obsidian
knives from tens of thousands of victims. Further to the south,
in Yucatan, even the Maya (generally characterized as gentle
colonizers, until the decipherment of their written language
showed them otherwise) were prone to ritual evisceration.
The Mauritanians learned to avoid these bloody native peoples
through bitter experience, or were forewarned by information
preserved in the annals of previous Phoenician visitors to the
Americas. In any case, the only route open to the African refugees
was through the mouth of the Mississippi River.
Up it they sailed until they came to the Ohio River. Steering
eastward, they traveled the Little Wabash River into the heart
of southern Illinois, where the peaceful Illini Indians, after
whom the state was later named, welcomed them. Here the Mauritanians
excavated a series of subterranean chambers, into which they
placed their precious cargoes. A long, arduous quest from the
destruction of their homeland and transatlantic crossing culminated
in a prehistoric American refuge, around 45 A.D..
The factual story of Mauritania and the undocumented but possible
consequences of its defeat are remarkably reflected in the thousands
of artifacts found by the man exploring in 1982. The bizarre,
apparently contradictory and generally unrecognizable variety
of cultures his illustrated stones depict has even led many diffusionists--
expecting evidence of Vikings or Celtic Iberians in pre-Columbian
America-- to reject all the items as fakes. The mix of white
European, black African and Middle Eastern |
|
Semitic faces seems incomprehensible to them.
So too the jumble of Egyptian, Jewish and Christian religious
imagery.
Yet, these are the very elements unique to the 1st Century A.D.
refugees from Mauritania. The Mauri were an Indo-European people
heavily influenced by Roman Civilization; hence, the stone portraits
of white men and women dressed in Roman and quasi-Roman styles.
Their religion was an import from the mystery schools of the
Nile Valley, which may explain why persons un-Egyptian in appearance
are shown performing arcane Egyptian rituals.
Less frequently represented are Jews and Christians, who were
welcomed to Mauritania and established themselves there. The
incised stones depict other Semitics-- Phoenicians. They still
lived in North Africa and spoke their language as late as the
8th Century A.D.. The blacks portrayed on artifacts from the
Illinois site often evidence ritual scarification, the same facial
mutilation West African Senegalese still practice. Theirs is
a living tra-
| The Crucifixion is clearly
indicated on this stone from the Illinois collection. |
|
|
dition going back
to 45 A.D., when their ancestors helped build and sail the ships
in which the Mauri leaders sought escape. At least one of the
recovered stones shows a black man wearing a sailor's cap with
a ship in the background.
 his odd, even disparate collection
of peoples and religions depicted on the Illinois stones could
only fit Mauritanian events of the early 1st Century, but they
comprise a nearly perfect fit. And there is another, although
still missing piece of evidence that may some day be the most
dramatic confirmation of the Illinois location's identity as
a pre-Columbian site.
Caligula wanted the Mauritanian treasury; that was why he had
King Ptolemy assassinated. It became one of the chief objectives
of the invasion launched by Claudius shortly thereafter. But
the Romans never found it. The Mauri removed their gold reserves
from Caesarea ahead of the enemy legions until it disappeared
from history.
When ground-penetrating sensors were brought into play at the
suspected location of the subterranean chambers last summer they
detected an unusually large concentration of gold far beneath
the surface. If the instrument readings have been properly interpreted,
then the Illinois site may feature not only unquestionable proof
of overseas' visitors to our continent nearly fifteen centuries
before Columbus. It might also contain the fabulous Mauritanian
treasury, rescued from military disaster in North Africa and
brought across the ocean to eternal safekeeping in distant America,
almost 2,000
years ago.  |
