Ancient
Hebrews
in Ohio?*

On the Borderline
Between Science
and a Clever Hoax.

By Dr. Ronald Fritze
September 10, 2007

". . . some one has been trying to hoax me . . ."
— David Wyrick, 13 April 1863

The prehistory of the Americas is a murky and contentious subject. All sorts of conflicting and contradictory theories speculate about how the Americas were peopled and who might have visited them before 1492. Even now in the early years of the twenty-first century, there is much that is unclear about how and when humans first arrived in the Americas.

Archaeologists possess many scientific tools for studying the past, including precise and practiced techniques for excavating a site. They employ radio-carbon dating, tree-ring dating (known as dendrochronology), pollen testing, and analysis of the DNA of ancient bones. They remove ice cores from Greenland glaciers and capture pollen from remote and exotic locations, subjecting the samples to detailed and informed analysis.

Doubts and Disagreements Persist.

Despite all this technology and refined scientific method, doubts and disagreements persist and even multiply. Yet, it is increasingly accepted among those who ponder such matters that humans were in the Americas at least 15,000 years before twenty-first century man. It is also clear that the ancestors of the modern Native Americans were Asian in their origins, although which groups of modern Asian they are related to remains unclear or in dispute.

How the first Americans got here is also unclear. Many archaeologists strongly suspect that the route followed by the first Americans now lies under water due to the melting of the great glaciers of the Ice Age, which significantly raised the level of the world's oceans.

At the same time, others speculate that some early Americans could have arrived by sea via drift voyages across the north and south Pacific and along the prehistoric ice sheet of the North Atlantic during the last Ice Age.

Today, the peopling of the Americas remains a blurred subject.

Speculation about the Peopling of America.

During the nineteenth century, the systematic methodologies of archaeology were in their infancy. Modern scientific techniques were undreamed of until the middle of the twentieth century. As a result, speculation was rife about the peopling of the Americas — and much of it was pretty wild stuff.

One of the most fascinating episodes of archaeological speculation in the nineteenth century focused on Ohio and other parts of the lower Midwest, which were peppered with ancient mounds. Most of these mounds greatly predated the historic tribes of Native Americans living in the area, so the question arose: Who built the mounds and other earthworks? Another question: What was the purpose of the mounds and earthworks?

Given the prevailing viewpoint that all natives were savages, no one among the thinkers of the day wanted to give the Native Americans credit for the mounds. Instead, they attributed the mysterious structures to ancient or medieval colonists from Israel (Judah), Carthage, Ireland, Wales, or even Atlantis.

The Ten Lost Tribes of Israel.

Among these various suggestions for Moundbuilder genealogy, the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel became a particularly popular candidate. After all, the lost tribes must have ended up somewhere. Why not Ohio? — and who in the world had the authority to say otherwise? Existing knowledge of American prehistory in 1860 being largely speculative, there were no scientific methodologies or detailed studies to turn that speculation into plausible theory, or into discredited nonsense.

The problem was not confined to academic archaeology, an infant discipline with few practitioners. North American prehistory was also bedeviled by fraudulent artifacts and clever hoaxes.

While most of these fraudulent artifacts have been thoroughly debunked and discredited, often more than once, they remain subject to periodic rehabilitation by intellectual speculators in search of a hook for the latest alternative theory of the peopling of the Americas. People forget — and an old idea can be resurrected to become "genuine proof" for the speculators of a new generation.

The First Holy Stone Is Discovered.

A good example of this phenomenon is the Newark Holy Stones. The amateur archaeologist David Wyrick discovered the first Holy Stone while digging in a mound near Newark, Ohio, on 29 June 1860. This artifact is known as the Keystone and is inscribed with Hebrew phrases.

While some people greeted Wyrick's discovery with enthusiasm, others were highly skeptical of its authenticity from the beginning. Critics pointed out that the Hebrew letters on the Keystone were relatively modern, which meant it could not be a two-thousand-year-old artifact purported to prove that the Ten Lost Tribes had reached Ohio and built its many mounds.

Wyrick, although pummeled by critics and suffering from self-doubt, continued to dig in neighboring mounds. Among many of his neighbors, he was a figure of derision. Then on 1 November 1860, Wyrick, while in the company of others, uncovered a second Newark Holy Stone while digging at the Great Stone Mound near Jacksontown, Ohio. This artifact became known as the Decalogue Stone and featured an inscription of the Ten Commandments as well as a carving of the figure of Moses.

Too Many Errors.

Interestingly, the Decalogue Stone answered the objections made to the Keystone. It was inscribed in what appeared to be truly ancient Hebrew characters. However, questions about its authenticity arose almost immediately. There were simply too many errors in the transcription of the Ten Commandments. The depiction of Moses was also entirely uncharacteristic of ancient Hebrew practice.

Unlike other spurious artifacts of American prehistory — the Davenport Tablets are a good example of this category — the Newark Holy Stones from their very discovery were never widely accepted as genuine.

If ancient Hebrews did not fashion the Newark Holy Stones, who did? Nobody knows for sure. For someone to fake the Holy Stones, a particular set of skills and knowledge was needed. The hoaxer had to possess a reasonably good knowledge of Hebrew and also had to be a stone-carver.

Was Wyrick the Culprit?

Wyrick, who suffered from chronic ill health and severe financial problems, committed suicide on 15 April 1864. Some suggested that his failure to acquire wealth through the Holy Stones and the infamy that arose around them helped drive the man to take his own life. A Hebrew Bible and slates with Hebrew lettering carved on them were found among his effects after his death. This evidence convinced many people at the time that Wyrick was the culprit.

The problem, however, is that Wyrick lacked both the necessary knowledge of Hebrew and the skill to carve the stones convincingly. It has been suggested Wyrick actually possessed the Hebrew Bible and the stone carving materials so that he could test for himself whether it was easy to fake the Holy Stones. Given the crudity of his own stone carvings, he probably concluded that the construction of a fake that appeared as plausible as the Holy Stones was a rather difficult task. Also, most of his neighbors considered Wyrick to be a sincere and honorable man, who also happened to be gullible and eccentric.

If Wyrick did not construct the Holy Stones, then who did?

Some have suggested Dr. John H. Nicol, a local doctor of somewhat dubious reputation. He may have been trying to make a fool of the hapless Wyrick. While his contemporaries may have considered him to have been nasty enough to have done such a thing, they did not credit him with the intelligence to have pulled off the hoax.

Wrangling over the Institution of Slavery.

Much more plausible is the suggestion that a local Episcopalian minister, John W. McCarty, conspired with stone cutter Elijah Sutton to carry out the hoax. Together the two men possessed the necessary skills. They also had a motive based in ideology.

If accepted as authentic, the Newark Holy Stones would have undercut the theories of polygenesis, or multiple creations of humans, that were being promoted by adherents of scientific racism in the American school of ethnology. These theories were used to justify the institution of slavery. Its antithesis, monogenesis, which was based on the single creation narrative of the Bible, promoted the unity of humanity and positioned slavery as an inhuman and immoral institution.

Abolitionists were supporters of monogenesis, and McCarty was a supporter of abolitionism. This sort of anti- and pro-slavery agitation was the most contentious of social topics in 1860 -- an issue so explosive that it resulted in the outbreak of the Civil War less than a year later. The Civil War and its destruction of slavery, along with the publication of Darwin's evolutionary theories in 1859, rendered polygenesis both moot. It became an untenable theory.

Final and Definitive Answers? No.

In spite of the fact that the Newark Holy Stones were widely considered to be fakes at the time, belief in their authenticity persisted and even grew as the twentieth century progressed. It is true that scientific advances in the field of archaeology have answered many questions about the human past. It is also true that science is not capable of providing final and definitive answers to the fringe theories of alternative archaeology.

Meanwhile, the Newark Holy Stones are on display at the Johnson-Humrickhouse Museum in Coshocton, Ohio, for visitors to see and to enjoy.

* N O T E:  I would like to thank Dave and Judy Erwin for their much appreciated gift of the materials on which this essay is based.