Celtic navigators and the New England stone chambers

A few days ago I wrote about the Minoans and the hypothesis that they visited America and traded native copper (pure metal) from Lake Superior in USA to the Mediterranean. I don't agree with that theory. Among the evidence put forward by those who do believe in it, was the existence of stone buildings in the northeastern states of the U.S.

There are stone structures found in different parts of New England and New York that have been attributed to European visitors. They are considered to sophisticated to have been built by the Native Americans who lived there, or by the later wave of settlers that came from Europe starting in the 1600s.

So, who built them? According to an article that has studied these structures (Lost Histories: The Story of New England’s Stone Chambers by Benjamin Lord, Northern Woodlands, Vol 20, No. 4 Winter 2013, p.24), some believe that they are the work of ancient European mariners, such as Celts.

The hypothesis is that thousands of years ago, Celts from Europe, crossed the North Atlantic and built these stone buildings in America.

Those who support this idea mention the stone structure at Mystery Hill, in Salem, New Hampshire, USA. or the Upton Chamber in Upton Massachusetts. They discard a colonial construction, or even a later origin (they may have been built as root cellars in the late 19th century) and consider that the natives couldn't have built them. So the explanation is that they are megalithic sites, similar to those erected by the Bronze Age Europeans 1,500 to 3,500 years ago.

Mystery Hill

This site is located at 105 Haverhill Rd, Salem, NH. It is a private site or park, known as "America's Stonehenge". It was acquired by William Goodwin, an archaeologist in 1936 and following his death in 1950, it was acquired in 1956 by an entrepreneur named Robert E. Stone, who charged an admission fee to see the massive stone structures. He also wrote some "papers" studying the site. The place is still operated by the Stone family. Below is a plan of the site (Source):

Goodwin believed that the site was built by Culdee Monks, who had crossed the Atlantic from Ireland (see my posts on Irish monks and America) around 1000 AD.

Stone, on the other hand promoted another origin, he asserted that the stones were aligned with astronomical points. Below I summarize on of his articles, published in 1971.

The site has many massive, stone structures and covers an area of 12 acres (6 ha). It has wells, stone walls, buildings, carvings, drains, and chambers. One stone slab was named with the eye-catching name of the "Sacrificial Table", located inside the site's largest structure. There are "monoliths" around the site that Stone argued were set with "astronomical alignments, similar to "Stonehenge" in England, are quite impressive. Thus far, the winter and summer Solstices for both rising and setting of the sun are very accurate, when viewed from the exact center of the site; the "Sacrificial Table", 500 feet away. Setting of the sun during'the Equinox also lines up on a dolmen-like structure built into the outer wall" Source.

Stone provides a historic timeline for the site: The Pattee family lived near it from 1823 to 1847, they built a house on it which burned down in 1855. The Pattees quarried the site, destroying up to 40% of it. Some slabs ended up as curb stones in Lawrence, Massachusetts. Following Stone's acquisition, the newly formed New England Antiquities Research Association (N EARA) in 1964, the site was excavated and radiocarbon dated.

Stone gave an age of 180 BC and 1045 BC and asserted that they "are indicative that a previously unrecorded megalithic culture was in existence in this hemisphere... This culture... not only included sites like Mystery Hill, but various other stone-constructions that we are documenting, such as dolmens, tunnels, strange non-Colonial walls, unusual wells and many other oddities."

Some views of the site, the "monolith" with the sign is one of those said to mark astronomical positions.

Views of Mystery Hill. Source

Barry Fell, in 1975 visited the site and coincidentially, Stone found a tablet inside one of the chambers at Mystery Hill with inscriptions that Fell immediately recognized as Ogam, an ancient Celtic sript. He also concluded that one of them was written in Libyan while the other was Phoenician or Iberian Punic script. According to Fell, one of the buildings had been dedicated to Baal by Canaanites who reached this spot.

Fell wrote a book about ancient European visitors to America (America B.C.: Ancient Settlers in the New World) mentioning other similar sites and Celtic inscriptions in New England and further inland, like the Davenport tablets. Fell says that Celts from what is now Spain, reached America 3,000 years ago establishing their kingdom, Iargalon, there. Source

Mystery Hill has been radiocarbon dated to around 2,000 BC, but this age is compatible with Native American occupation. A calendar aligned with the position of the sun (Solstices and equinox) is unknown among the Algonquian tribes so it is probably a coincidence. But, they were capable of building large structures like the massive earth mounds (see my posts on mound-builders).

Mainstream archaologists consider that "America's Stonehenge" is the work of either American natives or later settlers, and was not built by Bronze Age Europeans. (Source)

Mystery Hill Tourist Attraction

The official website of the America's Stonehenge tourist attraction states that:

"Unfortunately, the original builders of America's Stonehenge remain unknown. While we do know that early construction happened here about 4,000 years ago, no diagnostic artifacts from that time have been discovered. The earliest diagnostic artifacts, attributed to the Pawtucket people, are dated to about 2,000 years ago. Similarities to megalithic structures in Europe, as well as the discovery of possible Old World inscriptions, has led some researchers to believe that there may be a connection between this site and ancient Western European or Mediterranean cultures. In the ongoing research of this site, we strive to keep an open mind. Before forming any conclusions about the origins of this site, it is important to follow where the evidence leads. Hopefully, with continued study, we can reveal who actually built these structures and what culture or cultures used the site over its thousands of years of history."

We must point out that diggings at the sie have discovered many Native American objects including a dugout canoe, a teepee, stone tools and ceramics, but no Celtic, Irish or Phoenician or Carthaginian artifacts, except for the "inscribed stone" the Baal Stone discovered in 1975 and deciphered by Fell. Pictured below:

Baal Stone. Source

It has what appears to be chiseled lines on it, in a random and disorganized way. Not a neat inscription or glyphs. Fell says it reads: "To Baal on behalf of the Canaanites this is dedicated." (Source).

This website has a list of the astronomical alignments mentioned for this site, and also includes pictures of the place.

Finally, there is a paper online that mentions a blue-light beams spotted at the American Stonehenge site common to all stonehenge-type buildings as well as pyramids. But they are not ghosts but "Manitou" that "can perhaps be categorized as signals generated by geophysical events... the equivalent modern descriptor would be that there are no “ghosts", or haunted houses, or TV's which tip over by their influence —there is only causative electromagnetic field!" (see Edward and Roger McLeod, 2001, America's Stonehenge, (A.S.), As a Prototype For Expected Phenomena At "The" Stonehenge, and Also For Psychophysical Events and Native American "Manitou."). The McLeods also mention this site regarding "Stellar Gravitational Neutrino Interactions (see their 2009 abstract online). The title may sound like real physics, but it seems to be nonsense. They report that neutrino flux from stars and quasars pass through the Earth (up to here it is true) and as they "cannot penetrate these graviton-like strings. They ... project... stick figures within instruments like the Watch House at America’s Stonehenge, and perhaps the chamber beneath the Great Pyramid..." I would have tended to agree with geophysical processes that form lights in the sky (see my posts about earthquake lights), but neutrinos somehow focused by quantum particles in certain ancient structures is beyond science.

Closing comments

I stand by the findings of a serious research article by Feathers et al, 2022 (Luminescence dating of Enigmatic rock structures in New England, USA, Quaternary Geochronology, Nov. 2022, 101402, Vol 73, doi 10.1016/j.quageo.2022.101402): "Enigmatic rock structures in the form of walls, chambers, tunnels, and cairns are common archaeological features in northeastern United States, but the age of their construction is mostly unknown. Debate persists as to whether they are colonial or pre-colonial in age. Luminescence dating ... place their construction in the late 16th century, just before sustained colonial settlement... The evidence suggests a pre-colonial construction, by ancestors of modern native Americans." Clear and simple, nobody came from Phoenicia, Carthage or Ireland, these structures were built by local Native Americans.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

Minoans in America

Not long ago, I wrote a post about the Native Americans from the Great Lakes region of U.S.A., who mined native copper and used it for practical and ornamental artifacts (axes, jewels, spear heads, etc). For over 5,000 years different tribes operated this mining, processing, and trading emporium across North America.

However, some authors have suggested that the copper was extracted by Mediterranean people (i.e. Phoenicians, Carthaginians, or Minoans). In today's post we will look into some of these wild theories.

Minoans and copper trade, Jewell's theory

In his book, published in 2000, "Ancient Mines of Kitchi-Gummi: Cypriot / Minoan Traders in North America", Roger L. Jewell gives his support to the Minoan discovery of America and their use of the native copper mines in Lake Superior. The name "Kitchi-Gummi" is the the Ojibwe (Anishinaabe) name for Lake Superior

Mainstream scientists agree that the copper was not only used locally but also traded across North America. Some of the metal artifacts were buried in graves, other pieces were lost, and, following the discovery of America, most Native objects were taken (looted, stolen) and melted down for other uses. However, Jewell argues that the natives couldn't have dug 5,000 separate mines 4,500 years ago or consumed the 20 to 50 million pounds (9,000 MT to 22,000 MT) of pure copper that were extracted from these mines.

But, according to Wilband, 1978 the figure is even higer than the one given by Jewell: "500 million pounds to perhaps more than one billion pounds" citing: Drier, R. W., and Du Temple, 1961, Prehistoric copper mining in the Lake Superior region. Published privately by the authors.

Though the figure may seem large, it adds up to 227,000 to 554,000 MT. To grasp it, its volume is roughly 25,000 to 50,000 cubic meters, or 883,000 to 1,766,000 cu. ft. Averaged over, say, 5,000 years of mining it isn't much: 5 m³ or 17.6 cu.ft. of pure copper per year. This was traded across the continent and widely dispersed.

As I haven't bought the book, I will simply summarize the arguments put forward by the author in his book's overview, and on its website, as well as information I came across on online forums. All of them agree, and sound quite serious, but, in fact they don't add up to support the Minoan connection with America.

Overview of the theory

The copper mines are located in the Isle Royal region of Lake Superior in Michigan, USA (Google maps). They were operated by Native Americans who were managed by European people on how to extract the copper. These Europeans then loaded their ships with the copper and sailing east, along the Great Lakes, and the -Saint Lawrence River, crossed the North Atlantic and took the copper to Spain where they smelted it. The copper ingots were then traded across the Mediterranean by Minoans from Crete or merchants based in Cyprus, who sold it to the Egyptians. All of this is said to have taken place around 4000 BC. (perhaps too early in my opinion, regarding the Minoan Culture on Crete.

Dolmens

As evidence, Jewell says these mines in Michingan have been dated to 4000 BC by radiocarbon methods. He adds that European culture can be seen in the region because there are dolmens on the shores of Lake Superior. Dolmens are megalithic (large-stone) structures common in bronze-age Europe 3,000 to 4,000 years BC. A dolmen generally consists of two or more upright slabs supporting a flat slab layed across them. They are table-like structures. Jewell adds that some of these dolmens are inscribed with the word "BAAL", the name of a Semitic god (from Phoenicia and Canaan) —which seems strange if the miners are Minoan or Cypriot! The script used to write the word is Ogham, another oddity because it is much more recent, from the Irish Middle Ages.

Below are some European Dolmens, they are structures that a person can enter, and stand inside. Their appearance is very different from the "dolmen" of Lake Superior pictured futher down, which is resting on some big boulders, not on tall slabs.

European dolmens.

The "dolmen" at Sawbill, Michigan:

Sawbill Dolmen stones near Lake Lujenida. Photo by Gary Meinz. Source

The supposed Dolmen is interesting, but I don't see the need to link it with Minoans. The picture above forms part of an article that states that dolmens "are commonly found in the Eastern United States. It is believed that this dolmen is the only one in Minnesota. The Dolmen measures approximately 4 feet high by 6 feet wide and seems to be oriented to the sunrise at the Summer Solstice. It has been speculated that this Dolmen may have been used to observe planetary/star movements, or as a worship area marking changes in the seasons".

Interesting speculatin, but notice the phrasing "it seems" so it isn't a fact that the boulder points towards the summer solstice. In my opinion is it not man-made, it is an erratic boulder (see this article, with a picture of a similar looking natural dolmen in Austwick, England). Erratic boulders are large stones hewn by glaciers and transported on the ice sheet for hundreds of miles and deposited when the ice melted.

Newberry tablet

Jewell adds further evidence in the shape of the Newberry Tablet (my next post will deal with it), a clay tablet inscribed with "proto-minoan script" and the clay figures knwon as McGruer's God's; all of which were discovered in 1896 along the Tahquamenon River in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. They are said to be the work of Minoans who visited the region.

The Sutton Deed signatures

Jewell also noted that the first English settlers (in fact they lived in Sutton, Massachusetts, which by the way, is very far from Lake Superior) purchased their land from the Native American Algonquian-speakig tribes, who signed the deed in 1681/2 using Basque language symbols (Basques live in Spain, hence the connection Spain-Basques-Cree-Lake Superior). He also points out that a treaty signed in 1727 between English and Native Americans had 32 Cypriot symbols used by the native chiefs as their signatures. The blending of Basques, Cree alphabet, and Cypriot symbols seems complicated and confusing. Below is a summary on how these elements are supposed to support the Minoan-Great Lakes connection.

I found an interesting 46-year-old article (Sutton Historical Society, Sutton, Massachusetts, 1704... and Before That, Bulletin, Vol 6, No. 4, Dec. 1980) that tells this same story, as reported by Barry Fell, an epigraphist in his book published in the late 1970s (America B.C.: Ancient Settlers in the New World).

According to Fell, who uses linguistics to support his wild claims, the Celts of Gaul and the British Isles who used Ogham script, reached New England and left inscriptions in rocks there. Carthaginians travelled with Celts (and also left inscriptions). Phoenicians and Egyptians joined in the trade with America and finally, Basque sailors came too. He left the Minoans out of his theory.

But, let's go back to Sutton, which is linked to Jewell and his copper trade theory. The native Nipmuck Indians, who were Algonquian, used Cree syllabic script, an original alphabet. It seems that in the early 1800s, missionaries learned about the existence of an ancient native "Cree" scripts, and used them to christianize the Indians. One of these missionaries, Rev. James Evans (1801-1846) even printed religious texts using it.

But, this nice story ignores the fact that the Cree didn't have a pre-Columbian writing system. Their symbols appeared after their contact with Europeans. There are two versions about who created the Cree script. One version is that, at first, Reverend Evans tried to use Latin characters to express the native language, but when that failed, he implemented a syllabic script inspired on the symbols used for the Cherokee language (devised by Sequoyah). Evans used special symbols that he designed for the Cree language. The other version differs, and states that the Cree invented the language themselves before the missionaries arrived.

Interestingly, Sequoyah was born in Tennessee, ca. 1770, the son af a white man, Nahtaniel Gist, and a Cherokee woman. His father abandoned them when Sequoyah was a child. He became a silversmith and blacksmith, and was a good artist. He also devised a written alphabet for the Cherokee language which he finished in 1821. He moved to Arkansas in 1818 and in 1828, he explored the lands in Oklahoma that the Federal government would give the Cherokee in exchange for their territories east of the Mississippi. He lived in what is now Sequoyah (a village on Route 66) in Oklahoma and died in in 1843 during an expedition. His is the first and only case of somebody who never learned to read or write and created on his own a new written language. (The image shows Sequoyah. It is a lithograph from the portrait painted by Charles Bird King in 1828. He is pointing at the script he invented).

Going back to the Cree script, the second version, the one involving a Cree myth, says that it was handed down by the spirits to a chief called Calling Badger, a man who returned from death, and wrote the symbols on a scroll of birch bark c.1830. These were then adopted by Evans. Neither story mentions a pre-Columbian origin, or Minoans.

Further reading: See this source for a serious explantion of the development of the Cree script.

Barry Fell, in his explanation of the Sutton deeds, jumps to Spain, and asserts that some inscriptions from Basque stone tablets in Spain, that predated Columbus, were sent to him for study, and he noticed they had lines of symbols identical to the Cree ones. Using the Cree "sounds" or phonemes (as a sillabic language, each Cree symbol is linked to a syllable) for these symbols, the language of the inscriptions turned out to be Basque. So ancient Basque inscriptions had been written in Cree-Algonquian script.

Fell added that the Sutton land deed was signed by natives using two types of alphabets, those native chiefs who had been educated in the New England schools used English (Latin) letters for their names while others used the Cree script (or mamalohikan) which Fell says uses ancient Cypriot alphabet letters, only deciphered in 1871, much later than the land deed.

This version contradicts the "Evans origin" of Cree symbols c.1840, and the Cree myth of Calling Badger inventing it in 1830. The Sutton deeds and the Basque inscriptions are theoretically much older and employed Cypriot characters!

Finally, Fell also noted the 1727 treaty signed at Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia, Canada had 32 Cypriot symbols. The Cypriot alphabet died out in Europe around the third century BC, during the days of Alexander the Great meaning that it had to reach America before that date.

So, some Canadian Indians used a script invented in Cyprus over 2,300 years ago, while others used one used by Basques prior to 1492. Confusing indeed! Seems scientific, but it hogwash.

The image above, from the Cree Language Grammar book written by John Horden in 1881 clearly states that "The Indians possess no written characters of their own, and their only mode of communicating with each other, except verbally, before they received instruction from European Missionaries, was by means of rude hieroglyphic symbols. They are now In possession of a "syllabic system"." So you can choose, the pro-native version that does not accept that the script was created by the invading "white Europeans" and imposed on an inferior race of natives, or the more politically correct version that the Cree people invented it themselves shortly before the arrival of the missionaries, inspired by their ancestral spirits.

Jewell's arguments, a Summary

Jewell's website (see it on archive.org) provides snippets of the main arguments that according to his book, support the presence of Minoan-Phoenician-Carthaginian-Basque traders in the Great Lakes region:

• The copper mines are far too old. He argues that they dates are "much older than would be expected" ranging from 2470 BC to 1050 BC. Stating that at that time there were "No developed cultures were here to use the copper." These people were hunter-gatherers. I can't imagine why he supposes that the Native Americans were not capable of mining and using native copper, which is almost pure. They used it to make tools, ornaments and traded it with other native groups. No Minoans needed for this.
• Where did all the Copper go? Arguing that it was shipped to Europe and Egypt because "the copper is missing" and can't be found in America. This overlooks the fact that it was traded all the way to Mexico, a lot of it was interred, placed in tombs and graves, and lost. Since corrosion affects copper, some of the artifacts must have disintegrated. Plenty of copper was looted and smelted by European settlers after their arrival in the mid 1500s.
• Scripts and Texts. There is evidence of other scripts like the Newuberry Tablet which is said to be written in "an ancient script known as a Cypriot Minoan Syllabary", and brought to America by "Minoan traders".
• Dolmens and the Stone Chambers. There is a "Stone Chamber" discovered in Putnam County, New York, oriented according to the Winter solstice and another facing the Equinox. Then there is the Sawbill Dolmen in the Superior National Forest supposedly marking the water divide between the Hudson Bay and the St. Lawrence River basins. I have already dealt with the "dolmens" further up. Regarding the Stone Chambers, they deserve a post for themselves: see it here.
• The mtDNA X haplogroup. I have posted about this in the past and discussed it in depth. Jewell says that the Algonquian people carry it because they were in contact with eastern Mediterranean, Spanish, and West European people "thousands of years ago." These people brought the X mtDNA haplogroup to America by sailing across the Atlantic Ocean.

Closing Comments

None of these arguments, support the Minoan trade network assumed by Jewell. One that spanned the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea, and also required navigating 1,170 km (730 mi) up the St. Lawrence River skirting rapids, and then continuing 1,750 km (1,100 miles) inland, bypassing Niagara falls, and crossing the Great Lakes and the St. Mary's rapids to reach the copper mines they didn't even know existed when they set out from Europe. Furthermore, for those who'd believe that the natives could have guided the Mionan expeditionaries from the Atlantic seabord to the the Isle Royale mines, I must point out that the French missionaries and explorers who reached the shores of Canada c.1600s saw copper objects but couldn't get the natives to explain or identify their exact source (see Ancient Mining on the Shores of Lake Superior, by Charles Whittlesey, 1862.

The Cree-Basque-Cypriot script link is tenuous at least, and a fantasy if we look at it objectively. The stones inscribed with the word "Baal" sound like nineteenth century forgeries, and I have not (yet) been able to find any formal research papers mentioning them.

In my opinion, if the Minoans visited America, it was a chance event driven by a storm or strong winds, an accidental voyage, and not a systematic and consistent trade route driving copper from America to the Levant. For those interested in the subject, I have mentioned Minoans in some previous posts.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall ©