December 22, AD 500: Christmas in West Virginia
In AD 500, King Arthur ruled England.
At about that time, a missionary in what is now West Virginia completed a drawing in a cave. It was an inscription written in a language known as Ogam Consaine. It was in use in Ireland. Here is what it said.
At the time of sunrise a ray grazes the notch on the left side on Christmas dayA feast-day of the church, the first season of the (Christian) year
The season of the blessed and event of the Savior, Lord Christ (Salvatoris Domini Christi)
Behold, he is born of Mary, a woman
Every year, on December 22, the winter solstice, a beam of light from the sun shines on the inscription.
The translation was made by Barry Fell, who was a master of Ogam and other ancient languages. He was also a professor of invertebrate zoology at the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology.
This inscription poses major problems for the critics. Academic historians are committed to one of these positions: (1) Columbus was first; (2) the Vikings were first, in 1000 A.D. This inscription undermines both positions.
In one of the anti-Fell papers linked by the critics of Fell, we read this:
One can only speculate about who inscribed the Wyoming County Petroglyph until researchers accumulate more evidence. West Virginians may never know whether an Irishman, a Berber, an Amerindian or all three made the carvings. But the undeniable fact is that the petroglyph is there, and its decipherment is validated by a natural phenomenon. Ancient history however, has a few insights to contribute to this puzzle.Irish monks possibly reached North America by the sixth century A.D. St. Patrick Christianized the Irish between 432 and 461. By this time the Gaelic people had established a class of learned men, who found a natural place in the Christian establishment. A century after St. Patrick's arrival, Irish monks and scholars began evangelizing abroad. St. Brendan, an Irish monk, supposedly made a voyage across the Atlantic Ocean from Ireland to Newfoundland on the eastern coast of Canada in the sixth century In modern times Timothy Severin set out to duplicate St. Brendan's voyage in a leather-hulled sailing boat, built to sixth century specifications. His successful voyage which proved the trip was possible, was reported by National Geographic in December 1977.
The question that American historians never have answered satisfactorily is WHO were the Amerindians? History books gloss over the fact that Americans have an ancient past. European explorers and settlers observed during America's colonial period that native Americans represented a variety of racial stocks and had developed an amazing range of culture from complex urban societies to primitive family units. But the most striking difference was the number of spoken languages. Ethnologists later estimated that more than 50 unrelated linguistic (language) stocks and 700 distinct dialects were spoken north of Mexico! The linguistic stocks had no common vocabulary or grammatical structure.
This suggests that successive groups of immigrants reached America, beginning in a distant time when hunters crossed the Bering land bridge between Siberia and Alaska and still continuing today. A growing body of convincing information points to an active period of trans-Atlantic crossings beginning about 2500 years ago; these waves of immigrants were absorbed into the American melting pot along with their customs and languages.
Fell thought the inscription was made sometime between AD 600 and 800. The critic thinks it could have been made as early as the sixth century -- King Arthur's era.
This abandons the argument for "the Vikings were first; Columbus was second." This is a major surrender to Fell, but in the name of criticism.
You have just read the text of Lesson 4 of my course on American history for the Ron Paul Curriculum. For more information, click here:
Here is my video lesson.
Merry Christmas.
For further reading:
Barry Fell, "CHRISTIAN MESSAGES IN OLD IRISH SCRIPT DECIPHERED FROM ROCK CARVINGS IN W. VA." (1983). Download here. If this link dies, go here.
"W.VA. PETROGLYPHS INDICATE PRESENCE OF IRISH A MILLENIUM AGO" (1988). Download here. (Scroll down.) If this link dies, go here.Mike McCormack, "West Virginia Petroglyph" (1988). Download here.
"Wyoming County Petroglyphs" (2015). Download here.
W. Hunter Lesser, "Cult Archaeology Strikes Again: A Case for Pre-Columbian Irishmen in the Mountain State?" (1983). Download here. If this link dies, go here.