New evidence links Early Bronze Age Ireland to the Southeastern United States
May 23, 2011
After years of speculating, the petroglyphs on the Reinhardt Boulder have been found to be identical to petroglyph boulders in County Kerry, Ireland Credit: Joe Kitchens
WALESKA, GA – May 24, 2011 (Examiner.com) For eleven years an enigmatic, 11 feet long boulder has been on display in the Hall of Ancients in the Funk Heritage Museum on the campus of Reinhardt University. Thousands of people viewed the boulder. All thought it was something very “special.” Few visitors could make sense out of the concentric rings, circles with crosses, stars and something that looks like a dogwood flower or primitive rose. These carved symbols are known to archaeologists as petroglyphs.
In 2008, Dr, Joseph Kitchens, Director of the Funk Museum, became determined to discover the meaning of the boulder in the heart of his museum. He began contacting archaeologists, petroglyph experts, and Native American scholars in hope of finding an answer. Although he modestly denies it, Kitchens himself, became knowledgeable on the petroglyphs of the Southern Highlands in the process of seeking answers to his own questions. He stated that one of his dreams is obtain more petroglyphic boulders that are now exposed to the elements, and put them safely on display in the Funk Museum.
One petroglyph consultant wrote a report interpreting the petroglyphs as being symbols associated with the Canaanite god, Baal. Another consultant interpreted the boulder as a star chart. It may be a star chart, but the researcher could not determine for which two nights of the year, the star chart would be accurate. Another expert decided that the boulder was a map of Cherokee towns. The only problem is that Cherokees did not arrive in the region where the boulder was found until after the American Revolution. Only a couple hundred Cherokees lived within 20 miles of this boulder and they did not live in towns. The petroglyphs appear to date from long before the 1700s, anyway.
In early 2011, Kitchens made contact with two organizations that were composed of innovative, but serious researchers. The American Petroglyphic Society is composed primarily of scientists and archaeologists. Its past focus has often been the petroglyphs of the Southwestern Desert, but more recently interest as spread to all of the Americas. Kitchens, also contacted several members of the People of One Fire, an alliance of Native American scholars (and their friends.) Members of the Society of Georgia Archaeology have researched some of the petroglyph boulders discovered in northern Georgia.
The Creek Indians have lived in Georgia for at least 2,200 years. Their ancestors built the state's famous mounds. Creek scholars told Kitchens that most of the designs on the Reinhardt boulder were not now part of their artistic tradition, and that in the past, the Creeks were more into carving realistic stone statues, not petroglyphs. They did notice a small cross within a circle, which is an important religious symbol for both the Creeks and the Yuchi's.
The Yuchi Indians have probably lived in Georgia at least several hundred years longer than the Creeks. Yuchi's in Oklahoma and Virginia sent word to Kitchens that the concentric circles WERE part of their artistic tradition. They symbolized "time portals" or "star gates." One mentioned a realistic stone tablet found in southeastern Tennessee, which he thought portrayed a Yuchi soldiers wearing a kilt with concentric circles on it.
Broadening the scope of the research to a national scale has resulted in the riddle of the Reinhardt Boulder finally being solved this week. North American researchers studied information and photographs on a Northern Irish website, www.IrishMegaliths.org.uk. This web site contains beautiful photography by Ken Williams of Ireland.
Williams' photographs describe petroglyphic boulders in western Ireland that are almost identical to petroglyphic boulders in the northern part of the State of Georgia. There is a boulder on the Dingle Peninsula of County Kerry that has the same glyphs as the Reinhardt boulder and is approximately the same size. The Reinhardt Boulders’ concentric circles are a common theme of petroglyphic boulders all along the western Irish coast. However, the answer to the riddle of the Reinhardt Petroglyph has created many more questions about North America’s history before Christopher Columbus’s voyages.
The petroglyphs on the Reinhardt Boulder are identical to those found on boulders along the Atlantic Coast of Ireland that date from the Early Bronze Age. The Irish petroglyphs were carved by non-Celts at least 1,500 to 500 years before the use of a unique form of Celtic writing, known as the Ogam Script. Irish researchers are not certain of the original meaning of the concentric circles, but many of the petroglyphs seem associated with graves.
Recent research in Canada, England and Wales have provided evidence of a Pan-Atlantic culture that thrived from around 4,000 BC to 1,600 BC. For 30 years, Professor Gordon Freeman of the University of Alberta studied the hundreds of stone circles of the Canadian Prairie Provinces. He then shifted his research to stone circle sites in Wales and western England. The surprising results of his work have proved that there were “Stonehenge-like” observatories in North America at least 500 years before they appeared in Great Britain and Ireland. The earliest stonehenges on both islands are identical to the older ones in Canada.
During the Neolithic (New Stone) Age and Bronze Age, Ireland and Britain were not inhabited by Celts. At the time of the Roman conquest of southern Britain, northern Scotland and the western edge of Ireland were still occupied by indigenous peoples. The Irish Celts called them Fomhoire, which means “from the sea.” They were described as having black hair, dark bronze skin and faces very different from either Northern Europeans or the Romans. They apparently resembled American Indians. These peoples were also portrayed by the Irish Celts and Romans as being expert sailors, who regularly made long voyages to fish, hunt seal & whales or trade.
Even during the Bronze Age, tribes living on the fringe of Europe possessed very few bronze tools or weapons. They might have traded copper to the more advanced societies farther south, but the bronze was smelted elsewhere. The stone tools and weapons of the non-Celtic Irish would have looked little different than those of eastern North America at that time. Pottery in both regions would have been made by hand.
The name of County Kerry is the English version of the Gaelic place name Ciarrai. Ciarrai is derived from the Old Gaelic name, Ciarraighe, or “People of Ciar.” It was an indigenous tribe that occupied the southwestern extreme of Ireland after most of Ireland’s indigenous peoples had been replaced or absorbed by the Celts. “Ciar” means black or dark brown. The word is still used in modern Irish for a person with dark complexion, like Native Americans. The original Ciar left County Kerry and migrated to an unknown land.
The first Celts arrived in Ulster (Northern Ireland) around 700 BC. More Celtic tribes arrived around 500 BC, 300 BC and 100 BC. Researchers theorize that at some time around 400-300 BC, the Ciar People found themselves between “the Celts and the Deep Blue Sea.” The petroglyphs suggest that at least some found their way to North America. It is quite possible that they had already been sailing to North America to mine copper. Enormous, rectangular bricks of pure copper have been found in ancient copper mines near the Great Lakes. These bricks weigh several tons and therefore would be far too large to transport by canoe.
Genetic research sponsored by Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland has recently determined that at least some indigenous Irish women stayed and bore children with the Celts. The modern Irish not only carry Celtic DNA but also maternal DNA similar to remnant pre-Celtic populations in the Pyrenees Mountains of the Iberian Peninsula and a Pre-Scandinavian population that survives in the mountains between Norway and Sweden.
For decades, some archaeologists have observed that the copper ingots, tools and weapons of the Southeastern Indians were almost identical to their counterparts used in western and northern Europe during the Copper and Bronze Ages. The presence of identical petroglyphs in both Ireland and the State of Georgia might explain the similarity of copper artifacts. However, most archaeologists will not probably be fully convinced of contacts between North America and Ireland until human remains are found in the New World with burial artifacts that clearly came from the Old World.
[As a matter of fact, NO that doesn't help, either!!-DD]
The petroglyphs were found on the extreme southwestern end of Ireland, its closest point to the United States. Credit: Map by Wikidpedia - notes by Richard Thornton
All the designs found on this Dingle petroglyph boulder can be found on the Reinhardt Petroglyph Boulder.. Credit: Wikipedia Commons
Both boulders are covered with concentric circles of varying sizes and number of rings. Credit: Irish Megaglyphs, Joe Kitchens, Richard Thornton
The Reinhardt Boulder contains concentric rings, circles with crosses in them, stars and a flower-like symbol. Credit: Richard Thornton
This enhanced photo of the Reinhardt Boulder shows three sizes of rings, plus a six pointed star. Credit: Richard Thornton
The circle with a cross in it is also a common feature on Irish petroglyphs. Credit: Richard Thornton
The Funk Heritage Museum is Georgia's official Native American and Applachian Heritage Museum Credit: Richard Thornton
On the far left is a soldier wearing a kilt with multiple concentric rings on it. Note that several soldiers are wearing helmets with copper crests. The copper crests have been found. Credit: Richard Thornton
The soldiers as depicted are typically Libyan (North African) and can be matched to historical records from Spain and Egypt as well as to Saharan rock art-DD
My reply to Drusin upon receipt of the link was as follows:
In 2008, Dr, Joseph Kitchens, Director of the Funk Museum, became determined to discover the meaning of the boulder in the heart of his museum. He began contacting archaeologists, petroglyph experts, and Native American scholars in hope of finding an answer. Although he modestly denies it, Kitchens himself, became knowledgeable on the petroglyphs of the Southern Highlands in the process of seeking answers to his own questions. He stated that one of his dreams is obtain more petroglyphic boulders that are now exposed to the elements, and put them safely on display in the Funk Museum.
One petroglyph consultant wrote a report interpreting the petroglyphs as being symbols associated with the Canaanite god, Baal. Another consultant interpreted the boulder as a star chart. It may be a star chart, but the researcher could not determine for which two nights of the year, the star chart would be accurate. Another expert decided that the boulder was a map of Cherokee towns. The only problem is that Cherokees did not arrive in the region where the boulder was found until after the American Revolution. Only a couple hundred Cherokees lived within 20 miles of this boulder and they did not live in towns. The petroglyphs appear to date from long before the 1700s, anyway.
In early 2011, Kitchens made contact with two organizations that were composed of innovative, but serious researchers. The American Petroglyphic Society is composed primarily of scientists and archaeologists. Its past focus has often been the petroglyphs of the Southwestern Desert, but more recently interest as spread to all of the Americas. Kitchens, also contacted several members of the People of One Fire, an alliance of Native American scholars (and their friends.) Members of the Society of Georgia Archaeology have researched some of the petroglyph boulders discovered in northern Georgia.
The Creek Indians have lived in Georgia for at least 2,200 years. Their ancestors built the state's famous mounds. Creek scholars told Kitchens that most of the designs on the Reinhardt boulder were not now part of their artistic tradition, and that in the past, the Creeks were more into carving realistic stone statues, not petroglyphs. They did notice a small cross within a circle, which is an important religious symbol for both the Creeks and the Yuchi's.
The Yuchi Indians have probably lived in Georgia at least several hundred years longer than the Creeks. Yuchi's in Oklahoma and Virginia sent word to Kitchens that the concentric circles WERE part of their artistic tradition. They symbolized "time portals" or "star gates." One mentioned a realistic stone tablet found in southeastern Tennessee, which he thought portrayed a Yuchi soldiers wearing a kilt with concentric circles on it.
Broadening the scope of the research to a national scale has resulted in the riddle of the Reinhardt Boulder finally being solved this week. North American researchers studied information and photographs on a Northern Irish website, www.IrishMegaliths.org.uk. This web site contains beautiful photography by Ken Williams of Ireland.
Williams' photographs describe petroglyphic boulders in western Ireland that are almost identical to petroglyphic boulders in the northern part of the State of Georgia. There is a boulder on the Dingle Peninsula of County Kerry that has the same glyphs as the Reinhardt boulder and is approximately the same size. The Reinhardt Boulders’ concentric circles are a common theme of petroglyphic boulders all along the western Irish coast. However, the answer to the riddle of the Reinhardt Petroglyph has created many more questions about North America’s history before Christopher Columbus’s voyages.
The petroglyphs on the Reinhardt Boulder are identical to those found on boulders along the Atlantic Coast of Ireland that date from the Early Bronze Age. The Irish petroglyphs were carved by non-Celts at least 1,500 to 500 years before the use of a unique form of Celtic writing, known as the Ogam Script. Irish researchers are not certain of the original meaning of the concentric circles, but many of the petroglyphs seem associated with graves.
Recent research in Canada, England and Wales have provided evidence of a Pan-Atlantic culture that thrived from around 4,000 BC to 1,600 BC. For 30 years, Professor Gordon Freeman of the University of Alberta studied the hundreds of stone circles of the Canadian Prairie Provinces. He then shifted his research to stone circle sites in Wales and western England. The surprising results of his work have proved that there were “Stonehenge-like” observatories in North America at least 500 years before they appeared in Great Britain and Ireland. The earliest stonehenges on both islands are identical to the older ones in Canada.
During the Neolithic (New Stone) Age and Bronze Age, Ireland and Britain were not inhabited by Celts. At the time of the Roman conquest of southern Britain, northern Scotland and the western edge of Ireland were still occupied by indigenous peoples. The Irish Celts called them Fomhoire, which means “from the sea.” They were described as having black hair, dark bronze skin and faces very different from either Northern Europeans or the Romans. They apparently resembled American Indians. These peoples were also portrayed by the Irish Celts and Romans as being expert sailors, who regularly made long voyages to fish, hunt seal & whales or trade.
Even during the Bronze Age, tribes living on the fringe of Europe possessed very few bronze tools or weapons. They might have traded copper to the more advanced societies farther south, but the bronze was smelted elsewhere. The stone tools and weapons of the non-Celtic Irish would have looked little different than those of eastern North America at that time. Pottery in both regions would have been made by hand.
The name of County Kerry is the English version of the Gaelic place name Ciarrai. Ciarrai is derived from the Old Gaelic name, Ciarraighe, or “People of Ciar.” It was an indigenous tribe that occupied the southwestern extreme of Ireland after most of Ireland’s indigenous peoples had been replaced or absorbed by the Celts. “Ciar” means black or dark brown. The word is still used in modern Irish for a person with dark complexion, like Native Americans. The original Ciar left County Kerry and migrated to an unknown land.
The first Celts arrived in Ulster (Northern Ireland) around 700 BC. More Celtic tribes arrived around 500 BC, 300 BC and 100 BC. Researchers theorize that at some time around 400-300 BC, the Ciar People found themselves between “the Celts and the Deep Blue Sea.” The petroglyphs suggest that at least some found their way to North America. It is quite possible that they had already been sailing to North America to mine copper. Enormous, rectangular bricks of pure copper have been found in ancient copper mines near the Great Lakes. These bricks weigh several tons and therefore would be far too large to transport by canoe.
Genetic research sponsored by Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland has recently determined that at least some indigenous Irish women stayed and bore children with the Celts. The modern Irish not only carry Celtic DNA but also maternal DNA similar to remnant pre-Celtic populations in the Pyrenees Mountains of the Iberian Peninsula and a Pre-Scandinavian population that survives in the mountains between Norway and Sweden.
For decades, some archaeologists have observed that the copper ingots, tools and weapons of the Southeastern Indians were almost identical to their counterparts used in western and northern Europe during the Copper and Bronze Ages. The presence of identical petroglyphs in both Ireland and the State of Georgia might explain the similarity of copper artifacts. However, most archaeologists will not probably be fully convinced of contacts between North America and Ireland until human remains are found in the New World with burial artifacts that clearly came from the Old World.
[As a matter of fact, NO that doesn't help, either!!-DD]
The soldiers as depicted are typically Libyan (North African) and can be matched to historical records from Spain and Egypt as well as to Saharan rock art-DD
Suggested by the author:
- The Funk Heritage Museum: Reinhardt University
- Who built the ancient stone architecture of Canada & New England ? - Part 1
- Who built the ancient stone architecture of Canada and New England? - Part 2
- Who are the Yuchi?
- The ancient stone forts of Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky
My reply to Drusin upon receipt of the link was as follows:
There are several things I have written about which are conglomerated together here: this makes one lump where I have several articles. In particular this relates to the postings I have on "Two Times Atlantis" "The Algonquins and the Red Paint People" and the Adenas as =Foemoers or Legendary Irish Giants probably the same as the Giants of the Bible (= Foimhoire )--I am unfamiliar with the expert cited and his work but I certainly would like to know where he gets his stuff since it's the same thing as I've been saying for the past 25 years at least (in smaller chunks) I rather suspect he is talking about some of the same things as Barry Fell did only not using Fell's chronology, because that would be approximately how I came about to say it, although both of us are plainly speaking about additional elements. The concentric ring pattern is something I have been talking about in connection to Atlantis for a long time now. [it comes from Donnelly, 1882, including also the circle-cross]
Best Wishes, Dale D.
PS, the Yuchi are a Siouxian nation from the Eastern US and thought to be transplanted.
Can you post links to where Yuchi/Euchee are Siouan? I have only seen information that they speak a language isolate and have an oral tradition of island hopping before they came to the SE. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteI said that in my reply before I saw the "prequel" article which said Yuchi was a language isolate: actually that sounds MUCH more likely to me. I shall check up on the literature. Thanks for the suggestion.
ReplyDeleteBest Wishes, Dale D.
To quote the Wikipedia:
ReplyDeleteYuchi is classified as a language isolate because it is not known to be related to any other language. Various linguists have made claims, however, that the language has a distant relationship with the Siouan family: Sapir in 1921 and 1929, Haas in 1951, and 1964, Elmendorf in 1964, Rudus in 1974, and Crawford in 1979.[4]
4. Mithun, Marianne. The Languages of Native North America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuchi_language
I think the circle and crosses resemble images of back to back bows with an arrow each. On the petroglyph found in America the arrows are off to the right far from the larger, perhaps secured zones of circles to the left. "x marks the spot" comes to mind.
ReplyDeleteThe Quartered Circle is the orientation of the individual in Time (as a calender: the 4 seasons and the cycle of the year) and Space (as the four directions and the horizon.) It's also a popular symbol with the Mississippian Indians who tell of a red head who came from the North, wore his hair in a single braid (Redhorn)and begat two heroic sons who kept being reincarnated to help the tribe. Also big in Siberian Shamanism :~)
DeleteYou may be right, but in that case the arrowheads are usually also indicated. What you are describing is very like the old form of the "Sign of Neith" which is evidently indicated in Platos's story of Atlantis as also being a marker for the "Athenians"-the sign is sometimes interpreted as "A shield with two spears" but it has also been said to represent "Two bows with crossed arrows". as such either interpretation of the sign is as a military emblem.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, the Atlantean circle-cross is related to the design of their capital city (as discussed by Donnelly in a pretty convincing chapter "The Pyramid, the Cross and the Garden of Eden")and it has a separate symbolism attached to the concept of the "Omphalos" or Center of the World.
Later on the Egyptians were slightly bothered by a goddess using a military emblem and they reinterpreted her sign as being a shuttlecock. It just so happens that fits Athena also.
Needless to say the actual settlement plan as a series of concentric circular walls and ditches was reproduced many many times, probably hundreds or thousands of times; and one of the later versions familiar to everybody is the typical midieval European castle with a moat.
Best Wishes, Dale D.
In Re Anonymous on the Quartered circle, yes, you get that meaning in Germany, too: but it only works in certain latitudes and the circle-cross is a universal symbol. Donnelly included the argument that the circle-cross is stated to represent the garden of Eden, and/or an Island Paradise of some other name. And really in that sense it is a sort of a mandala, also representing the four directions ("The four winds") In the case of Plato's description of Atlantis, the circle-city is also quartered by a cross, and eventually I was going to get around to writing about that here. The multiple concentric circles as representing an Omphalos also figures into that, in that it represents a certain stage of development, a certain mindset, and a certain World View: all of these things are tied in together and interrelated. And the American Indians used it in that sense also, especially if the Mayans used Mandalas (see today's posting on that)
ReplyDeleteThe thing is that several symbols might have multiple meanings and you've got to be careful. The circle-cross is also one tradtional symbol meaning either the sun or the Earth And it is the latter sense which is more tied in to the Atlantis discussion.
Best Wishes, Dale D.
PS: 1) I really would prefer it if you did not submit comments anonymously, and 2) For some reason Blogger will not allow me to "Reply to replies". Therefore when somebody else does it, I am forced to leave a new comment as I am doing now. Makes cross-referencing that much more confusing. Just saying that so's you'd know that was going on, too.