Ancient Travels to the Americas or a Modern Forgery? Who Made the Bat Creek Inscription?


The Bat Creek stone was discovered in a small mound near Knoxville, Tennessee, USA. The archaeologists who dug it up in 1889 discovered a small stone tablet engraved with several mysterious alphabetic characters.

The stone was discovered by a team led by entomologist Cyrus Thomas from the Smithsonian Bureau of Ethnology's Mound Survey. Eight years earlier, Congress assigned the Institute to complete archaeological excavations. The main goal was to explore the prehistoric mounds. After just a few years of work, archaeologists had collected over 40,000 artifacts and wrote a seven-hundred-page report of their findings, which was presented in 1894.

Thomas wondered if the tablet with the inscription was created in a pre-Columbian language. He was fascinated with the tablet and its secrets, however he didn't have enough knowledge or tools to examine the discovery properly. Now, his reports from the excavations are not considered a serious archaeological resource. Nonetheless, one of his discoveries, known as the Bat Creek stone, helped Thomas leave his mark.

A Strange Language

Soon after the discovery, Cyrus Thomas was convinced that the inscription was created with the Cherokee alphabet. The Cherokee alphabet was created by Sequoyah, a Cherokee silversmith. His English name was George Gist or Guess, and he created a syllabary to write down the Cherokee language. The syllabary was adopted in 1825 by the Cherokee Nation, which was illiterate before that. The syllabary was firstly created with logograms, but with time Sequoyah created a system of 85 characters to write down the Cherokee language. The symbols look similar to Greek, Latin, and Cyrillic.

Thomas’ publication of the inscription in his ‘The Cherokees in Pre-Columbian Times’ (1890).

Thomas’ publication of the inscription in his ‘The Cherokees in Pre-Columbian Times’ (1890). ( Public Domain )

Over seven decades later, in the 1960s, two other researchers, Henriette Mertz and Corey Ayoob, noticed that the inscription looks like ancient Semitic writing. Moreover, the specialist in late Semitic languages, Cyrus Gordon, asserted in the 1970s that the language identified previously as Cherokee is a Paleo-Hebrew language. He dated the inscription to the first or second century AD. He also read the five letters from the right to the left (as it should be read in a Hebrew language) and transcribed LYHWD, meaning ''for Judea''. Other interpretations suggest that the text reads LYHWD(M), ''for the Judeans'', ''only for Judea'', or ''only for the Judeans''. According to these interpretations, the ancient Hebrew language used in the inscription was something between the language used in the Siloam inscription and the Qumran Paleo-Hebrew Leviticus scroll.

Masonic artist's impression of Biblical phrase QDSh LYHWH in Paleo-Hebrew script (Macoy 1868: 134).

Masonic artist's impression of Biblical phrase QDSh LYHWH in Paleo-Hebrew script (Macoy 1868: 134). ( Public Domain )

Another theory suggests that the writing could be a Welsh Coelbren language. According to Alan Wilson, Baram A. Blackett, and Jim Michael, the tablet was inscribed with the ancient Welsh Coelbren alphabet. The researchers read it as ''Madoc the ruler he is''. They suppose that the Bat Creek tumulus was found in the tomb of Prince Madoc, who sailed to America in 1170 AD, or the brother of King Arthur II, who sailed there in 562 AD.

Both of the hypotheses have been well researched but there is no clear answer to this problem. Thus, scientists must look for other ways to find the origins of the artifact.

More Unsolved Features of an Ancient Tablet

The dating of the tablet is also a controversial issue. Radiocarbon dating suggests that it was created between 32 and 769 AD or 45 BC – 200 AD. The dates were made with fragments of artifacts discovered near the tablet. It is impossible to receive satisfactory results of the radiocarbon tests for the tablet because it was touched by too many people and influenced by too many substances after its discovery.

Currently the Bat Creek stone belongs to the Smithsonian Institution in the Department of Anthropology collection. It was loaned to the Museum of the Cherokee Indian in Cherokee and was also on display in the Frank H. McClung Museum at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville for a time.

Bat Creek in Loudon County, Tennessee.

Bat Creek in Loudon County, Tennessee. ( Brian Stansberry/ CC BY 3.0 )

The mound the tablet was found in has been plowed flat, so its location is forgotten - only descriptions of it have survived. According to the notes written by 19th century archaeologists, the Bat Creek Mound contained 9 burials. The owner of the land cut down trees growing on the mound 40 years before the excavations began. He discovered that something interesting was located under the trees. Years later, archaeologists found out that he was right. The roots of the trees entered the tombs and went down to the skeletons.

Ancient Travelers to the Americas

Legends about ancient travelers to the Americas have not been accepted by conventional history. Apart from medieval Norse expeditions, Polynesians, Japanese, and other peoples supposedly reached the Americas before Columbus did. It has even been proposed that in ancient times the Phoenicians may have traveled to lands that were later called the “New World.” This civilization could have brought other Semitic cultures on their ships - a possible explanation for the inscription of the Bat Creek tablet.

Not all researchers are convinced on the antiquity of the Black Creek tablet. They claim that it could have been created by people in the 19th century. There are plenty of reasons behind this view as well. Some believe that it could have been related to the growing influence of Masons.

Apart from this, many theories related to the Bat Creek tablet suggest that it was meant to confirm theories about the origins of the early inhabitants of the Americas. Supporters of this hypothesis say that Europeans wanted to prove that the land colonized by them belonged to them in antiquity too. Faking evidence to support their ownership could be a possibility. Unfortunately, as long as the mound remains lost and no more evidence appears, it seems that the problem of the Bat Creek stone will remain unsolved.

By Natalia Klimczak

Top Image: A reflected light image of the controversial Bat Creek Stone. Source: Scott Wolter


The Bat Creek Stone by J. Huston McCulloch, available from:

The Bat Creek Stone. The inscription of a Judean fleeing the AD70 desolation found in Tennessee? Available from:

Stone inscription found in Tennessee proves that America was discovered 1, 500 years before Columbus, By Dr. Cyrus Gordon, USA, Roy Bongartz, USA, available from:

The Bat Creek stone revisited: a reply to Mainfort and Kwas in American Antiquity, by J. Huston McCulloch, available from:


Everything that doesn't fit within academias preconceived notions is automatically considered a forgery. Western institutions have agendas to sell to their students in order to keep the lies afloat. Most likely the first explorers to America were the Chinese on the West Coast, most notably California where there is a stone wall in the hills outside of San Francisco. On the East Coast Runes have been found in Minnesota, New Brunswick, Maine and New Hampshire, and elsewhere with Hooked X's that tell of Viking or Norse explorers landing here. We all know the lies peddled to Americans about Columbus, who NEVER landed on the Continental United States. He maybe got to Dominica or Cuba. But NEVER , EVER what is now the USA.

I don't think schools are maliciously avoiding the subject of non Europeans ever settling in North America.

American schools teach us that viking incursions into eastern Canada predate any European settlements. No one is whitewashing the important historical viking settlements that have been found in Newfoundland or New England.

If anything your comment may be slightly offensive to Native Americans for ignoring their arrival. Native Americans predate all other population arrivals, even the Chinese people you mention. And no American textbook that I know of ever denies Native Americans from already preexisting in North America. Yes, the eugenics that took place after the Europeans colonized North America was awful, but that's another topic entirely.

All this information is available in textbooks, so I don't quite understand your grievance.

Never mentioned The Indigenous People because they were/have been here for 10000+ years or longer. You misunderstood my comments. American universities slight them all the time and don't respect the Indigenous as a whole.

If you think thats a slight, thats on you. Americans tend to ignore the natives here, I see it all the time here in Arizona. America needs to correct the record and give those here before the Chinese or Vikings more respect. And remove Columbus day from the record.

Well,Jason the Realist, the United Stars did not exist in1492,America was named much later by another person, and no history book I have ever read or heard of suggest that Columbus and his band of sea pirates landed anywhere close to the northern American continent. He made the history books because he was the first person in a LITERATE AGE that made the journey across the Atlantic. He took the trip and talked himself up. It may be the Chinese, Phonecians, Irish priests or whomever non-native persons who first set foot upon this continent, but we have NO HARD PROOF, just a few possible clues and apcriphal legends. So you may not like Columbus, but he made history for a reason, reasons you would do well to brush up on........

So many different historical references being ignored. For example there are never any mentions or references to the historical accounts that have been shared by the indigenous peoples of Canada in any of this “Coming to North America”. 

New World discovery stops at the Canadian border and is not allowed to go any farther South. I have found some amazing accounts coming from North of the Border in my quest to prove historical Pre-Columbian trading routes by Sea around the North Pole via the Circumpolar Currents.

Take the Mystery of the ancient Copper Mines in Michigan near Lake Superior. When Henry Hudson first entered Hudson’s bay to start his Fur Trade he discovered that the Indigenous already had an ancient well established network of trade routes by Canoe and Portage from Lake Superior to the Arctic Ocean. WHY?

The explanation shared by the Indigenous stories were that these routes had been used for ages by their ancestors who traded Copper to the “Red Paint People" from the Sea. They apparently called them the Red Paint People because these people from the Sea had a Ritual of covering their Dead with Red Ocher before Burial.

Where in the World have we seen this before? The deception here would be the almost forced use of the Mercator Projection in all studies about the “Discovery of America” and the premise that all Early Man were "Hydrophobic". If one was to use a Polar Projection of the Arctic Sea the Earth becomes a whole lot smaller and the very viable early intercontinental travel by Sea becomes not quite such a huge challenge.



Next article