In post on Jewell and Fell's theory about Minoan presence in America, engaging in copper trade between the Levant and the Great Lakes, I mentioned the Newberry Tablet as evidence put forward by them to back their theory. This post will look at the tablet with a critical eye.
Did it ever exist?
As you can verify by googling the phrase "Newberry Tablet", there are no formal, serious, scientific articles about this artifact. There are some newspaper articles, a few blog posts, and one "paper" (if we can call it that), discussing the characters. All of them reproduce the same image of the tablet, shown below, supposedly a picture taken by the Smithsonian Institution, or taken in Michigan and sent to the Smithsonian in 1896:
The tablet's fate is not quite clear, some sources say it crumbled into dust (it was a clay tablet) as it was not properly preserved or treated, another, posted by the museum in St. Ignace, Michigan, that houses it, shows a deteriorated piece of brown clay asserting that it is what remains of the tablet. See the image below:
The photograph and the the clay tablet look very different from each other. Are they the same object?
The story behind the Tablet
The museum's post adds that "The Newberry Tablet is shrouded in mystery. The tablet was discovered in the 1890s under a tree in a farmer’s field. Since its discovery, it has ignited imagination and debate about its origins and its meaning. Despite the long-held belief that the tablet is fake, new research is being conducted testing the theory that it was left by an ancient group of people called Minoans. So, is it an ancient relic left behind by Minoan explorers or a clever hoax? You decide."
A local newspaper published an article about it in 2015 which states that the tablet measured 19 by 26 inches (48 x 66 cm) and had a grid with 140 squares that contained symbols of some unknwon language.
It was discovered in 1896 when two loggers were felling trees on a plot of land close to the town of Newberry, Michigan, USA (See the spot in Google Maps). They discovered the tablet and two clay figures next to it (McGruer's Idols). They were tangled in the roots of an old tree (perhaps as some proof of their great antiquity). As nobody understood the symbols, they were photographed and the pictures were sent to scholars at the University of Michigan and the Smithsonian in Washington. The tablet was dismissed as a forgery, a hoax, quite common at that time when mound-diggers produced many inscribed objects to sell them at a profit.
They were kept in town until they were bought by Henry Vaughan Norton and moved 60 miles away to the town of St. Ignace, on the Straits of Mackinac and exhibited as an attraction at a tourist site owned by Norton, called Fort Algonquin. He opened it in 1926 (Source) and ran it until the mid 1950s. Its remains can still be seen (Google Maps), below is an old postcard.
Norton died in the 1980s, and according to the story, the tablet was acquired by Dr. Donald Benson (1924-2005). Benson, a local orthodontist founded the Fort de Buade Museum around that time (1980s) and housed it in a building he owned, which he had purchased for his AM radio station in the mid 1960s, and shut down in 1979. Benson stocked the museum with ihis personal collection of local historic artifacts. After Benson's death in 2005 the Michilimackinac Historical Society took it over. (see this source and this one).
The online posts (see this one as an example) embrace Jewell and Fell's theory and hint that the inscription is probably Minoan, but show some skepticism: "One theory is they have to be a hoax because if they are supposed to be hundreds or even thousands of years old, from the time of the Minoans, how did they survive for so long only to be eroded away in a short amount of time after they were discovered. Like I wrote at the beginning of the post, I am not sure it is real or a hoax, but it is an interesting story."
Another blog, Archaeological Fantasies (Occam's Trowel, Sifting archaeological fringe to get to archaeological fact), has an objective post that dismisses the tablet as a hoax, and summarizes the story, along the lines I gave further up, and concludes with a sober disqualification of the tablet:
"What we can say for sure is that the tablet is not Minoan, Hittite, or any of the other cultures it’s supposed to be written by. Since it’s not any of those cultures, there is no way it could be translated. So any claims that the Tablet proves contact with Pre-Columbian peoples is not valid.
It is my opinion that the Tablet in the Museum is not the same Tablet as the one in the pictures from 1898. I base this on the images as they have been provided. It’s not the best way to evaluate them, I admit that, which is why this is my opinion on the matter and not a fact of any kind. If evidence comes to light that can prove the Tablet’s existence and location over the 60+ year gap between photographing and being purchased by Dr. Donald Benson, then I would re-evaluate my position.
With all of that, I must declare this Tablet a hoax. Neither the facts about the Tablet, nor the speculation is convincing enough to say otherwise.".
Nevertheless, an article (Mormonism’s Encounter with the Michigan Relics by Mark Ashurst-McGee while accepting that another set of articles (the Scotford artifacts) are forgeries, and a hoax, has a different approach regarding the Newberry stone and accompanying figures: "The inscribed stone, discovered in 1896 in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, does not fit within the spatio-temporal context of the Scotford scheme. Scotford worked in the state’s main land mass. Except for the first phase of the hoax, which was very localized, Scotford’s work took place after 1896. The Newberry tablet bears only a superficial resemblance to the Scotford-Soper artifacts. Figurines of the Newberry type are without parallel among Scotford’s known productions." Of course, it does not state whether the tablet and the figures are genuine or fakes.
Not the only Tablet
My research uncovered a new fact, there was another tablet discovered in the same region at roughly the same time! Such coincidences are so improbable, that they mean that the artifacts are hoaxes or, a naturally occuring phenomenon that were interpreted as a manmade objects. The latter may well be a good explanation for these tablets.
This is the story: The Newberry tablet was not the first one to be discovered in St. Ignace. Apparently in 1892 (one year before the Chicago World Fair, another tablet was unearthed while digging a ditch at the St. Ignace Court House, where the future office of A. J. Gennell, county clerk, would be later built (Source), the following article published in a local newspaper at that time, describes the event:
The facts tie in with this information: In 1883 Alfred J. Gennell owned a grocery and general store, he was born on Mackinack Island in 1844, and moved to St. Ignace in 1881, (Source), he later became a Public Notary, Real Estate Dealer and city clerk (1888 to 1906). He passed in 1935.
This second tablet existed, and was reported by the Smithsonian Institution on page 180 of its 1914 Report on the progress and condition of the United States National Museum for the year ending June 30, 1914 pictured, and titled "GENNELL, A. J., St. Ignace, Mich.: Fragment of limestone with natural markings resembling ornamental designs. (55998)" This is a list of "List of Acceessions to the Collection During the Fiscal Year 1913-1914." This means that a piece of the tablet was sent to the Smithsonian, accepted, and added to its collection. However, note that the description says "natural markings resembling ornamental designs." The piece of sandstone was not manmade, it had natural inscriptions that resembled symbols. The Smithsonian received the sample of the tablet in 1914, roughly twenty years after the stone was discovered.
McGruer's Idols
One of the versions about how the tablet was found says that it was unearthed on the McGruer farm, located close to Newberry, with the stone idols also known as McGruer'
I searched for John McGruer on ancestry.com, and came up with his bio: "John McGruer was born on February 12, 1858, in Canada. He married Catherine (Kate) McMillan in 1883. They had one child during their marriage. He died on May 20, 1917, in Newberry, Michigan, at the age of 59." He was a pioneer, and also operated timber business, the Tahquamenon Logging Museum preserved his homestead house, which can be seen on their website in a picture, it has a sign that reads "McGruer House" on it. The place is 2 km (1.3 mi) north of Newberry (Google map) on the south bank of the Tahquamenon River.
The figures are on exhibition in St. Ignace with the remains of the tablet. Pictured below in color, and a black and white picture supposedly from the Smithsonian. The images came from this source and this one.
In a book titled This Land: America 2,000 B. C. to 500 A. D., by May, W. N. (2012), you can read about the tablet and the figures, which are not made of clay, but of stone! It cites a local Newberry newspaper article as follows (my comments in brackets):
"Jacob Brown and George Rove, both residents of Newberry were looking for deer, and in the course of their hunting, startled a mink, which made for a swamp nearby and took refuge in a hollow stump. In digging under one side of the stump to get at the mink, they struck stone which bore evidences of the handwork of man. Becoming interested, they secured picks and spades, and unearthed the stones. As a result of their labors, thre stone images were uncovered, also a large stone tablet. All four objects were cut from brown sandstone, the rock probably coming from the northeastward where the pictured rocks, great cliffs of sandstone, worn by the wind and wave into fantastic forms frown for many miles upon the blue waters of the great lake [learn more about these cliffs]. Of the three images, the largest is that of a man in a sitting posture, nearly life size. This statue is on a pedestal formed from the same piece of stone. The second image, from point of size, is that of a woman, and is a trifle under three feet in height [90 cm], while the third is an image of a child, and like the man, is postured in a sitting attitude and is about two feet high [60 cm]. All three of the images were found placed with faces towards the east, which may have been accidental, but more probably intentional, and this points strongly to sun worship...
Near these figures was found a slab of brownstone averaging six inches [15 cm] in thickness and eighteen by twentyfive inches on each face.
One side was smoothed as carefully as the coarse structure of the rock had allowed, while upon the other face were engraved a series of inscriptions each set in a square of approximately one and a half inches, there being 140 of these."
The description of the tablet coincides with what I have mentioned further up, but this source states that the tablet was made of sandstone, not clay. Yet Betty J. Sodders (1928-2018) in the paper mentioned further down in the next section, after stating that together, the statues weighed almost 1,000 pounds (453 kg) and made from pinkish clay adding, that the initial reports said they were made of brownstone (Sodders, B, p. 24).
Very few "Serious" articles about the Tablet
Betty Sodders lived in St. Ignace, and was an amateur historian, she wrote about the tablet in her 1990 book Michigan Prehistory Mysteries, and according to online forums, she wrote to Mrs. Benson about sending the clay tablet to California to be radiocarbon dated, but the results were never published. She also wrote a paper: Betty Sodders, McGruer’s Gods and the Newberry Stone, The Ancient American 1 (March-April 1994): 24–26.
Another paper was written by Dr. Minas Tsikritsis in 2024, who is a school professor of informatics who is interested in Aegean scripts, based in Heraklion, Crete, Greece, his article is titled The Newberry Stone, ESOP, The Epigraphic Society Occasional Papers · Volume 30 p.220. (it can be read online). In his paper, Tsikritsis attempts to identify the script, concluding that it may not be a forgery:
"The Newberry Tablet is a unique artifact... Consequently, cannot be attempted a replacement of the symbols with possible phonetic values, which have been attributed in table 1, since only the 24 out of 39 symbols are similar to the cyprominoan script. Since the remaining 15 cannot be recognized, the subject of reading and interpreting the inscription still remains open. Nevertheless, the replacement of the symbols that have great resemblance to the symbols of the Cypriot-Minoan script, gives us words that are actually names of people who come from the region Kamiros ofRhodes and they are mentioned as ka-mi-ri-ta-wi.
Probably the inscription was written between the 12th and the 8th century BC and its symbols were influenced by the Cypriot-Minoan script. A percentage of 25% approx of its symbols has to be a local creation. The modification of a syllabic system in another region is a known phenomenon. A similar case was the case of Cypriot-Minoan script (1650-1050 BC) that was based on Linear A (1800-1530 BC). We should also note that the horizontal and vertical lines of the Newberry Stone is a characteristic not found in other script artifacts of the Cypriot-Minoan writing system. Regarding the authenticity of the tablet, we may argue that the Stone is probably not counterfeit, because it could not have so many Cypriot-Minoan symbols, since by the time that Newberry tablet was found —in 1896— the symbols of the Cypriot-Minoan script had not been found yet. The first symbols of Cypro-Minoan were found on two cylinder seals found in 1875 in Cyprus but did not receive publicity until 1957. These seals were bearing 5 and 4 symbols Cypriot-Minoan script respectively. Two of symbols found on the seals exist also in the Newberry stone tablet"
Closing Comments
Interesting story, very likely a hoax, well done, but a hoax or, people believing that a natural sandstone bears manmade inscriptions. The idols or gods seem to confirm the artifacts are fakes. I don't think that Minoans reached the Great Lakes and left some tablet and idols hidden in a lost river in the middle of nowhere.
Some blogs and other sources
There is a blog, Noahs age that deals with this artifact, and includes texts, translations, interpretations, and wild theories about comets!
Up North Michigan mentions the tablet.
Another blog, archaeological fantasies.
Charles Sprague Taylor, 1991, Tahquamenon Country: A Look at Its Past. page 113
C. Fred Rydholm, 2006, Michigan Copper, the Untold Story: A History of Discovery. page 123
Mertz, Henriette, 1964, The Wine Dark Sea: Homer's Heroic Epic of the North Atlantic. United States: Mertz. page 131.
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