Ancient American: Articles Issue 26 page 4

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ANCIENT AMERICAN * ISSUE #26
Christ in North America? ©
(continued)

ment says that the accuser is before the Father daily, making accusations, and that the Messiah is seated again at the right hand of the Father, acting as an advocate, they should, perhaps, reconsider this concept. The
point isn't about to become embroiled in a theological discussion, but to realize that the doctrine pictured on these tablets, does not conform to any Christian religion of this day and age (including 1874). Therefore, the possibility of fraud is

michigan script

Above: A Burrows Cave stone with an unknown style of cuneiform writing identically found on many of the Michigan Tablets. Photograph ©, Triple A Productions.

Below: Examples of cuneiform writing illustrated from a black Assyrian obelisk (10th Century, B.C.) Although they compare favorably with specimens found in Michigan and Illinois, they are not identical. Drawing ©, courtesy of The Story of Mankind, Olive Beaupre Miller, Tangley Oaks Educational Center, Lake Bluff, Illinois.

assyrian cuniform

diminished to nearly zero, by this fact alone."
he Michigan relics came to public attention in 1879 when they were reported in a state newspaper. But for thirty one years before, Father Soper had been collecting them throughout the state. From 1848 to 1920, the relics continued to be accidentally uncovered by local people clearing forests and building roads. Over the course of more than seventy years and across twenty seven counties, thousands of slate, clay and copper tablets continued to emerge. Written testimonies and sworn affidavits accompanying many of the discoveries were officially recorded, mostly by farmers who plowed them up while working their land, and not by trained archaeologists, who were neither available nor open-mindedly disposed enough to even give their authenticity the benefit of a doubt. They claimed then, as they still do, that the Michigan tablets must necessarily be fake, because no one from the Old World could have arrived in America before Christopher Columbus.
Their fossilized mind-set was examined in Ancient American Volume 2, Issue Number 9, May/June 1995, page 31, by Kenneth Moore. He addresses the claims of hoaxing these artifacts by citing the work of two brothers named Scotford, who probably faked a few of their own reproductions of the Michigan tablets. But Moore also points out that although it is reasonable to expect some forgeries with any collection of this size, it must be remembered that when fraudulent duplicates of this kind are made they are usually copied from original artifacts. More revealingly, the first Michigan plates to be found, already in the many hundreds, at least, were already being collected before the Scotford brothers were even born!
y 1920, the scholars of the day had academically crucified several men and women who would not stand down concerning these artifacts. Some colleges and private museums actually destroyed their Michigan tablet collections by casting them into local dumps. In the decades following that wholesale destruction, the Soper-Savage discoveries lapsed into almost total obscurity, and might have been utterly forgotten, save for the independent research of two American writers, Henrietta Mertz and Milton R. Hunter.

The books of Henrietta Mertz continue to be prized by readers inter

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