strong evidence that the grooves were made, at least in part, wth an iron or steel tool.” Finally —contrary to Witthof’s assertion— several of Strong's associates in the matter of the Susquehanna Stones were still alive at the time the article was written, including Joseph Ayoob. Witthoft, in addition to being Pennsylvania's state archaeologist, was also chief curator at the Pennsylvania State Museum at Harrisburg. It was under his curatorship that the museum “lost” several specimens of Dr. ‘Strong's inscribed stones that had been submitted for study and analysis. These rocks were never seen again, Their mysterious disappearance did not seem to reflect badly on the chief curator. Witthoft’s article in the Pennsylvania Archaeologist satisfied serious scholars. For all practical purposes, the ‘Susquehanna Stones had been debunked. Disheartened, the young Dr. Strong made arrangements to have the several tons of grooved stones trucked upto New Hampshire, where they were placed in the custody of the New England Antiquities Research Association (NEARA), the only organization that offered to take them off his hands. Thus the Susquehanna Stones came to rest again in a barn —this time in New Hampshire. [Owned by NEARA member Midge Chandler. —Ye Ed) But their story was far from over. In 1975, Dr. Strong's diabase enigmas were back in the news again, this time because of the work of an energetic professor from Harvard, Dr. H. Barraclough (Barry) Fell of the Museum of Comparative Zoology. Fell, a marine biologist and amateur epigrapher whose decipherments of pre- Columbian inscriptions in America had outraged archaeological traditionalists and delighted iconociasts, decided to try his hand at the Susquehanna Stones. (Within a year, Fell would publish his first pop archaeology work, ‘America BC (1976), in which he overhauled the traditional scheme of American prehistory, leaving the pages awash with Celts, Egyptians, Libyans, Iberians and Phoenicians. He would advance his thesis even further in Saga America (1980) and Bronze Age America (1982).) When first told about the Strong collection, Fell took a photographer to the New Hampshire barn and spent a day inspecting and cataloguing the best of the specimens. He cartied several stones back to his research lab in his home in Arlington, Mass., and published his initial findings in May 1975, in a paper for a research group he had founded, the Epigraphic Society. Figure 6. De. Barry Fell ‘Some of the inscriptions were indeed Phoenician, Fell decided, but only a few. Most, he said, were Iberian or Basque! According to Fell, Dr. Strong had stumbled onto the remains of a late Bronze Age necropolis, or “city of the dead” —the cemetery of an Iberian settlement in the Susquehanna Valley which dated back to almost 800, BC. The stones were funerary headstones, he said, bearing an Iberian script almost identical to the important script found on tablets in Traz-os-Montes, Portugal. The language behind the letters was related to Basque. The Basque people of northern Spain have been accomplished sailors and explorers for many centuries. Basque ‘crewmen accompanied Columbus on his historic voyage of discovery in 1492. But Fell was talking about Basque trans-Atlantic crossings more than 20 centuries earlier. 142 ESOP * The Epigraphic Society Occasional Papers * Volume 28Susquehanna Stones “The steles so far examined,” Fell said, “disclose that the settlement was administered by a north Iberian chieftain named Galba, who claims the title king, and who was doubtless a member of the same Aquitanian Basque gens that was later to supply Roman governors of Spain and one emperor, Sulpicius Galba.” In his initial report, Fell published translations of two of the stones (“Gora in his old age" and “Galba, sole ruler’), and at the same time offered a translation of one of the Traz-os-Montes tablets by way of comparison. (The Traz-os-Montes inscriptions had eluded all previous attempts at decipherment. if Fell in fact translated this particular inscription correctly, that in itself would be a major epigraphic triumph.) In 1987, Fell modified his conclusions, declaring that the diabase rocks were probably marker stones used by 17°-century Indians to mark their farming plots. But the writing on the stones was still Iberian/Basque, he insisted. These Indians, the now vanished Susquehannocks, may have encountered visiting Basques in ancient times and retained memories of these contacts. The Indians may have preserved marker stones engraved by the Basques themselves, or used Basque letters to inscribe some of their own. Dr. Strong's rocks were indeed engraved with Basque family ‘names, Fell continued to assert. The Susquehannocks were an Iroquoian- speaking tribe that lived in the westem part of the Chesapeake Bay estuary Up till the end of the 1600's. Fell cited an old document called the New Figure 7.A Susquahannock Castle Deed, in which certain tribal chiefs transferred ownership of land to (1624) Wiliam Penn. The signatures of nine chiefs were initialed in letters from the Basque alphabet, Fell declared. ‘About a year later, Barry Fell wrote in his society's journal that critics were unjustified in claiming the Susquehanna Stones were “modern fakes" simply because traces of steel had been detected in the grooves of ‘some of the rocks. “William Penn's treaties show that he provided the Indians of the Susquehanna Valley with hundreds of steels’ as part payment for land," Fell said, “and itis to be expected thatthe Indians would periodically re-engrave the land boundary markers that defined their crop gardens.” This appears to have been his last word on the subject, Most archaeologists have totally rejected Fells work on this and other pre-Columbian topics. Some have attacked him as an "imposter." A few ‘scholars, however, have stood by the controversial Harvard scholar, including a Basque etymologist and epigrapher named Imanol Agire, who has endorsed Fell's theories about Basque influence in pre- Columbian America. (One academic critic went so far as to claim that Imanol Agire didn't even exist. But ad Agire is real, and the author of a hefty, 629-page linguistics text called Vinculos de la Lengua Vasca con fas Lenguas de Todo el Mundo (The Basque Language's Ties with the Languages of the World) (1980), available in major U.S. libraries.) Figure 8. Yellow Beeches Creek ESOP * The Epigraphic Society Occasional Papers * Volume 28 143Susquehanna Stones Since Fell’s final comments on the subject in 1988 (he died six years later), the Susquehanna Stones have settled into a position of secondary importance for investigators cataloguing evidence of early trans-Atlantic crossings. Over the years, some of the stones found their way into private collections. NEARA eventually moved ‘most of the remaining “artifacts” from New Hampshire to a protected site in Maine, where they reside today. Hundreds of miles south of Maine, in the valley of the Susquehanna, lie the rugged diabase ridges where this curious archaeological odyssey began. Bewildered by the twists and turns of the stones enigma, this writer and a fellow investigator decided, literally, to take to the hills in search of a solution. At the suggestion of Albert ‘Strong, they set off for Stony Ridge in the Susquehanna Valley, just east of Carlisle, Penn., one of the overgrown haunts where he believed his father wandered in the old days. But Stony Ridge is no longer the heavily wooded wildemess “where snakes constitute a great hazard,” as William Strong once wrote. The bulldozers have taken care of that. The private stomping grounds of an eccentric physics professor searching for the relics of a lost world have been replaced, inevitably perhaps, by the blissful Quietude of a shady, suburban housing development, Ironstone Ridge Estates. Ironstone is the popular name for diabase. ‘The homes are impressive along the single ribbon of road which traverses the blunted crown of the ridge. The lawns are spacious, trim and green. And everywhere, lining driveways, or shoring up an earthen wall, or just sitting amid a colorful patch of flowers, are countless, orange-crusted diabase rocks, torn from the ridge when the builders excavated the area years earlier. With growing dismay, we could see that virtually all of these rocks were marked in the same manner as those in the Strong collection. Some marks were a clutter of light gray lines, others formed the kind of strokes which actually duplicated Phoenician letters, Most of the rocks were the size of those Dr. Strong found; others were huge boulders. ‘On one piece of property a construction project was underway, and an earthmover had gouged out a chunk of the ridge, exposing a six-foot wall studded with diabase rocks in various stages of breaking up and turning to clay. The rocks formed in this process were weathered, coated with the familiar orange crust, and wrapped in a tangle of tree roots. The roots cling to the rock seeking its scarce but life-giving potassium. Once ton away, these roots expose the light gray streaks of fresh diabase, where the orange crust has been unable to form, leaving either a mish-mash of marks or "Semitic letters.” ‘The researchers sat stunned for a moment, certain they had found the mysterious chiseler of the Susquehanna ‘Stones, hard at work beneath the surface of the earth —the 300-million-year-old chemistry of crumbling diabase, caressed by woody fingers. But what of those specimens that seemed so letter-like to Barry Fell, Raymond Bowman and the Ecole des Langues Anciennes? Are they really nothing more than the random markings of tree roots? Or are they the product of a hoaxer's imagination, as Witthoft and others have claimed? Ancient mysteries researcher Salvatore M. Trento doubts they are the product of an elaborate hoax. “It is unlikely that all of the four hundred Pennsylvania field stones were meticulously etched and carefully buried by a misguided colleague of Dr. Strong,” he notes in hs Field Guide to Mysterious Places of Eastern North America (1997). “The vast amount of labor and scholarship needed to carry out such a task would preclude someone from performing it without getting caught or without a rumor being spread. Also, the farmer on whose land the stones were found would have been bound to notice sections of his field plowed up every morning, if we assume the forger worked by night. No such accounts were ever reported.” In the Strong collection there are stones with markings too regular, intricate or angular to be root tracks and. plow cuts: clear letter shapes, closed circles and unusual figures like a rhombus with a cross in its center. These constitute only a small portion of the collection, perhaps five percent. Some of the best of these, such as the samples “lost” by the Harrisburg museum, have disappeared, and are thus unavailable for further study. But of those that remain, part of the solution may lie in the geological properties of the rock itself, and in analysis which should have been conducted decades ago. 144 ESOP * The Epigraphic Society Occasional Papers * Volume 28‘Susquehanna Stones Diabase is an igneous rock well-known for its superior building qualities. However, when considering the Possible survival of 2,500-year-old inscriptions, the rock's weathering characteristics must be taken into account. Wind, rain, soll acidity and subsurface water combine to erode a stone like diabase relatively quickly, whether it lies on the surface or is buried, as at Ironstone Ridge Estates. Dr. Robert Smith of the Pennsylvania Geological Survey's mineralogical department, who did his doctoral dissertation on diabase, estimates that East Coast Jiabase erodes at a rate of two centimeters per thousand years, a figure other geologists have concurred is reasonable. Given this estimate, the inscriptions of ancient Phoenicians or Iberian visitors to the Susquehanna Valley would have had to have been made as steep, narrow cuts, four centimeters or more in depth, in order to be visible today. This is extremely unlikely. Ifinscriptions of this type had been carved 2,500 years ago, they would exist today as broad, shallow engravings where the built-up orange weathering crust would be as thick as elsewhere on the rock. Few if any of Strong's stones fit this description. Weathering, it should be added, is not ‘ clearly defined science, but rather a borderline discipline shared by geologists and soil specialists. Facing these geological realities, and the stark testimony of Stony Ridge, the possibility that the Susquehanna ‘Stones bear a story of Phoenician or Iberian settlement in Pennsylvania seems down to its last breath. What explanations —aside from fraud—remain? There is the theory of Cyrus Gordon, who suggested that the lettering was a primitive American Indian script —itself startling enough, and not destined to win the support of traditional Scholars. There s the tenuous link with the Traz-os-Montes tablets. Barry Fell believed that ifthe rock's properties exclude the possibilty that the engravings are ancient, then the letters might represent the memory of a people who knew of the ancient Iberian language and who bequeathed it to the Americas —i.., the Susquehannocks, ‘As was noted earlier, the Susquehanna collection constitutes only a small —and by now insignificant— part of a much larger body of evidence which some say points to pre-Columbian contacts by ancient European and Mediterranean voyagers. The momentum for this research is being generated by amateur groups like NEARA. Whether in the hands of amateurs or professionals, the Susquehanna Stones suffered from the prejudices of each. Pennsylvania state archaeologist Witthoft’s “authoritative debunking” tums out to have been anchored in the clouds. yet his il-derived conclusions seemed to satisfy scholars in associated disciplines. The amateurs, determined to keep alive the fascinating possibilities the stones hinted at, never had the courage to subject the collection to a proper and comprehensive petrographic examination, and have yet to do so. The stalemate that has resulted from this clash of purposes seems symptomatic, and does not bode wel for the study of the myriad other inscriptions and artifacts which have been reported in America —some of which ‘may prove to be authentic. If the amateur-led theorists are right, American prehistory must be rewritten. If they are wrong, the landscape will still be strewn with thousands of enigmas. What is certain is that the true story stands little chance of surfacing if the handling of Dr. Strong's stones sets the pattern for future research. [Robert Lebling, a writer/editor and communications specialist, is based in Saudi Arabia. He is author of Natural Remedies of Arabia (with Donna Pepperdine) (London, 2006) and Legends of the Fire Spirits: Jinn and Genies from Arabia to Zanzibar (London, 2010). Lebling is an past contributor to the Epigraphic Society Occasional Publications (1977 and 1984). A version of this article appeared in Mysteries Magazine, Issue #12. The author thanks R. Taylor Walsh of Kensington, Maryland, for his important contributions to this investigation | Back in a previous millenium, | had occasion to visit Midge Chandler's barn and personally examine NEARA's holdings of the above stones. | selected some not published by Fell and drew them carefully (see two of them to the left), transliterating the letters using Fels romanizations. I've been unable to find ‘my suggested decipherments which supported Fells, | cannot consider that decisive, since | DO NOT know. Basque. It is hard to imagine, however, tree roots. producing the images you see here, which do seem to provide meaningful translations. —Ye ed ESOP * The Epigraphic Society Occasional Papers * Volume 28 145