These ancient West Virginian tablets may be hoaxes

CHARLESTON, WV (WOWK) — West Virginia is home to many interesting artifacts that give us a broader idea of what life was like before colonists came to America. However, two such artifacts have had their legitimacy questioned.

Discovered in 1838 during an excavation of the Grave Creek Mound in Moundsville by Abelard Tomlinson and others, the Grave Creek Stone or Tablet is a sandstone tablet written in a mysterious language.

While ethnographer Henry Rowe Schoolcraft believed the tablet belonged to ancient Celts, “different scholars concluded that the characters resembled those in a variety of ancient alphabets, including Tunisian, ancient Greek, Egyptian, Etruscan, and Phoenician, as well as those from Algiers, Libya, and the African interior,” according to the WV Encyclopedia .

It was this uncertainty however that led some scholars to denounce the tablet as a hoax.

Unfortunately, any hope of verifying the stone was lost as its current location is unknown, despite four casts being made by the Smithsonian Institution. These recreations and others have been criticized for their slight deviations from the original , making insights more difficult.

As for the second artifact, the Braxton County Rune Stone — also called the Wilson Stone or Braxton County Tablet — was discovered by Blaine Wilson at Triplett Fork on April 10, 1931. The sandstone tablet has an inscription across its face in what appears to be a similar language to the Grave Creek Tablet.

Much like the Grave Creek stone, the legitimacy of the Braxton County stone has been called into question.

After the state of West Virginia purchased it, nine years after it was found, it was sent to University of Michigan archeologist Dr. Emerson F. Greenman, who concluded that , “it has not been demonstrated that the Wilson tablet is a fraud, but the preponderant evidence points in that direction.”

Unlike the Grave Creek Tablet, the Braxton County Rune Stone can be found in the West Virginia State Museum in Charleston.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to WOWK 13 News.