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