The Grave Creek Stone is a small sandstone disk with about twenty-five characters carved on one side. It was supposedly found in 1838 at Grave Creek Mound in Moundsville, West Virginia. If the stone is real, it might show that people in the area wrote symbols before Columbus arrived in the Americas. However, because similar symbols appeared in a book published in 1752, many believe the stone is not genuine. Copies of the stone have been made, but the original is now lost. 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, uncovered the ruins of two large vaults, one below the other. The vaults had many human bones and a lot of jewelry and other items. Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, a famous geologist who visited the site in 1843, said the Grave Creek Stone was found in the upper vault along with 1,700 beads, 500 sea shells, 5 copper bracelets, and 150 mica plates. He described the stone as "a small flat stone shaped like an egg, with writing in unknown characters." Schoolcraft was the first to examine the stone closely. Five years later, he found it "lying unprotected among broken stone tools, old pottery, and similar items," suggesting those who found it had not recognized its importance.

The exact details of the stone’s discovery are disputed. The first published report about 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 drawing of the stone, "differing greatly in its characters," was published in The American Pioneer in May 1843, along with Abelard Tomlinson’s eyewitness account. He said the stone was discovered on June 9, 1838, about two feet from the skeleton in the upper vault. It had "no engraving on it, except for one side." Later, Tomlinson 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, one of the workers at the excavation, gave a different account: "I was the man who found the stone… The engraved stone was found inside a stone arch." His testimony was supported by Colonel Wharton, who said he saw the stone among dirt and debris being moved from the mound that day. Stephen Williams, author of Fantastic Archaeology, believes Catlett’s story is most reliable, explaining that "Tomlinson’s description of how the shaft and drift were dug does not match any statements from people who observed the excavation." The same view was shared by M.C. Reid in his 1878 report in The American Antiquarian. Reid also noted many errors in Tomlinson’s statement, concluding, "It is very certain that Mr. Tomlinson is mistaken and that he did not find the inscribed stone."

Artifact

The sandstone disk is about 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 non-alphabetical symbol at the bottom. The other side has no writing. The stone has been in many collections, but its current location is unknown. In the late 1800s, when it 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 has four copies of the stone. The National Anthropological Association also has a wax copy 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 a lot of discussion. Henry Rowe Schoolcraft was the first person to study this part of the stone. He tried to find out if the symbols were letters from an alphabet by asking experts for help. He wrote to "noted antiquarians" and found that the inscription included "four characters from Ancient Greek; four Etruscan; five Runic; six ancient Gallic; seven old Erse; ten Phoenician; fourteen old British; sixteen Celtiberic, with some resemblance to the Hebrew." However, he believed 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 letters from an alphabet. He asked four people (a teacher and law student, a schoolgirl, a pharmacist, and a college professor) to create "twenty or more arbitrary characters not resembling any figures or alphabetical characters known to them." Since the Grave Creek Stone was carved using only straight lines (a very common method because straight lines are easier to carve than curved ones), Reid told the participants to use only "straight lines or combinations of straight lines." To make the experiment more realistic, the people were not allowed to change their first attempt (because once a symbol is carved, it cannot be erased). Like the Grave Creek Stone, these symbols also looked similar to characters from old world alphabets. Reid had to conclude that "there is nothing in the form of the characters of the Grave Creek Stone which require us to decide that they are old, that they are alphabetical, or if alphabetical that they are derived from any known alphabet."

Recent research

At a meeting of the West Virginia Archaeological Society in October 2008, David Oestreicher, an anthropologist, said 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: 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 repeated errors and unusual character arrangements, was copied directly from the book.