The Grave Creek Stone is a small sandstone disk with about 25 characters carved on one side. It was supposedly found in 1838 at Grave Creek Mound in Moundsville, West Virginia. If real, it might show that people lived in the area long before Columbus arrived and used writing. However, since the same characters appear in a book from 1752, it is likely not genuine. Copies of the stone have been made, but the original is no longer available. The only picture of the real stone comes from a photograph taken in the 1870s of items in the E.H. Davis collection. Most of these items were later sold to the Blackmore Museum, which is now part of the British Museum.

Discovery

In 1838, an excavation of Grave Creek Mound, led by Jesse and Abelard Tomlinson, revealed the remains of two large rooms, one located directly below the other. Inside the rooms, archaeologists found several human skeletons, along with many items such as jewelry and other objects. Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, a respected geologist who visited the site in 1843, reported that the Grave Creek Stone was found in the upper room, along with 1,700 beads, 500 sea shells, five copper bracelets, and 150 mica plates. Schoolcraft described the stone as "a small, flat rock shaped like an egg, with writing in unknown symbols." He was the first to carefully study the stone. Five years later, he noted that the stone was "lying unprotected among broken stone tools, old pottery, and similar items," indicating that those who found it had not recognized its importance.

Details about how the stone was discovered are disputed. The first published report of the find, including a drawing of the inscription, appeared on the front page of the Cincinnati Chronicle on February 2, 1839, in an article by Thomas Townsend. Another image of the stone, showing "different characters" in the writing, was published in The American Pioneer in May 1843, along with Abelard Tomlinson’s account of the discovery. Tomlinson stated that the stone was found on June 9, 1838, about two feet from a skeleton in the upper room. He said the stone had "no engraving on it, except for one side." Later, he claimed, "I removed it with my own hands … from its ancient bed." A letter from James Clemens, dated April 10, 1839, supports Tomlinson’s account. Clemens wrote that "Abelard Tomlinson, Thomas Biggs, myself, and others were present when the stone was discovered with the copper bracelets and the shell necklace."

Peter Catlett, a worker at the excavation site, gave a different account: "I was the man who found the stone … The engraved stone was found on the inside of a stone arch." His testimony was supported by Colonel Wharton, who said he saw the stone among dirt and debris being removed from the mound that day. Stephen Williams, author of Fantastic Archaeology, believes Catlett’s story is most reliable, noting that "Tomlinson’s description of how the shaft and drift were dug does not match any of the statements made by other observers." M.C. Reid, in his 1878 report published in The American Antiquarian, also questioned Tomlinson’s account, pointing out several factual errors and concluding, "It is very certain that Mr. Tomlinson is mistaken and that he did not find the inscribed stone."

Artifact

The sandstone disk is approximately 1.875 inches (4.76 cm) wide and 1.5 inches (3.8 cm) tall. One side of the stone has 23 alphabetical or pseudo-alphabetical characters arranged in three lines, with a final symbol that is not alphabetical located at the bottom. There are no writings on the other side. The stone was part of several collections over time, but its current location is unknown. During the late 1800s, when the stone was in E.H. Davis's collection, he created a copy of it and sent it to the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, Department of Anthropology. The Smithsonian now holds four copies of the stone. The National Anthropological Association also has a wax impression of the stone made by Davis. Six facsimile drawings of the stone were also created.

Inscription

The inscription on the Grave Creek Stone has caused many people to argue about its meaning. Henry Rowe Schoolcraft was the first person to study this part of the stone. He wanted to know if the symbols were part of an alphabet. He asked experts in ancient history for help. His letters to these experts led him to believe that the inscription includes "four characters from Ancient Greek; four from Etruscan; five from Runic; six from ancient Gallic; seven from old Erse; ten from Phoenician; fourteen from old British; sixteen from Celtiberic, with some similarity to Hebrew." However, he thought the whole inscription was most likely Celtiberic.

In the late 1870s, M.C. Reid did an experiment to show that the symbols might not be part of an alphabet. He asked four people (a teacher and law student, a schoolgirl, a pharmacist, and a college professor) to create "twenty or more made-up symbols that looked nothing like any known letters or symbols." Since the Grave Creek Stone was carved using only straight lines (which is common because straight lines are easier to carve than curved ones), Reid told the participants to use only "straight lines or groups of straight lines." To make the experiment more like the real process of carving the stone, the people were not allowed to change their first attempt (because once a symbol is carved, it cannot be erased or altered). Like the symbols on the Grave Creek Stone, the ones created by the participants looked similar to characters from alphabets used in the old world. Reid concluded that "there is nothing about the shape of the characters on the Grave Creek Stone that proves they are old, that they are part of an alphabet, or that they come from any known alphabet."

Recent research

At a meeting of the West Virginia Archaeological Society in October 2008, David Oestreicher, an anthropologist, proposed that the inscription was created by James W. Clemens, a local doctor who used loans to fund the excavation. Oestreicher discovered the source of the inscription in an 18th-century book titled "An Essay on the Alphabets of the Unknown Letters That Are Found in the Most Ancient Coins and Monuments of Spain." All the writing on the stone, including groups of letters that did not make sense and had the same errors, was copied directly from the book.