Sounds like a fraud to me, but some people still say it's possibly true and evidence of diffusion.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Lunas_Decalogue_Stone

Quote:

The first recorded mention of the stone is in 1933, when professor Frank Hibben, an archaeologist from the University of New Mexico, saw it. Hibben was led to the stone by an unnamed guide who claimed to have found it as a boy in the 1880s. The 1880s date of discovery is important to those who believe that the stone was inscribed by a lost tribe of Israel. The Paleo-Hebrew script is practically identical to the Phoenician script, which was known at the time, thus not precluding the possibility of fraud.


What do you all think?

Just another forgery like all of these things. This link even suggests it to be a nineteenth century mormon forgery:

http://www.badarchaeology.net/forgotten/los_lunas.php

michaelm (not logged in) Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Just another forgery like all of these things.
> This link even suggests it to be a nineteenth
> century mormon forgery:
>
> http://www.badarchaeology.net/forgotten/los_lunas.
> php


Pretty poor mormon forgery as the script type and grammar would date the rock to middle east scribes having left for the new world after the nephite nation was already toast.

This site believes there's some credibility to it.

http://www.econ.ohio-state.edu/jhm/arch/loslunas.html

Quote:
"At present the inscription itself is badly chalked and scrubbed up. However, George Moorehouse compares the surviving weathering on the inscription to that on a nearby modern graffito dating itself to 1930. He concludes that the Decalogue inscription is clearly many times older than this graffito, and that 500 to 2000 years would not be an unreasonable estimate of its age."



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/28/2011 03:40PM by Jesus Smith.

The folks at bad archaeology give a pretty good analysis of the script and problems with it.

Mormon forgery? I don't know. Did Hoffman have an ancestor with the Mormon Batallion? (joking)

Thanks, MM. I think between what Cabbie wrote below, and they say there, it looks very fraudy.

This line from badarch sums it up for me:

"The writer also changed the word order from the original Hebrew, something a person who believed in the inspired and unchangeable nature of the supposed words of Moses would never have done."

Yes, the unchangeable part makes so much sense that it would have to be a forgery or a retarded hebrew immigrant.

i believe that even hugh nibley, the arch-apologist himself, was somewhat skeptical of this find. i don't have any quotes off hand though.

Of course his fan base believes him to be the original prototype for Indian Jones....

My views on diffusionism (other than Vikings in Newfoundland and possibly Polynesians on the Pacific Coast) are well known...

I'll jump in a little on Hibben shortly, as well as the Los Lunas Stone, but here's the word from the Smithsonian on the subject:

http://www.godandscience.org/cults/smithsonian.html

>Reports of findings of ancient Egyptian, Hebrew, and other Old World writings in the New World in pre-Columbian contexts have frequently appeared in newspapers, magazines, and sensational books. None of these claims has stood up to examination by reputable scholars. No inscriptions using Old World forms of writing have been shown to have occurred in any part of the Americas before 1492 except for a few Norse rune stones which have been found in Greenland.

What I found somewhat interesting--I just don't want to waste a lot of time debunking known frauds--is the way Wiki's entries on the subjects of Hibben have been repeatedly edited (my term for LDS sorts who do this one is the archaic "Mormonites" because of their metaphorical resemblance to termites attacking the supports of otherwise sound structures).

Compare what's written in Wiki now with this one I dug off a document in my files I labeled "Los Lunas Debunked."

>Most modern scholars question much of Hibben's research today because of his work with alleged pre-Clovis sites. In at least two separate incidents, Hibbens fabricated some or all of his archaeological data to support his pre-Clovis migration theory. [2][3] These missteps call the rest of his work into question, and, for many, undermine the validity of his claims about the Los Lunas Decalogue Stone.(footnoted)

This one is no longer in the Wiki entry on the stone, nor is the following...

>Though the stone is sometimes cited by Latter Day Saint laypeople as evidence that supports the existence of the Nephites in Mormon archaeology, FARMS, a scholarly group associated with BYU, has no scholarship dealing with the site and does not make any evidentiary use of it, and Hugh Nibley, a professor at Brigham Young University and an apologist for the LDS Church, denounced it as a transparent fraud in an official LDS publication:[6]

>Much study and care went into the preparation of this "ancient Hebrew inscription" near Los Lunas, New Mexico, yet a cursory glance was enough to reveal the crisp freshness of the newly-cut letters. Numerous other flaws appeared upon closer inspection. To anyone not determined to accept this inscription as genuine, it furnishes an interesting illustration of the pains to which people will go to produce a convincing-looking antique, and the impossibility of doing so without immense and laborious preparation.

One other scholar besides Hibben whose reputation suffered over defending Los Lunas--and the Kensington Runestone--was Cyrus Gordon. I invite readers to review that subject at their leisure; right now, the biggest defenders of Gordon's "finds" include Wayne May--a compadre of Rod Meldrum--and the publisher of "Ancient American" magazine, a fringe publication that focuses on such pseudo-archaeological claims. And yes, May is a Mormon...

One of the most devastating debunkings of the Los Lunas Stone I found came from what is now a non-working link... I'll put the link here in along with the extraction I copy-and-pasted to a text document, and I would be grateful if someone can find the original if it exists elsewhere... And I would invite any linguistic experts to chime in as well...

http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=78

>Concerning the above, we received the following feedback recently:

>I am a very experienced student of Hebrew in all it's forms dating from at least 1000 B.C. until today. Since my birth I have been speaking Hebrew with my father who was born in Israel. Since then, I have studied the language from both a religious and secular perspective and have always been building on my knowledge of it. I have been searching the web for interesting ancient translations, and despite the seemingly inexperienced writing style on the Los Lunas tablet, I decided to translate it to see what it would yield.

>I am not an expert on aging, so I cannot date this archaeologically, but linguistically, some of the characters used could not possibly have been used by any Hebrew (or other Jew /Christian) people from 2000 years ago.

>I'm open minded to the idea of ancient Hebrews somehow making it to North America, but this tablet has several errors no self respecting Hebrew-writer would make.

>1. Line 2: the last word "panai" has an extra "h"- which never was used anywhere in the bible or otherwise.

>2. Line 3: the author seems to make up a character for "samech" here- uses what seems to be a variation on his version of "mem".

>3. Line 4: an "alef" is used in the word "zakhor" to represent the place of the English or European "A"- which tells me the author was most likely a Christian, or at least someone who spoke English or a similar language. I guarantee you this would never have been done by anyone who was educated in Hebrew- it is my guess (simply by having done lots of translation/transliteration myself w/different techniques) that the author was using an alphabet key to help him translate from a transliteration in either English or another European language, since copying the original Hebrew text would have helped him avoid that mistake. Adding an "alef" to a Hebrew word (at any time at least since c. 2000 bc) would change the entire structure of the word root- and besides, it would be redundant- since this author seems to be using it to represent the (kamaz) in the hebrew word "zachor", it would not need an extra "alef"- nor was this technique ever used anywhere in the bible.

>4. Line 5: The word for "in order that..." - (last on the line) in Hebrew- "l'ma'an" (L-M-'-N) is spelled here- "l'ma'al" (L-M-'L)- which actually means "above" in Hebrew. I'm sure it's just an error, but only one that someone not familiar with chiseling these characters would make, since this letter is slightly similar to a "nun", but this is a very common word in the bible... it would be like you or me accidentally spelling "MAN" as "MAL"- except this person was carving it out slowly... so you'd really have to think you were doing it right for a while.... and, even when he was done, he could have easily altered it to be a "nun" (more or less :) - so he probably approved of the final copy.

>The rest of the text is more or less accurate, but (as I'm sure you know) Greek letters are used here to replace some of the ancient Hebrew characters that are more intricate to draw, so it seems likely to me that the author did not know them (b/c why would he settle for Greek letters which were not the language of the bible- if he was a Jew, "lashon hakodesh" [the holy tongue] would have been a priority) - thus I feel it is likely that he thought his audience would not know the difference.

>Again, I truly am open minded to the possibility of authentic ancient Hebrew writing arriving somehow in the new world.... but I would stake my life on the idea that this stone was not chiselled by an ancient Hebrew, or an experienced writer of the ancient Hebrew letter system, and probably not even by a Jew.

'Nuff...

SL Cabbie Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> FARMS, a scholarly group associated with BYU, has
> no scholarship dealing with the site and does not
> make any evidentiary use of it, and Hugh Nibley, a
> professor at Brigham Young University and an
> apologist for the LDS Church, denounced it as a
> transparent fraud in an official LDS
> publication

Okay. well if Hugh said so, well, that's good enough for me. lol ;-)

I doubt it's legit. I grew up in Albuquerque and have heard about this most of my life. I never took the time to hike out and actually look at it but I have a friend who is also an author of local history who has made a few hikes out that way, he simply treats it as a cuirosity.

There have been a myriad of results on the translation, none of which are consistant. The one I tend to like the most says that it is a report of a phonecian sailor who setteled in the Rio Puerco valley to the west. Reportedly he and his crew were blown off course and were shipwrecked (presumably on the Atlantic or Gulf Coast) and made thier way west to avoid hostile natives. All but himself were kiled and he wanted to leave the marker as a testament to his life and the friendlieness or the natives of what is now the Rio Grande valley to the east who helped him.

Even if it's a hoax it sure beats some stupid story about it being the 10 comandments or an even stupider record of the Nephites.

Albuquerque and have never heard of it. I thought that was weird since my grandmother was such a history buff.

BTW, luckychucky, I went to West Mesa and was in Volcano Cliffs ward in Taylor Ranch. Is it possible we know each other?

Maybe so. I Graduated from Manzano and whent to Edgewood cedar crest ward growing up. I was in sage ward from late in 06 till the end of 07. Its pretty likely that if you didn't know me you knew my ex wife she was a mustang as well.

I just did a quick Google, and from what I read, the Phoenicians were a Canaanite people, but their religion was definitely pagan...

http://www.123helpme.com/view.asp?id=23531

It's a common tactic of some LDS apologists to suggest that Phoenicia may have been where the maritime technology existed that permitted Lehi's voyage to the New World...

But with this one, we're back to my charge against the BOM, which is that the Hebrews had no history of seafaring or maritime technology sufficient for a transoceanic voyage.

Of course without a compass, nobody but the Polynesians did either; the Vikings probably relied on sailing along the polar ice for their expeditions to Iceland, Greenland, and Newfoundland.

Thats the point. The alternate translator tried to demonstrate that the engravings werent hebrew and had nothing at all to do with the decalouge. Personally I think it's a hoax on all accounts.

Personally I find the nearby petroglyph national monument of far greater interest compared to the hoax stone and stupid mormon fairy tales. http://www.nps.gov/petr/index.htm The park has real engravings that help us to understand the history of the people who were actually in the area for the last several thousand years.

http://www.adventureroad.com/Rock%20Art/Images/Petro5.jpg

I haven't seen enough of the discussion on this one (or interpretations of the geological record to see how "desert varnish" ages) to determine whether this one is bogus or not.

If it is, it's probably unreasonable to suggest the etching is less than around 10,000 years old. Apolosgist claims that it's evidence for the BOM dating to Anasazi times are nonsense.

I understand there are few other petroglyps depicting mammoths and mastodons...



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/31/2011 01:47AM by SL Cabbie.

That is very interesting. Prehaps it is a legit clovis period petroglyph. I don't know alot about rock art other than alot of times the petina or varnish that was used as a medium is a fesult of lava cooling and is therefore a different color and texture that still allows the drawings to remain visible even after years of nature. I know the rangers at petroglyph monument are far more concerned about acid rain and other damage resulting from polution than they are about the long term forces of nature.

I really don't understand why so many people are more prone to care about poorly writen fairy tales like the BofM when there are so many examples of what was actually happening on this continent before Europeans got here. What makes it even harder to understand is the evidence left by the original inhabitants presents a much more interesting picture of life and civilization in the Americas than Joe blows con mans fiction ever would have.

It is also insulting when you think about it. The people that would rather believe the churchs bullshit are basicly trying to say that there is no way this place could have been civilized without old world intervention. Its such a crock, I live within a few hours of several world heritage sites that prove the first inhabitants were doing quite well in thier development, they had irrigation, archetecture, mathematics and extensive trade routes, all established without the help of middle easterners or Europeans.

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/28/2011 09:37PM by luckychucky.

Ive seen some gravestones in Hamburg dating from the end of the 17th right to the middle of the 19th that looked older then that rock. Amazing its out the for500 to 2000 years and looks like it was carved last centufy

dieter Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Ive seen some gravestones in Hamburg dating from
> the end of the 17th right to the middle of the
> 19th that looked older then that rock. Amazing its
> out the for500 to 2000 years and looks like it was
> carved last centufy


Depending on the kind of stone and environment, some rocks can maintain inscriptions very freshly for a long long time. Abq is a high plains desert environment. The biggest source of deterioration is water and plant life, of which Abq is in short supply. I've seen rock art that is legit that has persevered well in those conditions for thousands of years.

I imagine Hamburg has a lot more moss, rain, snow and varied environmental conditions, not to mention urban pollution and other acidic toxins that can eat away at the stones.