West Virginia glyphs

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Barry Fell, a retired professor of marine biology at Harvard University, published an article in 1983, describing his claims that he had deciphered petroglyphs in several places in southern West Virginia, which he claimed were written in Ogam, an Irish Celtic script dating back to the 6th to 8th century A.D., and that they were in fact a detailed description of the nativity of Christ. [1] Fell is known for promoting a theory of North America as having been visited by Irish, Iberian, Libyan, and Egyptian explorers "some 2,000 to 2,500 years ago".

In fact, Fell's methods involved an arbitrary grouping of the markings, an interpretation of them as only the consonants of Ogam, and the addition of vowels and horizontal stem lines where he saw fit. This allowed him to decide which of three consonants any particular glyph should represent.

Fell's work was subsequently debunked by linguists and archaeologists from several countries [2], to which Fell responded by accusing them of being "too damn lazy" to read his writings, and of being "ignorant".

Even those who agreed with Fell's interpretation of the marks as being Ogam disagree with his translation. Edo Nyland believed the "inscription" at Horse Creek to be in Basque and translated it very differently, as a description of a bison hunt. For instance, the section which Fell translates as "A happy season is Christmas, a time of joy and goodwill to all people." is given by Nyland (1996) as "Club blows in abundant measure (were needed) because many which had fallen into the ravine resisted with obviously broken legs. Brothers, come and help the slaughterer to finish them off." [3] Any interpretation which leads to such radically different interpretations should be treated with caution. Unfortunately, Fell's dubious Ogam theory has influenced many subsequent interpretations of carvings and paintings all over America.