by the way, the same person whom LDS apologists refer to as a reliable source for the Bat Creek Stone, also defends the legitimacy of other discoveries supposedly demonstrating ancient writings from the Old World in the ancient New World. (such as in the mounds of the moundbuilders). The artifacts McCulloch defends are widely viewed as fraudulent by experts in the fields. (note, McCulloch is an economist.)
Kenneth Feder, in his excellent book discussing known pseudo-archaeological claims, discusses some of these same artifacts that McCulloch defends here:
http://www.econ.ohio-state.edu/jhm/arch/decalog.html
From Frauds, Myths, and Mysteries – Science and Pseudoscience in Archaeology
By Kenneth Feder
Page 162-165
Though the myth of a vanished race of Moundbuilders was based largely on misinterpretation of actual archaeological and ethnographic data, hoaxes involving inscribed tablets were also woven into its fabric.
For example, in 1838, during an excavation of a large mound in Grave Creek, two burial chambers were found containing three human skeletons, thousands of shell beads, copper ornaments, and other artifacts. Among these other artifacts was a sandstone disk with more than twenty alphabetic characters variously identified as Celtic, Greek, Anglo-Saxon, Phoenician, Runic, and Etruscan (Schoolcraft 1854). Translations varied tremendously and had in common only the fact that they were meaningless. The disk was certainly a fraud.
Given the popularity of the notion that the Indians may have descended from one of the Lost Tribes of Israel, it is not surprising that suggestions were made that at least some of the Moundbuilders themselves represented a group of ancient Jewish immigrants from the Holy Land. The so-called Newark Holy Stones seemed to support this notion. (Applebaum 1996)
In the summer of 1860, David Wyrick, a professional land surveyor and ardent amateur archaeologist, continued his ongoing explorations of an impressive group of mounds and enclosures in Newark, Ohio (Lepper and Gill 2000). Immediately to the east of the large octagonal enclosure, Wyrick discovered a 6-inch by 2 and half inch, polished stone object with clearly recognizable Hebrew letters etched onto its surface. Wyrick must have been ecstatic at this discovery because it seemed to supply proof for his own deeply held belief that the New World Moundbuilders were members of the Lost Tribes of Israel. Hebrew writing found in a mound in Ohio would have seemed to confirm this hypothesis.
Unschooled in the Hebrew language, Wyrick took the object, called the Keystone, to a local minister who could translate it. The Reverend John W. McCarty determined that on each of its four faces, the messages read, respectively, “the laws of Jehovah,” “the Word of the Lord,” “the Holy of Holies,” and “the King of the Earth.”
Several months after the discovery of the Keystone, none other than David Wyrick discovered yet another stone with Hebrew writing on it in a mound located just a few miles south of Newark. This was a far more elaborately carved object: a limestone tablet, covered on all of its many faces with Hebrew letters of an entirely different vintage from the characters of the Keystone. This stone became known as the “Decalogue” when its translation revealed it to be a version of the Ten Commandments; the person around whom the commandments were carved was identified as Moses.
Some hailed these artifacts as proof of an ancient Jewish presence in Ohio. Others claimed the inscribed stones were proof of the authenticity of the Book of Mormon, and still others thought the stones were proof that not ancient Jews, but ancient Masons had built the mounds. Many others were skeptical. The Keystone was written in a modern version of Hebrew, and the alphabet on the Decalogue stone seemed to reflect a more ancient script that, nevertheless, contained anachronisms indicating it had been carved in the nineteenth century. Besides this, if both stones were legitimate, how is it that ancient Jews in North America were, at the same time, writing in two different versions of Hebrew traceable to different time periods in their homeland? Or, if the first stone was a fraud, how likely was it that a genuine stone with ancient Hebrew writing would coincidentally be found just a few miles from the spot where hoaxsters had recently planted a fake stone with modern Hebrew on it? These questions do not even begin to touch on broader, cultural issues: there is no ancient (or modern) Jewish practice of constructing burial mounds, yet it was being proposed that the ancient Jews had built the burial mounds found in North America; neither the Keystone or the Decalogue bear any resemblance whatsoever to any artifact ever found associated with Jewish culture.
In a wonderful piece of detective work, Brad Lepper and Jeff Gill have traced the cast of characters in this story and unraveled what was clearly a hoax. They point out that in 1839, Reverend McCarty’s bishop, Charles Petit McIlvaine, had predicted that artifacts linking the Moundbuilders to the Bible would one day be found. The ambitious Reverend McCarty was deeply involved after the discovery of the Holy Stones; he may also have been deeply involved before they were “found.” As Lepper and Gill conclude, in a general sense, the purpose of the hoax may have been “to encompass the prehistory of the New World with the biblical history of the Old” and to show that all people could be connected to the first people whom God had created and placed in the Garden of Eden. There had been no ancient Israelites in Ohoi, after all, but only nineteenth-century hoaxsters intent on convincing people of the accuracy of the Bible.
In another hoax, the Reverend Jacob Glass discovered two inscribed tablets, in 1877, in a mound on a farm in Davenport, Iowa. One of the tablets had a series of inscribed concentric circles with enigmatic signs believed by some to be zodiacal. The other tablet had various animal figures, a tree, and a few other marks on one face. The reverse face had a series of apparently alphabetical characters from half a dozen different languages across the top, and the depiction of a presumed cremation scene on the bottom. Glass discovered or came into possession of a number of other enigmatic artifacts ostensibly associated with the Moundbuilder culture, including another inscribed tablet and two pipes whose bowls are carved into the shape of elephants.
Thomas launched an in-depth investigation of the tablets. He believed he had identified the source of the bizarre, multiple-alphabet inscription. Webster’s unabridged dictionary of 1872 presented a sample of characters from ancient alphabets. All of the letters on the tablet were in the dictionary, and most were close copies. Thomas suggested that the dictionary was the source for the tablet inscription.
Beyond this, McKusick has discerned the presence of lowercase Greek letters on the Davenport tablet. Lowercase Greek letters were not invented until medieval times. McKusick has also identified Arabic numbers, Roman letters, musical clefs, and ampersands (&) on the Daventport tablet. Their presence is clear proof of the fraudulent nature of the stone. In fact, no genuine artifacts containing writing in any Old World alphabet have ever been found in any of the mounds.