Bourne Stone
Encyclopedia
The Bourne Stone is an archaeological curiosity located in the town of Bourne
, Massachusetts
.
The object is a 300-pound chunk of pink granite
, upon which two lines of carvings were made. For many years it served as the doorstep for a meetinghouse in Bourne. It is currently on display at the museum of the Bourne Historical Society.
The controversial amateur epigrapher
Barry Fell
claimed that the carvings were made in Iberian script and read as follows:
Fell asserted that "Hanno" referred to Hanno the Navigator
, which, if true, would date the stone to about 570 BC and offer evidence that the Carthaginians crossed the Atlantic in ancient times.
In 2004 runic expert Michael Barnes was shown the stone and stated that the markings were definitely not runes, and the Minnesota archaeologist Patricia Emerson and Larry J Zimmerman (an academic with expertise in Native American archaeology) suggested that the markings were either natural or Native American
petroglyphs.
Bourne, Massachusetts
Bourne is a town in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 18,721 at the 2000 census.For geographic and demographic information on specific parts of the town of Bourne, please see the articles on Bourne , Buzzards Bay, Monument Beach, Pocasset, Sagamore, and Sagamore...
, Massachusetts
Massachusetts
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...
.
The object is a 300-pound chunk of pink granite
Granite
Granite is a common and widely occurring type of intrusive, felsic, igneous rock. Granite usually has a medium- to coarse-grained texture. Occasionally some individual crystals are larger than the groundmass, in which case the texture is known as porphyritic. A granitic rock with a porphyritic...
, upon which two lines of carvings were made. For many years it served as the doorstep for a meetinghouse in Bourne. It is currently on display at the museum of the Bourne Historical Society.
The controversial amateur epigrapher
Epigraphy
Epigraphy Epigraphy Epigraphy (from the , literally "on-writing", is the study of inscriptions or epigraphs as writing; that is, the science of identifying the graphemes and of classifying their use as to cultural context and date, elucidating their meaning and assessing what conclusions can be...
Barry Fell
Barry Fell
Barry Fell was a professor of invertebrate zoology at the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology. His primary research was on starfish and sea urchins...
claimed that the carvings were made in Iberian script and read as follows:
A proclamation. Of annexation. Do not deface. By this Hanno takes possession.
Fell asserted that "Hanno" referred to Hanno the Navigator
Hanno the Navigator
Hanno the Navigator was a Carthaginian explorer c. 500 BC, best known for his naval exploration of the African coast...
, which, if true, would date the stone to about 570 BC and offer evidence that the Carthaginians crossed the Atlantic in ancient times.
In 2004 runic expert Michael Barnes was shown the stone and stated that the markings were definitely not runes, and the Minnesota archaeologist Patricia Emerson and Larry J Zimmerman (an academic with expertise in Native American archaeology) suggested that the markings were either natural or Native American
Native Americans in the United States
Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples in North America within the boundaries of the present-day continental United States, parts of Alaska, and the island state of Hawaii. They are composed of numerous, distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which survive as...
petroglyphs.