Newberry Tablet - Minoan script in the Great Lakes

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:

Photograph of the Newberry Tablet. Source

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:

Newberry Tablet nowadays. Source

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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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025by 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 © 

Copper artifacts in prehistoric North America

At school I was taught that the Native Americans used stone tools, and lived as hunter-gatherer groups roaming across America, living in crude tents or makeshift huts. They had learned how to make pottery and rudimentary weaving, but that was all. The advanced Mesoamerican civilzations, and the Incas of South America had a more developed culture, led by kings, they build cities with magnificent stone buildings, pyramids, and carved stone. They had armies, agriculture, irrigation, delicate weaving and some metallurgical skills. They worked gold and silver by beating the metals, and also had some rudimentary smelting know-how for copper and bronze. They never learned about iron.

But this history overlooked the fact that some native groups in North America developed the use of native copper metal, and over thousands of years, these people moved from utilitarian objects (adzes, knives) to delicately decorated artifacts for ceremonial purposes. The "Indians" weren't so brutal and uncivilized as I had been taught.

The Old Copper Complex

Utilitarian copper artifacts at the Milwaukee Museum

The Old Copper Complex, or Culture appeared in the Great Lakes region of the U.S. around 6,000 years ago, during a period known as the Middle Archaic. At that time, they worked native copper (pure copper metal) into utilitarian objects like axes, knives, hooks for fishing, and spear or arrow heads (see photos of tools online: Milwaukee Museum Collection). They continued to do so for thousands of years, developing techniques to extract the almost pure copper metal nuggets from the soil and bedrock.

Roughly 2500 years ago, their culture shifted, and these people started making decorative (probably religious) artifacts and jewelry. (Source).

Thousands of objects have been discovered and are held in private and public collections. Many more were looted and melted down by the newcomer Europeans after the discovery of America.

As mentioned in previous posts, the American scholars of the 1800s didn't believe that the "Indians" were capable of working metals, or crafting the objects that they were finding in mounds and burials. They believed, with their racist mindset, that the natives were far too primitive to have developed this type of material culture. The scientists imagined a lost civilization of advanced mound-builders, or that advanced people from Eurasia (Phoenicians, Egyptians, Romans, Vikings, etc.) made their way across the Mediterranean Sea and the North Atlantic Ocean, and upstream along the St. Lawrence River, deep into the Great Lakes, to source copper and in the process, teach the natives how to work the metal. Clearly absurd considering the logistics involved, and the nature of their ships. It was fine to bring tin from Cornwall, in the southwestern tip of Britain, across the English Channel, but to cross the ocean with tons of copper was risky, and impractical.)

So, none of that was true. The ancient Amerindians learned how to work the nuggets of pure copper all by themselves.

In the mid 1900s, better tools allowed the dating by radiocarbon of copper finds, and we learned that some of them were very ancient, and indigenous to the New World.

The Copper

The Amerindian people used native copper, a rare and very pure (95% purity) grade of metallic copper. It appears as nuggets, with the typical red color of copper (see picture above). For this reason it was easily found, and used. Current copper mines used low purity, highly oxidized mineral, that requires complex mechanical and chemical processing of thousands of tons of ore, to obtain a few hundred pounds of pure metal.

The Great Lakes area is one of the few regions in the world, where native copper is found. The activity of glaciers also bulldozed the ore, spreading copper across the surface. The natives also dug mines to extract native copper. They used stone hammers, and also heating and cooling cycles to break the rock apart (light a fire, and cool the rock suddenly with cold water).

The copper nuggets were then processed. The North American natives had not learned how to smelt copper, or blend it with tin to make bronze. They used cold techniques to work the metal: they hammered it into shape. Another process they used was to heat it to make it more malleable, a process known as annealing (at 800°C, - 1470°F it softens but does not melt the copper).

They embossed, perforated, engraved, and also riveted the objects that they crafted (Source), copper trade carried the metal from the Great Lakes across the continent, even 1,500 km (900 mi) south of the Great Lakes (Source).

Below are two images of some of the Wulfing copper objects, unearthed in a farm in Malden, Missouri, in the late 1800s. They date to around 1200-1400 AD. (Source) they are named after the collector who donated them to the Museum; they are good examples of the artistry achieved by the native metalworkers.

The following image is the "falcon", that was excavated at the Hopewell Culture National Historical Park (Source):

These were delicate, carefully crafted objects, made by skilled artisans. They show us an alternative reality about the Native Americans. People who had sophisticated societies, religion, and also an organization that supported trade, mining, and craftsmen capable of working the copper metal. They weren't only people that hunted buffalo and lived in teepees. Amerindians thousands of years ago, lived in complex societies, like the mound-builders, in urban-agricultural settings, producing ceramics and beautiful objects like those depicted above.

There is no need to concoct a pre-Clovis civilization like the one proposed by Graham Hancock, the natives themselves developed their own civilization starting from scratch.

An example of their elaborate culture can be seen at the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Cahookia, just east of St. Louis, in Southern Illinois, it has mounds that are over 30 m (100 ft) tall, and had a population of 10,000 to 40,000 residents. This required an advanced agricultural and social organization. I wrote about them in my Route 66 website because the site is located right beside on of U.S. 66's alignments. Below you can see what we think they looked like in AD 1,100.

Decline and Collapse

But, shortly after, the mound-culture vanished. Starting in 1200 AD, weather changed, a cycle of drought and floods hit the region. It was followed by a Little Ice Age. The large semi-urban populations that depended on agriculture suffered the effects. Famine, social unrest, environmental degradation led to a gradual depopulating of these towns. By the early and mid 1500s, few of them remained.

These final days of these mound villages were mentioned by the ruthless Spanish conquistador Hernando de Soto in 1540, when he rode from Florida across the Southeastern USA and along the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico. de Soto attacked the natives, killing many, maiming and torturing captives, a brutal man of his time. He mentions some of these fortified cities (Coosa, Mabila, Cofitachequi). This expedition more or less coincides with the final stage of decline and destruction of these cities which was probably promoted by the Old World diseases introduced by the Europeans, (smallpox, measles, flu...) which led to the "Great Dying" that exterminated 90% of the Amerindian population starting in 1492.

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