The Bat Creek Stone is a stone tablet with writing on it. It is now believed to be a fake, or a hoax. John W. Emmert found the tablet on February 14, 1889, during an excavation of Hopewell mounds in Tipton Mound 3, located in Loudon County, Tennessee. This excavation was part of a larger effort to investigate who built the mounds found in the Eastern United States.
When the tablet was discovered in the late 1800s, Cyrus Thomas, who led the mound excavations, believed the writing used letters from the Cherokee alphabet. This idea was accepted at the time. However, about 100 years later, Cyrus H. Gordon, an expert in ancient languages, studied the tablet again in the 1970s and suggested the writing was in Paleo-Hebrew from the 1st or 2nd century. Today, most archaeologists agree the tablet is a forgery.
Economist J. Huston McCulloch argued that the Hebrew text on the stone supports theories about contact between ancient peoples across oceans before Columbus. In contrast, archaeologists Robert Mainfort and Mary Kwas concluded the writing is not genuine Paleo-Hebrew but a 19th-century fake. Their findings have been accepted by other archaeologists and scholars.
The likely source used to create the writing on the tablet has been identified, but the identity of the person who made the tablet and the reason for its creation remain unknown.
Physical description of the tablet
The stone is 11.4 centimeters long and 5.1 centimeters wide. This is about 4.5 inches by 2.0 inches. The inscription includes at least eight different characters. When the straighter edge of the stone is placed at the bottom, seven characters form a single row, and the eighth character is positioned below the main group of characters. Each of these eight characters is about 2 to 3 millimeters deep. The carvings have smooth, rounded grooves. This shape suggests the stone’s creator used a rounded tool to make the engravings. The entire surface of the stone appears to be polished, which helps create the smooth, rounded edges of the carvings. Between 1894 and 1970, while the stone was stored at the National Museum of Natural History, someone added two nearly parallel vertical lines. This is shown because the first photo of the stone, published in the 1890–1891 annual report of the Bureau of Ethnology, does not include these lines, but later photos from after 1970 do. These lines have V-shaped carvings, which means they were made with a sharper tool than the original eight characters.
Context of excavation
North America has a long and varied history that spans thousands of years. Before European settlers arrived, Native American civilizations had already been living in the region for many centuries. Some of the earliest evidence of these civilizations can be seen in the large earthworks and mounds built by the Adena and Hopewell peoples, who lived in the eastern and midwestern parts of North America. These structures were created by Native American groups and show the advanced skills of these early societies.
Archaeological discoveries have shown that these mounds were built by Native American peoples, not by a separate group known as the "Mound Builders." This belief, which suggested that Native Americans were not responsible for the mounds, was widely accepted in the United States before the twentieth century. Many scholars, including Kenneth Feder and Sarah E. Baires, argue that this idea harmed Native American communities by claiming that a different group, often called the "Vanished Race," built the mounds. This belief reflected the influence of European settlers and their tendency to erase Native American connections to their land and history. The destruction of mounds and the forced removal of Native peoples from their homes were acts that separated Native communities from their heritage and culture.
The discovery of the Bat Creek Inscription became part of a larger discussion about who built the mounds. In the early 1800s, people were unsure about the origins of the mounds, but by the 21st century, it was clear that Native American groups built them for different purposes. To investigate this mystery, the U.S. government created a new division called the Division of Mound Exploration in the late 1800s. Cyrus Thomas, an entomologist, was chosen to lead this group. With a budget of $60,000 and twelve years of research, Thomas studied the mounds and their connection to Native American communities who lived in the area during European colonization. Archeologist Kenneth Feder praised Thomas's work, calling it the most thorough study of the mounds and the Mound Builder theory. Thomas's findings provided clear proof that Native Americans built the mounds, which helped to end the harmful idea that a separate group, the "Vanished Race," was responsible. Through his research and published reports, Thomas's work greatly weakened the belief in the Mound Builders myth.
Geographic context
The Little Tennessee River begins in Tennessee near the Appalachian Mountains to the south and flows north for more than 50 miles (80 km) before joining the Tennessee River near Lenoir City. When the Tellico Dam was completed at the mouth of the Little Tennessee in 1979, it formed a reservoir that covers the lower 33 miles (53 km) of the river. Bat Creek flows into the southwest side of the Little Tennessee 12 miles (19 km) above where the river meets the Tennessee River. Although much of the original place where Bat Creek and the Little Tennessee met was covered by the lake, the mound where the Bat Creek Stone was found remained above the water level of the reservoir.
Archaeological excavations
Thomas did not dig the mounds himself but let his assistants do the field work. John Emmert excavated Bat Creek Mound 3, doing so "alone and in isolation." Emmert described the site as having one large mound (Mound 1) on the east bank of the creek and two smaller mounds (Mound 2 and Mound 3) on the west bank. Mound 1 had a diameter of 108 feet (33 m) and a height of 8 feet (2.4 m). It was located on the first terrace above the river. Today, this mound is covered by a reservoir. Mound 2 had a diameter of 44 feet (13 m) and a height of 10 feet (3.0 m). Mound 3 had a diameter of 28 feet (8.5 m) and a height of 5 feet (1.5 m). Both Mound 2 and Mound 3 were higher than Mound 1. Emmert’s field notes stated that the Bat Creek Stone was found in Mound 3.
In Mound 3, Emmert reported finding "two copper bracelets, an engraved stone, a small drilled fossil, a copper bead, a bone implement, and some small pieces of polished wood soft and colored green by contact with the copper bracelet." His excavation also revealed nine skeletons. Seven of these were placed in a row with their heads facing north, and two others were nearby, one with its head facing north and the other with its head facing south. Emmert noted that the Bat Creek Stone was found under the skull of the skeleton facing south. The two bracelets found in the mound were first identified by Emmert and Thomas as "copper," but a 1970 analysis by the Smithsonian concluded they were actually heavily leaded yellow brass.
In 1967, the Tennessee Valley Authority announced plans to build Tellico Dam at the mouth of the Little Tennessee River and asked the University of Tennessee Department of Anthropology to conduct salvage excavations in the Little Tennessee Valley. Legal disputes and environmental concerns delayed the dam’s completion until 1979, allowing extensive excavations at multiple sites in the valley. Between the late 1960s and 1970s, the Tellico Archaeological Project, led by the University of Tennessee Department of Anthropology, studied over two dozen sites. Evidence showed that people lived in the valley during the Archaic (8000–1000 BC), Woodland (1000 BC–1000 AD), Mississippian (900–1600 AD), and Cherokee (c. 1600–1838) periods. Mound 1 of the Bat Creek Site was excavated in 1975. Researchers concluded that the mound was a "platform" mound typical of the Mississippian period. Artifacts from earlier periods, including the Archaic and Woodland, were also found. The University of Tennessee excavators did not study Mound 2 or Mound 3, both of which no longer existed. Neither the University of Tennessee’s excavation of the Bat Creek Site nor any other excavations in the Little Tennessee Valley found evidence of contact between Pre-Columbian cultures and Old World civilizations.
Analysis and debate
In the 1894 Report on the Mound Explorations of the Bureau of Ethnology, the inscription was first officially mentioned along with other items found during the Bat Creek Mound excavations. Cyrus Thomas, the report's author, stated that the marks on the Bat Creek stone matched the Cherokee writing system and used this to suggest that the Cherokee people built many of the earth mounds and enclosures in eastern North America. However, this identification was later shown to be incorrect. The Cherokee writing system was created in 1819, and if the tablet had Cherokee writing, it would mean the mound is much younger than evidence suggests it is. As Feder explains, the Bat Creek Stone was unusual and difficult to place in a clear historical context. Though few spoke openly about it, many believed the artifact was not genuine. At the time of its discovery, there was little debate about the inscription, and Thomas did not mention the stone in his later major works. This changed in the 1970s when the Bat Creek Inscription was used by people who believed that people from the Old World visited the Americas before Columbus. Some claimed the stone was the strongest evidence supporting the idea that the Americas were visited or settled by seafarers from the Old World. This idea began in the 1970s when Dr. Cyrus Gordon, a scholar of Biblical and Near Eastern studies, examined the stone. Gordon argued that Thomas had viewed the inscription upside down and that, when read correctly, it resembled ancient Hebrew. He suggested the inscription might mean "For the Jews." In 1988, J. Huston McCulloch, an economics professor, supported Gordon's view. He said the stone was likely a rough but real example of ancient Hebrew writing and that it showed only limited contact between Hebrew sailors and the New World. However, these claims have been challenged by archaeologists who say the Bat Creek Stone is not genuine. Robert Mainfort and Mary Kwas concluded that the inscription is not real ancient Hebrew but a 19th-century forgery. Other archaeologists, like Kenneth Feder, agree that the tablet is not authentic. Mainfort and Kwas traced the inscription's origin to a book called the General History, Cyclopedia, and Dictionary of Freemasonry, which was widely printed in the 19th century and could have been used by the forger. Bradley T. Lepper, an archaeologist, said the work by Mainfort and Kwas uncovered a well-known hoax. Kyle McCarter, a professor of Biblical Studies at Johns Hopkins University, stated that the Bat Creek Stone does not belong in lists of Hebrew inscriptions from the time of the First Jewish Revolt against Rome and is more a part of the dramatic stories of American archaeology in the late 19th century. McCarter concluded that the stone is likely a fake.
Current location
The Bat Creek Stone is owned by the Smithsonian Institution and is listed in the collections of the Department of Anthropology at the National Museum of Natural History. Its catalog number is A134902-0. From August 2002 to November 2013, the stone was on loan to the Frank H. McClung Museum at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. After that, it was sent on loan to the Museum of the Cherokee Indian in Cherokee, North Carolina. It was displayed there from 2015 to 2021.