[via]

The Stone

The Bat Creek Stone was discovered in 1889 in a burial mound at the confluence of the Bat Creek and Little Tennessee River. It was discovered by John Emmert, a semi-trained archaeologist working for the Smithsonian. Emmert claimed to have found the Stone along with some copper bracelets, wood fragments and skeletons in the mound. Later tests would date the wood fragments to the first CE.

The most notable feature of the Stone was the eight characters engraved upon it. Emmert claimed that these were Cherokee. This caused some obvious problems, since the Cherokee alphabet was only created by Sequoyah around 1828, and the mound was clearly much older than that.

Emmert’s superior at the Smithsonian, Dr. Cyrus Thomas, already believed that the mounds had been created by the Cherokee or their ancestors. Thomas was willing to argue that the symbols used in the Cherokee language were actually a great deal older than previously thought. He later seemed to abandon this argument, and may have decided that the Stone was a forgery.

Despite the initial flurry this generated, the Stone seemed to disappear off the radar. It continued to attract very little attention up until the 1970s. That’s when Dr. Cyrus Gordon (yes, another Cyrus), a professor of Mediterranean Studies, claimed that when you inverted the stone it became clear that the characters were actually Hebrew. He admitted that three of the characters were problematic, but suggested that the stone might read “for the Jews.”

The Current Debate

Gordon was a proponent of a very old idea: that the Old World and the New World had been in contact after the migration of the Native Americans and before Columbus. He suggested that the Stone proved that people had migrated to America during the Roman Empire. Most other proponents of the theory have different ideas, and the stone is frequently mentioned by people who argue that it shows a connection between ancient Jews and modern Native Americans. You can imagine the connections with the Lost Tribes of Israel or Mormon pseudo-history.

The debate has continued, most prominently in the pages of the Biblical Archeology Review, where Huston McCullough argued for its authenticity. One of the best responses to Gordon was an article by Robert C. Mainfort and Mary L. Kwas in the The Tennessee Anthropologist, available online here.

In order to understand the symbols, the authors contacted Frank Moore Cross, at that point the Hancock Professor of Hebrew and Other Oriental Languages at Harvard. Dr. Cross is famous for his work on the Dead Sea Scrolls, being one of only two Americans on the scroll-publishing team.

Cross’ verdict is pretty damning: of the eight characters on the stone, six cannot be identified as paleo-Hebrew script. Faced with that, the most probable conclusion is that the Stone is a fabrication, rather than evidence of Hebrew contact with the New World or the preexistence of the Cherokee alphabet. Since there are no photographs or reports from the dig, it is impossible to say with any certainty that the stone wasn’t placed by Emmert or someone else at the time.

Conclusions

There’s a fair bit of speculation as to why a forgery would be created. Mainfort and Kwas suggest that Emmert was trying to gain support from his boss, who believed that the mounds were the work of the ancestors of the Cherokee. Another theory has it that Luther Meade Blackman, a Union veteran and local stone cutter, was trying to set Emmert, a former Confederate soldier, up to be fired by planting a fake stone.

I don’t know how much this kind of speculation is going to gain us. My inclination is to rest on Cross’ statements about the stone. It’s a forgery, and finding out who created it and why is less important than making sure its nature is understood.

But let’s set its nature aside for the moment, and look at the arguments that it’s used for. Let’s assume that it does, as Gordon suggests, read “for the Jews.” What does that tell us?

Not nearly as much as many pseudo-archeologists would often like. It would presumably show some contact between the Middle East and North America, but contact does not equal influence. Consider the Maine Penny(above). While its exact provenance is still unknown, it seems likely to be a real Norwegian silver penny. But no one is going to suggest that it proves the Natives Americans are really descendants of Vikings. At most, it’s a sign that the Vikings who may have briefly settled in Vinland might have traded south farther than expected.

“Flint tools found in an English village show ancient humans settled northern Europe 800,000 years ago, far earlier than previously thought, which could prompt scientists to reassess the capabilities of early humans.”

How exciting is that? I think this is what separates religion and science (and history):  Ability to embrace being wrong as a good thing.

The new species of hominid, the evolutionary branch of primates that includes humans, is to be revealed when the two-million-year-old skeleton of a child is unveiled this week.

Scientists believe the almost-complete fossilised skeleton belonged to a previously-unknown type of early human ancestor that may have been a intermediate stage as ape-men evolved into the first species of advanced humans, Homo habilis.

Experts who have seen the skeleton say it shares characteristics with Homo habilis, whose emergence 2.5 million years ago is seen as a key stage in the evolution of our species.

The new discovery could help to rewrite the history of human evolution by filling in crucial gaps in the scientific knowledge.

I haven’t seen too much talk about this in the blogosphere — do you think it’s as big of a find as they’re making it out to be?

Update: Carl Zimmer has an excellent essay in Slate on this.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Can’t wait to see the whole thing!

Update: There’s also a blog about the production.

That may look like a snake, but it’s actually a hawkmoth caterpillar. How could something that amazing be created by “randomness”? It couldn’t, of course. It came about by natural selection, as Richard Dawkins explains in The Greatest Show On Earth:

If you were a bird, out hunting caterpillars in a forest, what would you do if you were suddenly confronted with a snake? Leap back startled, would be my guess, and then give it a wide berth. Well, there is a caterpillar — to be precise, the rear end of a caterpillar — that bears an unmistakable resemblance to a snake…. [it] gains protection because [it] looks like something else.

The birds usually stay away from the tails that look like snakes, and the more closely it resembles a snake head, the less likely it will be eaten. After millions of years of this, you get a snake head. Perhaps not the most efficient of processes, but pretty damned effective over the long haul.

Click here to view the embedded video.

His proof is near death experiences. He says atheists are “very worried” about that evidence.

Anyone here worried about that “evidence”? Anyone? Anyone?

(via)

My friend Hemant Mehta (FriendlyAtheist) had a great interview with blogger Nancy Duke on the Chicago Coalition of Reason billboard, atheism, and religion.  The questions gave away her semi-hostile position, but I feel like Hemant did a great job answering in a positive way:

ND: What is ChriFSMas?
HM: Christmas for the Flying Spaghetti Monster followers.

ND: Are you equating Jesus to a Flying Spaghetti Monster? That doesn’t sound like a “Friendly Atheist.” In fact, it sounds a little mean.
HM: Well, the ChriFSMas thing is just a play on words, but there is a FSM movement where the argument is: There’s as much evidence for a Flying Spaghetti Monster as there is for any other God. So, why not worship the former and not the latter? It’s tongue-in-cheek, but I think it makes a good point. In any case, I think Christmas is a good time for everyone to give presents and spend time with loved ones. It’s not limited to Christians.

Oof.  She’s clearly looking for a fight.  An interesting exchange came near the end:

ND: One more question and then a few quick hits to wrap it up. You mentioned that after research, you couldn’t find evidence to support any of your previous religious ideas. But isn’t that the point? Isn’t faith supposed to be based in a belief of not needing evidence, not needing proof? It wouldn’t be faith if you needed evidence and facts, because that’s called science. So, why use science or atheism or anything else to debunk religion when religion is based on embracing something you cannot prove, i.e. faith?

HM: Yes, relying on faith is the opposite of relying on evidence. However, I was always taught my beliefs as if they were facts. I don’t know of any Christian churches that say, “We believe Jesus resurrected after three days but we don’t actually know that for sure.” No, they say it as if it were true and proven and factual.

I discovered at 14 that my beliefs, which I always believed were factual, were just ideas that people of my faith shared and there was no good reason to believe any of it was true. I guess I discovered that my faith was indeed faith. And I decided I wanted to rely on things that were evidence-based and actually factual. That led me to atheism. It doesn’t say that God doesn’t exist, but atheism says that there’s no good evidence for God’s existence, so why bother believing in one. To me, that’s honest.

Bewildering image and caption:

---

Facts are fun! …
Sometimes.

This meme is what we need to combat in America, and Hemant does a good job explaining why he dismissed faith.  It’s not a reason to belive something is true.  It’s funny that both sides are saying “there’s no evidence for this belief!” but meaning it in completely opposite ways.  It is central to our arguments that people need reasons to assert something as true.  If they don’t accept that basic tenant of thinking, literally any belief is acceptable.

A big distinction that I make time and time again is that we’re never looking for proof – we’re looking for a reasonable amount of evidence to support the level of belief.  It would be a positive step if churches did what Hemant suggested – admit their own uncertainty and instead use stories as non-authoritative metaphors about life.

I’m a bit puzzled – and concerned – that Duke had a small clipart of someone pointing to a chart with the caption: “Facts are fun! … Sometimes.”  What in the world is that supposed to convey?  In context of the discussion – it was right next to the above blockquote – it wasn’t saying that sometimes the world isn’t as we wish it to be.  No, it seems to be dismissing the very value of facts when assessing a worldview.  “Facts are great unless they contradict my beliefs!”

How do you respond to such brazen disregard for logical thinking?

[Update:] You raise the point that this might be a Poe, especially given the “Keeping democracy intact since 1912″ slogan. If it’s satire, it’s remarkably subtle. I’m looking into it. What do you guys think?