Well, hugging the African coast is a little different then sailing west across the Atlantic. But it isn’t inconceivable a phonecian era vessel could’ve gotten very lost and ended up in the Americas. If the guy had found the stone on the Eastern seaboard that might be a plausible explanation, but New Mexico? If it was some sort of trade-good, you could posit it was passed from native American Civilazation to native American civilization via trade-routes, but boulder with writing in a foreign language is hardly a valuble trade good, or particularly transportable.
Which is one person’s thinking, put onto a Wikipedia page that otherwise properly blasts Fell up and down presumably by a defender who wanted to find something, anything to make Fell look legitimate.
Other mainstream archaeologists do not recognize an extensive pre-Columbian European presence in the New World. They recognize zero presence outside of a tiny Viking colony in the far northeast.
As for Kelley, here’s what the Bad Archaeology page had to say in Fell’s obituary.
Wikipedia is a wonderful tool, but like any tool you have to know how to work it. If you don’t know anything at all about a subject, especially one on which there is controversy, it is always dangerous to blindly quote Wiki. They will try to ensure that defenders and attackers are equally represented in what they call neutrality. But woo-woo is only defendable by more woo-woo. The two sides are not equal and should not be held up as equals.
Here we go. Barry Fell used to defend Israelites in America 1000 B.C.
And Welch [sic] too!
It should also be noted that Thor Heyerdahl made it across the Pacific from the Americas in a one man raft.
This, of course, is the core problem that believers are stuck with. They can’t tolerate or accept the unknown. They are flummoxed by uncertainty, ambiguity, or simply a lack of complete understanding. They must attribute items, acts and events and forces to God. The notion that something has been observed but has not been explained by science means to them that the answer must be God, and not “we don’t know, we haven’t a clue, etc.” That is completely unacceptable to them.
Isn’t this one of the central tennets of Mormonism?
While the Los Lunas stone obviously has interest as a mystery, I’m not sure I understand the (possibly hidden) motives of folks who argue it’s genuine (other than, of course, the perceived scientific truth of their own argument).
Is this stone cited as evidence supporting the Mormon version of pre-Columbian history, or is there a different agenda at work? Just curious…
Yeah.
Just going by the link in the OP, it seems some Christians are touting it as evidence that the Ancient Israeli Empire was a bigger deal then modern archaeology has revealed it to be. Not every podunk civilization can circumnavigate the globe, after all.
You would think the Mormons would be all over this though, but I’ve never seen it come up in any debates on Mormon beliefs. Maybe I’ve just missed it, though.
Nitpick: Six man raft
Oops.
Ex-mormon here. Yes, Mormons absolutely believe that a few groups of Hebrews migrated to the Americas. The majority of the Book of Mormon deals with Lehi’s descendants that settled in the Promised Land after fleeing Jerusalem in 600 BC.
In my college-level Book of Mormon class in 1996, the favorite piece of archaeological evidence was the Izapa Stela 5, known among Mormons as the Tree of Life Stone. My Institute teacher spent 2 hours going over details such as Hebrew clothing and Egyptian gestures in the carving.
Also interesting is the 1820-ish book View of the Hebrews by Ethan Smith (no relation to Joseph), which presents the author’s opinion that the American Indians are Hebrews.
This is what YEC arguments always boil down to.
They are right as far as you can defend any hypothesis by coming up with ad hoc excuses (aka “interpreting” data). But they are wrong to imply that both sides of the “debate” do this equally.
Because to real scientists, no concept is sacred. The only axioms they have are those essential for employing the scientific method.
And they only “believe” in the big bang, say, because it makes good, testable predictions (i.e. it is “operational” science).
This is the kind of thing I wish I could say to every creationist. Not that they’d listen, but I’d feel better.
Were there even Jews in 1000 B.C.? Obviously their ancestors existed then as did everybody else’s, but 1000 BC was, by tradition, the time of the reign of David and I don’t even associate Judaism with coming into existence until after the Temple which wasn’t built until late in the reign of his son Solomon. I think really after the Captivity is considered when ‘Jews’ emerged- i.e. when it became a more portable/less bound to a particular place religion.
An outgrowth of the obsession for locating the Lost Tribes of Israel. During the 17th and 18th centuries, in particular, many explorers claimed finding one of the lost tribes upon returning from the Americas. There’s even today a guy (Howshua Amariel) claiming the Cherokee Nation is descended from one of the lost tribes, and that Israel’s Law of Return should apply to him.
On one of the “Did Nostradamus and the Da Vinci Code Predict Ice Road Truckers Will Rule the World in 2012?” style shows on History Channel they had a Cherokee who subscribes to the Really Lost Israelites mythos. They did DNA testing on him and some of his supporters, both mitochondrial and Y chromosome, and, surprise-surprise, no semitic ancestry either way. His response was to the effect of “Nah-ah! I am too a Hebrew!” There’s no way of winning a debate with some people as no evidence will convince them.
Maybe you need to hang out with a better class of believer…
To be more fair, the argument advanced by many but not all people for the existence of God is that there has to be some explanation for xyz, and since we have no idea of what that explanation is, there must be a god. How else can you explain…xyz?
I’d call that a problem with people. If it’s not God, it’s the Devil. Lacking a Devil, it must be Spirits, Fairies, or Goblins. With no Spirits, Fairies, or Goblins around, we turn to Phlogiston, Humors, and the Luminiferous Aether.
It’s only a short hop from there to Men in Black, 9-11 Coverups, and Ancient Mariners.
They are able to tell who is really a Levite from DNA testing. 