It has been thirty years since Barry Fell stirred up a hornet’s nest regarding his thesis of a long lasting European interaction with the Americas that began perhaps around the beginning of the Bronze Age and had died out before the current era, probably as a result of Roman suppression of the Celts and their deep sea fleet by Julius Caesar.
His strength was the interpretation of inscriptions in particular. To put it bluntly, he was the first to take them seriously and attempt their interpretation. He was also a linguist and expert in the art of epigraphy as well as a trained scientist in marine biology.
His death caused his initative to be shelved in the late eighties. He made extraordinary claims, showed extraordinary proof and was denounced in an extraordinary manner. They are still bad mouthing him to this day. He never deserved that, and for that matter no scholar deserves that.
I have observed that most scholars are successful because of their trained memories or unusual memory talent, usually in the form of an actual eidetic memory. I have also observed that when an idea is entered into that world that conflicts with their memory patterns, the natural instinct is to dismiss the idea. This makes it very difficult to pursue new ideas with this style of scholarship.
Not surprisingly, these folks usually avoid those areas of scholarship demanding sophisticated mathematical thinking and the like, although a friend of mine did dive into that world with an obviously eidetic memory and aced everything he touched. His measured IQ was at 185. I once introduced an idea to him that had been incredibly fruitful, yet he dismissed it immediately with a label and went elsewhere in his thinking. I was startled and I never disabused him.
My conjecture is that the more powerful the memory function the more difficult it is to shift mental gears and follow curiosity outside ones defined expertise which also excludes new material not already part of your world.
In any event there is currently limited material support for work in this field. The recent recognition of ancient city remnants outside the Straits of Gibraltar that conform in space and detail and best locale with the legend of Atlantis is another example. It took a non specialist (a mathematician) to tell the story. I also have the advantage of not having to protect an academic reputation so I can shout as loud as I like.
This piece here is the Los Lunas inscription of the ten commandments located in New Mexico using a script that conforms to script used around 1000 BCE.
http://www.asis.com/users/stag/Las%20Lunas%20Ten%20commandments
Of course the naysayers have shouted hoax. And perhaps a scholar steeped in Canaanite scripts took a trip into the desert sometime in the nineteenth century and set up this hoax. The hoax claim is thrown automatically against every inscription found everywhere.
The problem of course is that the hoaxer would need incredible knowledge of the script and sentence structure able to preclude error confirmed by forthcoming discoveries. The fact is that an inscription hoax fails to hold up in the face of new inscriptions. It starts to be the odd man out. I am very uncomfortable with the hoax argument. It still needs a crooked scholar who failed to profit from his discovery.
More compelling, the script is reminiscent of Celtic Ogam to the extent that it can be easily chiseled into stone. Both scripts are phonetic based and recently it has been established that Mayan script was also phonetic based.
As an aside, I never understood what the Mayans were doing until I realized their script was painted with a rather fat brush. The tools and media determine the nature of your script. Ogam was designed to be cut into a branch.
This is an example of Phoenician script from Tyre surely and perhaps the principle script of the city of Atlantis.
Recall also, like Lake Superior, that New Mexico is copper country and is accessible via the Rio Grande.
Plainly, the sooner Atlantis and its Atlantic mercantile empire is dug up and acknowledged the better for scholarship everywhere. What impresses me most is how accurate Plato’s report turned out to be. I am developing a healthy respect for ancient sources even if they lacked our vocabulary. By the time something was consigned to paper and many successive rewritings, it was thoroughly attested to unlike today low cost makes this aspect far less important.
His strength was the interpretation of inscriptions in particular. To put it bluntly, he was the first to take them seriously and attempt their interpretation. He was also a linguist and expert in the art of epigraphy as well as a trained scientist in marine biology.
His death caused his initative to be shelved in the late eighties. He made extraordinary claims, showed extraordinary proof and was denounced in an extraordinary manner. They are still bad mouthing him to this day. He never deserved that, and for that matter no scholar deserves that.
I have observed that most scholars are successful because of their trained memories or unusual memory talent, usually in the form of an actual eidetic memory. I have also observed that when an idea is entered into that world that conflicts with their memory patterns, the natural instinct is to dismiss the idea. This makes it very difficult to pursue new ideas with this style of scholarship.
Not surprisingly, these folks usually avoid those areas of scholarship demanding sophisticated mathematical thinking and the like, although a friend of mine did dive into that world with an obviously eidetic memory and aced everything he touched. His measured IQ was at 185. I once introduced an idea to him that had been incredibly fruitful, yet he dismissed it immediately with a label and went elsewhere in his thinking. I was startled and I never disabused him.
My conjecture is that the more powerful the memory function the more difficult it is to shift mental gears and follow curiosity outside ones defined expertise which also excludes new material not already part of your world.
In any event there is currently limited material support for work in this field. The recent recognition of ancient city remnants outside the Straits of Gibraltar that conform in space and detail and best locale with the legend of Atlantis is another example. It took a non specialist (a mathematician) to tell the story. I also have the advantage of not having to protect an academic reputation so I can shout as loud as I like.
This piece here is the Los Lunas inscription of the ten commandments located in New Mexico using a script that conforms to script used around 1000 BCE.
http://www.asis.com/users/stag/Las%20Lunas%20Ten%20commandments
Of course the naysayers have shouted hoax. And perhaps a scholar steeped in Canaanite scripts took a trip into the desert sometime in the nineteenth century and set up this hoax. The hoax claim is thrown automatically against every inscription found everywhere.
The problem of course is that the hoaxer would need incredible knowledge of the script and sentence structure able to preclude error confirmed by forthcoming discoveries. The fact is that an inscription hoax fails to hold up in the face of new inscriptions. It starts to be the odd man out. I am very uncomfortable with the hoax argument. It still needs a crooked scholar who failed to profit from his discovery.
More compelling, the script is reminiscent of Celtic Ogam to the extent that it can be easily chiseled into stone. Both scripts are phonetic based and recently it has been established that Mayan script was also phonetic based.
As an aside, I never understood what the Mayans were doing until I realized their script was painted with a rather fat brush. The tools and media determine the nature of your script. Ogam was designed to be cut into a branch.
This is an example of Phoenician script from Tyre surely and perhaps the principle script of the city of Atlantis.
Recall also, like Lake Superior, that New Mexico is copper country and is accessible via the Rio Grande.
Plainly, the sooner Atlantis and its Atlantic mercantile empire is dug up and acknowledged the better for scholarship everywhere. What impresses me most is how accurate Plato’s report turned out to be. I am developing a healthy respect for ancient sources even if they lacked our vocabulary. By the time something was consigned to paper and many successive rewritings, it was thoroughly attested to unlike today low cost makes this aspect far less important.
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