At the risk of stepping in it (again), I'm writing another post about stone holes.

You heard me: stone holes.

My last post on the subject asked why we should assume that hand-chiseled holes (which are irregular or triangular in shape rather than perfectly round) are medieval in age. There are several pieces of information (including experiments and first-hand accounts) that leave little doubt that the hand-chiseled holes being created in Minnesota in the 1800's and early 1900's would be difficult to distinguish from any holes left by a Norse expedition hundreds of years earlier. The discussion on that post didn't convince me that there's a good positive case to be made for the medieval origin for any of the stone holes: the work to develop and apply a reliable methodology for discriminating stone holes based on their intrinsic characteristics apparently hasn't been done yet.

I thought it might be fun to approach the problem from the other direction: let's develop a falsifiable hypothesis that all of the stone holes are of modern (i.e., post-Columbus) origin. I'll call it the "Boulder Field Quarry" hypothesis. I didn't invent this explanation, of course, but considering it as a formal hypothesis will be a useful way to demonstrate how you use an explanatory model (an explanation/description of how variables fit together) to derive falsifiable expectations that you can compare to empirical data. If it's possible to prove a hypothesis wrong but you can't do it after repeated attempts, you can start to have some confidence that you might be onto something. Here it goes.

Hypothesis: All of the stone holes found on boulders in Minnesota were produced by post-Columbus Euro-American settlers for the purposes of blasting the boulders into smaller pieces. 

Glacial boulders in Minnesota were useful sources of stone for the Euro-American who populated the region in the 1800's. Holes chiseled or drilled into boulders were packed were filled with black power, gun powder, or dynamite. The explosives were ignited to break the boulders into smaller pieces which could be removed to clear fields and/or be used as building materials.

In The Art of Splitting Stone: Early Rock Quarrying Methods in Pre-Industrial New England 1630-1825 (2005), Mary Gage and James Gage discuss how this technique was used by German immigrants to New England in the late 1700's and early 1800's (pp. 24-25). Gage and Gage (pg. 25) describe round blasting holes with a diameter of about 1 3/16" (about 3 cm) and depths ranging from 4 to 20 inches (about 10-51 cm). New England blasting holes created after 1825 are slightly larger, ranging in size from 1.5-2 inches (3.8-5 cm) (pg. 25). Gage and Gage also note that "Generally, the hole was drilled into the top center of the boulder . . . Some surviving examples of blasted boulders have two or more blasting holes. The evidence indicates that an additional blast hole was drilled when the first blast was insufficient to break the whole boulder apart" (pg. 25).

Text Expectations: The placement, diameter, and depth of stone holes in Minnesota should be consistent with their creation for the purpose of blasting rocks. Based on descriptions of boulder field quarry blasting in New England discussed by Gage and Gage, the following statements should be true: 

• Boulders with one or more stone holes are too large to easily move in one piece or too large to use in the construction of building foundations;
• Stone holes are located on the top surfaces of boulders in locations suitable for blasting the entire boulder or removing significant pieces of the boulder;
• Stone holes are in the range of 3-5 cm in diameter;
• Stones holes are in the range of 10-60 cm in depth;

The test expectations are pretty simple. They can be refined if there's additional information out there about patterning in stone holes associated with boulder field quarry blasting.

​In the comments to the previous stone hole post, I mentioned repeatedly the need for a stone hole dataset that could be analyzed. This is why. The boulder field quarry model produces specific expectations for patterning in the placement, size, and depth of stone holes. In other words, it makes predictions which can potentially be shown to be false. Testing those predictions requires empirical data that can be used to quantify and characterize the stone holes. How wide are they? How deep are they? Where are they located on individual boulders? Are there any examples of small, intact boulders with stone holes? 

Can the "medieval Norse origin" stone hole model produce a set of falsifiable predictions? I don't know. If so, I have yet to see those predictions clearly articulated.

That's one reason why the boulder field quarry hypothesis should be the null hypothesis.  There are several others: it accords with multiple first-hand accounts, it's logical, and it fits with experimental, archaeological, and historical data from other areas. If you can prove that the stone holes weren't for blasting, I'm prepared to consider alternatives. But first you either have to show me why this explanation doesn't work (citing "because the Kensington Rune Stone" exists isn't going to cut it, either, for reasons I've already beat to death) or develop an alternative model that's also falsifiable. What characteristics of these stone holes indicate they weren't created for blasting rocks?

I'm behind on everything and don't have time to write, as usual, but I wanted to pass on a few things while I'm eating my lunch.

In the interest of historic preservation, I'd like to pass on these two images (both by Killbuck Norman) to add to your Fake Hercules Sword dank meme stash:

Fair is fair, so it's legitimate to pass on this link to a fascinating video that cuts right to the heart of the matter and makes excellent use of clipart images. For added fun, I recommend turning on the auto-generated captioning. Enjoy!

Finally, some of you are no doubt aware of the ongoing discussion on last week's blog post about calcite weathering and the Kensington Rune Stone. As of this writing there are 155 comments, many of which are useful and some of which are not. I was recently made aware that there's been a somewhat parallel discussion about the issues raised in the post in the Kensington Rune Stone International Supporters Club group on Facebook (it's an open group, so you can go and read what's there if you like). This is, I think, a useful statement to have on the record:

If you've been paying attention, that statement speaks volumes. Moving on. 

As my Forbidden Archaeology course descends into the meaty part of the syllabus, the interesting "fringe" topics I'd like to write about are piling up to the point where I'm feeling buried. There was already a backlog, but now I'm finding myself listening to presentations and interviews (rather than music) on my walks to and from work. When I get to my lab, however, I've got people to manage and a hundred other things to do to move my actual research forward -- I just haven't been able to make the time to hole up and spend a few hours composing a thoughtful blog post. One of the reasons I like to write is that the process of writing helps me organize my thoughts. So it's a bummer that I'm finding less time to write during the semester when I'm most immersed in "fringe" claims.

Rather than let things remain unwritten, I'm going to try a "lightning round" approach where I quickly summarize an idea: short and (hopefully) to the point. These posts won't be works of art, but will (1) provide a place for discussion for those who are interested in a topic and (2) provide an organized summary that I can return to. So don't beat me up if I leave something out or fail to appreciate some nuance: it is what it is.

Now onto the topic.

Harold Edwards, a professional geologist and scheduled Forbidden Archaeology participant, sent me some information on the weathering of calcite as it relates to evaluating the age of the inscription on the Kensington Rune Stone (KRS).  Edwards told me that I could "use these pictures and this information as you wish." I'll quote Edwards directly when so you'll know which words are his and which are mine.

First, some definitions: 

Calcite is a common carbonate mineral that is one of the principal constituents of limestone and marble. It has a Mohs hardness of 3 and dissolves in acid.

Greywacke is a variety of sandstone. Sandstone has a Mohs hardness of 6.5 to 7. The susceptibility of sandstones to acid depends upon the minerals holding the sand grains together.

The different hardness and weathering properties of calcite and greywacke are important to evaluating the age of the inscription on the KRS.  I have modified an image of the KRS (taken in 1995 and sent to me by Edwards) to show the location of the calcite deposit on the front face of the KRS.  According to Richard Nielson and Scott Wolter (The Kensington Rune Stone: Compelling New Evidence, 2006, p. 17), the calcite layer is 1-2 mm thick and was deposited millions of years ago "along the joint fracture system [while the rock was still attached to its parent] in solution, parallel to the face side of the stone." (In his email, Edwards stated that the calcite layer was about 3 mm thick).

The inscription on the KRS extends into the calcite deposit.  Given that calcite is more susceptible to weathering than greywacke, one would expect that the portion of the inscription in the calcite would be more weathered than the portion in the greywacke.   Neilsen and Wolter (2006: 17) say this is, in fact, the case:

"Microscopic examination using reflected light revealed that the characters carved into the calcite were less distinct and appeared to be more weathered than the characters carved into the graywacke. . . . Further study of the weathering of the characters within the calcite area might yield additional information about the relative age of the inscription, but currently the only tests available are invasive and would deface the inscription."

​In his email, Edwards claims that the portion of the inscription in the calcite is much less weathered than one would expect had the carved runes actually been exposed to 500 years of weathering:

"The inscription is about as sharp as the day it was carved.  Look at the word spacer--the colon-like double dotted letter.  There is an almost perfect impression of a conical punch. The surface of the calcite layer shows the granular texture that is typical of weathered calcite so it was weathered for some time.  The letters are smooth showing virtually no weathering."

Edwards also sent me some images of marble tombstone from 1881 to illustrate the effects of above-ground weathering on calcium carbonate rocks. Edwards wrote the following:

"Marble is almost completely made of calcite.  Rainwater absorbs carbon dioxide from the air to become slightly acidic and over time dissolves away the calcite.  In the Kensington area this happens to marble tombstones at a rate of 6mm/1000 years.  In other words in the 500 years between 1362 and 1898 the calcite layer would have been obliterated."

If you're interested in the issue of stone holes in the Upper Great Lakes and whether or not some of them were made by members of a medieval Norse expedition, you are probably familiar with the work of Bob Voyles. As I wrote last Friday, I've invited Voyles to prepare a guest blog post about his ideas, perhaps the first in a series of "Forbidden Friday" posts. There has been some back and forth in the comments on that post, so I thought I'd make a new post to pose some of my own basic questions/thoughts about the stone hole issue prior to Voyles' guest post. I want to make it clear that I'm not a stone hole expert, and I haven't spent a lot of time looking into Voyles' claims (i.e., it's possible he or someone else has already addressed these questions).

Confronted with the claim of a Norse origin for some of the stone holes, my first question is "how do you know the holes were made by the Norse?"  You can't directly date a hole in stone, after all, and there are several possible reasons for creating holes in stones in the first place.  The leading "mainstream" explanation for most of the holes, as described in this 1998 article by Tom Trow, is that they were created for the purposes of blasting the rocks apart so the pieces could be used for the foundations of buildings. Trow (pp. 127-128) quotes an older resident's description of how and why the stone holes were created, by hand, with iron or steel chisels:

"Gee, whiz, I had to crank the grindstone for ’em to sharpen them chisels. You know, you had a chisel this long [showing about a foot and a half]. And then it was about as big as your finger. And then it was sharp, you know, sharpened, and then you took it like this and then you held it on the stone and then you gave it a crack and, you know, they were experts at turning it, see? And then they turn it, and then they gave it another crack, and that’s the way, after a while, the chisel went down in the stone. And then they dug the scrap out and they kept on drilling until it was about this deep [showing about eight inches]. Then they put powder. . . . in there, black powder, and then if it was a big stone you’d have to make another hole over here and another hole over there. And then they set fire to it and blasted it. And it cracks nice."

Trow's informant (Emil Mattson) was born in 1897, and therefore would have been describing creating stone holes using hand chisels in the early 1900's. 

If I understand Voyles correctly, he claims that one can differentiate stone holes created in the 1800's and 1900's from those created by the Norse because of differences in (1) weathering and (2) form. With respect to weathering, Voyles states that the edges of what he interprets as medieval stone holes show significantly more weathering on their edges than those that were obviously made by modern drills. On this page he shows what he describes as aging differences between a "modern" stone hole and one created by the Norse. 

With respect to shape, Volyes points to differences in the regularity of holes created with modern drilled versus those created by hand chisels.  In a January 2016 article titled "In Defense of the Kensington Runestone: Stoneholes," Voyles makes the following statement:

"The medieval stoneholes are slightly triangular because it is not possible to make a perfectly round stonehole with a hand chisel. Later modern drilling could make perfectly round holes, and this is how old and new can be distinguished from one another."

I think Voyles is correct that are groups of holes made using different techniques. My issue comes with equating "triangular" or "hand-chiseled" with "medieval." A little searching online turned up some descriptions of early American stone quarrying methods that are useful, I think.  The first quote is from the 2005 book The Art of Splitting Stone: Early Rock Quarrying Methods in Pre-industrial New England 1630-1825 (Mary Gage and James Gage) in a section titled "Hammer Drilling or Triangular Hole Method" (page 48):

​     ". . .Triangular holes are documented at archaeological sites in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Delaware, and Great Britain. Archaeological, historical, and experimental evidence has demonstrated that the triangular holes were cut with a straight edge chisel being rotating approximately 60 degrees between hammer strikes. These holes come in a wide variety of diameters and depths.
     Frederick Pohl in his book The Lost Discovery has documented and researched several triangular hole sites found in stone outcroppings along the tidal waters and bays on Cape Cod . . . Mr. Pohl felt a straight-edged chisel rather than a plug or star drill was used to drill/cut the triangular hole. To verify his theory, he conducted an experiment. He and two other people, "taking turns leisurely cut a hole 1 1/4 inches deep in five minutes. We found we could not make a round hole with a straight-edged chisel. All our attempts resulted in triangular holes with the corners rounded.""

Gage and Gage point to other interesting accounts of using hand chisels to create stone holes. A 1904 book by Halbert Powers Gillette titled Rock Excavation: Methods and Cost is quoted in this report by James Gage:

​"Hammer Drilling. – The common weight of hammer for one-hand drilling is 4 ½ lbs; for two-hand or three-hand drilling 10 lbs. The striking face must be flat or slightly rounding, and smaller than the stock of the hammer. The hole is started on a solid and squared surface, with a short drill, for the longer the drill the less effective the blow. Light blows are struck at first. The bit is turned one-eighth of a revolution after each blow to insure keeping the hole truly circular. But in spite of this precaution most hand-drilled holes are three-cornered, or “rifled.”"

Based on the fact that we've got multiple accounts demonstrating that hand chisels were commonly being used to produce holes in rocks in the northern United States at least into the early 1900's (including in Minnesota), and that such methods typically produced triangular holes . . . on what basis could one claim that some triangular/irregular stone holes were created by the medieval Norse?  What is the positive evidence? How could you separate out the Norse holes from all the others that we know were being created?

As Voyles suggests, weathering could be a way to go. If similar tools were used to create similar holes, there's still at least the theoretical possibility that one could differentiate stone holes created in the 14th century from those created in the 19th or 20th centuries by looking at the weathering of exposed surfaces. As Voyles stated in his comments on my blog about the Sauk Lake Altar Rock, "multiple hand-chiseled holes in this rock can be compared to the mineral or mica decomposition of the late 1800's stoneholes to see that they are extremely aged by comparison." I think there's potentially a significant difficulty here, however, if we depend on macroscopically-observable "weathering" to assign relative age. The descriptions of steel chisels "dancing" around in the holes as they're created suggests to me that the edges of hand-chiseled holes might be battered as they are created (rather than smoothed gradually by mechanical weathering). To my eye, for example, the triangular hole shown by Gage and Gage in Figure 20 (page 49) appears to have a battered/smoothed lip.  Perhaps there would be a way to look at some microscopic characteristics of the stone and say something about aging.  You'd have to have good controls for that, however. If I were trying to build a case that some of these stone holes were created by medieval Norse, I'd start working on that aspect and looking for other ways to differentiate them from modern holes.

That's my two cents on stone holes for today.

My Forbidden Archaeology class will have its first meeting this Friday morning. As usual, I've waited until almost the last minute to attempt to finalize the syllabus. But that attempt has now been made, and I still have a day to spare. Go me. 

As anyone who has ever created a syllabus from scratch knows, there comes a point when the rubber meets the road and you have to cease thinking vaguely and start nailing down the specifics. I've still got a few more nails to drive in (you'll notice some "TBA's" in the day-by-day readings, and I'm still working on a couple of additions to the guest list), but this is more or less what we'll be driving this semester. Yes, I know I'm mixing metaphors. It's been a long day. One of my kids woke me up at 2:30 and then again at 3:30 and I wasn't able to get back to sleep afterwards. 

I got several offers of guest participation that I won't be able to fully capitalize this time around. If you emailed me about the class and I haven't gotten back to you yet, I sincerely apologize. As I've mentioned before, the students will be writing several blog posts. I hope that several of you that I was not able to include as formal "guests" of the class will perhaps be willing to work with one or more students individually. I'll be in touch!

Finally, I'm sure some of you out there will, for whatever reasons, be unhappy with what the students will be reading. And I'm sure some of you will tell me about it. Keep in mind that I did not chose readings to provide "answers." I chose them to illustrate points, show contrasts, spark questions, and provoke arguments. While we will be discussing and dissecting some of the readings quite closely in class, others are there simply for background. I'll learn a lot about what works well and what doesn't as I get to know the students and we work our way through the course.  

Stay tuned!

I'm happy to announce that I have a new (albeit still preliminary at this point) structure for the portion of my upcoming Forbidden Archaeology course in which we will be discussing the Kensington Rune Stone (KRS). As I've written before, Fobidden Archaeology (ANTH 291 for prospective students at USC) is intended first and foremost to be an exercise in critical thinking, logic, and the evidence-based methods we can employ to discriminate credible from non-credible statements about the human past. Scott Wolter's departure from the schedule doesn't mean that we're not going to talk about the KRS: the origins and meaning of the stone continue to be the focus of a multi-leveled debate that can be used to illustrate the scientific process. I'm hoping that the guests I've now lined up will help my students work through the main points of that debate and experience how scientific methods can be used to frame critical questions and develop testable expectations material evidence related to the past.  

Because of South Carolina law (I was required to settle on texts for the course some time ago), I'm locked into using Wolter's Hooked X book. We'll use that book and other sources to understand arguments supporting the claim that the KRS is a genuine medieval artifact dating to 1362.  Each guest that I've invited will address a different aspect of that claim. 

The Geology and Age of the Kensington Rune Stone

Dr. Harold Edwards will be joining the class (via Skype) to discuss the geology of the KRS as it relates to interpretations of the age of the inscription. Edwards, a professional geologist who works in Minnesota, is currently preparing a paper on the geology of the KRS. He has written lengthy critiques of Wolter's conclusions about the weathering of the KRS on Jason Colavito's blog (e.g., here), and has made comments on my blog in the past. Edwards does not accept the KRS as a medieval artifact on the basis of its geology.

The Runes

Dr. Henrik Williams will be talking to the class (via Skype) about the linguistics of the KRS. Williams is an expert in Germanic runes who has made extensive study of the KRS inscription. You can see a brief interview with Williams in this podcast from the Minnesota Historical Society. Williams does not accept the KRS as a medieval artifact on the basis of its runology.

The Kensington Rune Stone as a Modern Masonic Creation

Finally, Paul Stewart will speak to the class about his ideas of who created the KRS and why. In his 2013 book The Enigmatist, Stewart argued that the KRS was neither a genuine medieval artifact nor an intentional hoax, concluding that it was probably created by Freemasons in the 1800's (perhaps by the Cryptic Rite in 1880). I'm hoping that Stewart will be able to visit the class in person.

While the fine details of scheduling these three guests remain to be worked out, I anticipate that the KRS discussion will happen sometime in early November. Ideally, these guests would be able to interact with my class in the order listed above: geology, runology, and the "third way" interpretation offered by Stewart. I'm planning on helping my students be as prepared as possible to ask Edwards, Williams, and Stewart the toughest questions that they can, probably designating some of them to take Wolter's positions on whatever issues are raised. I want my students to learn how to arm themselves with questions and facts and how to engage with those questions and facts in ways that are constructive, productive, and fun. While I don't yet know how successful I'll be in doing that, I think all signs point to this class being a good ride. Stay tuned.

I'm going to keep this short, because life is short and I don't see much utility in expending a lot of energy on this issue.

As I wrote yesterday, Scott Wolter communicated to me that he was no longer interested in participating in my upcoming class. He told me in the email that it was because Jason Colavito would also be involved in the class (here is Jason's take). Given that Colavito would be participating at a different time and discussing totally different topics, it seemed like a strange decision to me. For that reason, I chose to let Wolter be the one to explain it if he cared to. It didn't take long for "Hutton Pulitzer" to show up on my blog and demonstrate, again, his aversion to factual accuracy. "Hutton Pulitzer's" comment provided information about Wolter's decision that I did not. So now it's a topic for discussion.

Scott Wolter decided not to participate in the class because Jason Colavito was also participating.

The alert reader will have noticed my use of quotation marks around "Hutton Pulitzer." As several people commented on yesterday's post, the language used by "Hutton Pulitzer" is distinctly un-Pulitzer-like, being largely devoid of typos, lacking the USE OF ALL CAPS, and written in more-or-less readable English. I have no way of knowing for sure, but it is plausible that "Hutton Pulitzer" was actually Scott Wolter in disguise.

Whether or not "Hutton Pulitzer" was Pulitzer himself or Wolter in a Pulitzer mask, my feelings are the same: good riddance. Team XplRr has passed my tolerance threshold for absurdity.

I'm a professor at an R1 university. I have a PhD. I do real archaeology and I teach students how to do real archaeology. The Forbidden Archaeology course is designed as an exercise in evidence-based critical thinking and communication. It exists to demonstrate to students that we have mechanisms for discerning credible from non-credible explanations of the human past. Not all ideas we have and stories we tell about the past can be correct, so how do we figure out which ones we can throw out? As I've written several times, the lack of a falsification mechanism is one of the hallmarks of pseudo-science. Holding ideas up to evidence-based scrutiny is what archaeologists do. If you're not doing that, you're not doing science. Forbidden Archaeology is designed to help students learn how to critically evaluate competing narratives about the past. 

For a class like this to work, there has to be a free flow of ideas and information. Period. The title of the course is tongue-in-cheek:  in my book there really is nothing that is "forbidden." As long as we have some mechanism for measuring the credibility of ideas and evidence, there's no reason to be afraid of examining any claim about the past. When some ideas or pieces of evidence are put "off limits," science begins to break down. It's okay to have vigorous disagreements, but at some level you have to agree on what constitute "facts" and "evidence."  Even in a dojo, where combat arts are learned and exercised, there are rules to be followed. 

When I talked to Wolter earlier this summer, I thought we had a meeting of the minds about the goals of the class and what we'd be doing. My intent was to have Wolter help us have a good, aggressive discussion of the Kensington Rune Stone, an object that remains enigmatic to this day. The students would have prepared themselves for Wolter's visit, and my hope was that they could experience some really interesting firsthand interactions with someone who has spent a lot of time and effort developing and defending his ideas about the stone.

I made it clear to Wolter in our phone call that I had no interest in having Pulitzer involved in any way. In my judgement, Pulitzer's history of misrepresentations and legal threats makes him unsuitable for interactions with my students. Based on my own history of interactions with Pulitzer, that's a pretty easy call to make.  

But it appears now that when you're talking to Wolter you're also talking to Pulitzer (perhaps literally). So there's really no way around it: whether Pulitzer speaks for Wolter or Wolter is pretending to be Pulitzer, it's monkey business that has no place in my classroom.  What's next? Demands to remove all the brown M&M's? No matter how I look at it, I cannot now imagine a good interaction with the Pulitzer-Wolter show. It's pretty weak sauce, and I'm no longer interested. The Wolter visit is off the table. What they decide to do with their partnership is none of my business, and that's the way it's going to stay.

I'm looking at other options for discussing different facets of the KRS. I've heard from several interested people already, and I'm considering several approaches that will let me meet the educational goals of the class. I wish the Wolter scenario would have played out differently, but it's just absurd to me that an invited guest (and/or his uninvited business partner) would attempt to exercise control over my syllabus. I have never misled anyone about the goals and content of this class. Forbidden Archaeology is going to be fun and educational for all involved.  I will work as hard as I can to make that happen. Wolter and Pulitzer won't be a part of that. Moving on.

That's about all I have to say about this situation at the moment. I'll keep you posted as I move forward.

On a different note, I spent my morning working on this sculpture of a crow. I'm posting an "in progress" picture because I think it's looking pretty good so far. I may enter it in the state fair.

Oh wait . . . maybe the crow is related: "Nevermore" . . . (thanks, Hartman Krug).

I'm sorry to announce that Scott Wolter will not be participating in my Forbidden Archaeology (ANT 291) class this fall. In an email exchange, Wolter told me that he has "lost his enthusiasm" for the idea. I don't fully understand his rationale for the decision, so I think the simplest and fairest thing to do is to leave it up to him to discuss his decision if he chooses.

The class will stilll be evaluating evidence and ideas about the Kensington Rune Stone (KRS), and we still be using Wolter's Hooked X book as a jumping off point for discussion (I was required by South Carolina law to choose the books for the course some time ago). My sense is that the KRS remains, over a hundred years since it's discovery, one of the more genuinely enigmatic objects used to support claims of pre-Columbian transoceanic contact. It's worth discussing no matter how we do it, so we're going to discuss it. I'll be thinking about options for bringing in someone else (probably via a remote lecture) to lay out an argument for/against the authenticity of the KRS. If I can get a prominent KRS skeptic to participate, maybe I'll set it up so the students take the position that the KRS is authentic . . . I'll think about it.

As far as the GoFundMe campaign to fund the costs of Wolter's travel, I can either find a way to return that money to the (n=3) donors or I can look into rolling it into the Jim Vieira travel fund. Vieira has agreed to pay for his own travel, but it would still be nice to offset some of the costs associated with getting him down here.

Please let me know if you have suggestions about KRS advocates/skeptics. I'll adjust the syllabus to accommodate whatever position the speaker wants to take. The class is first and foremost an exercise in critical thinking, logic, and the evidence-based methods we can employ to discriminate credible from non-credible statements about the human past.

This is a quick follow-up to a blog post from earlier today about the Faram Research Foundation's take on the Kensington Rune Stone (KRS). I was curious about the idea that the runes on the stone were carved by two different people. In the comments to that post, Joe Scales pointed me to this website which contains a link to a 1976 article in Minnesota History titled "The Case of the Gran Tapes" that sheds some light on that issue. 

The Minnesota History article transcribes a 1967 interview with Walter Gran, son of John P. Gran, and Walter Gran's sister (Anna Josephine) and nephew. John P. Gran was a neighbor of Olaf Ohman, the man who unearthed the KRS in 1898. As described in the article (pg. 153),

"The pertinent information as to the inscription derives from conversations in the late 1920s between Walter and his father, who was ill at the time and convinced that he was dying. The evidence thus has the quality of a deathbed statement."

Here is a bit of the interview relevant to the issue of right- and left-handed carvers of the KRS:

"Nephew. Well now, did Ohman ever admit that be did this?  

Walter. No, Ohman didn't. Well, you see, then as time went on. Papa was getting older and older, and I was in Canada. Then I got a telegram, I think it was Art [his brother, Arthur Gran] who sent me a telegram, if you want to see Dad alive, you better come right away. . . . Let me see, when 1 came back, what year was that now? I believe it was in 1926 or '27, I ain't so sure, one of them years. I come up and seen Dad then, and Dad was glad to see me. He was laying in bed but he was pretty weak. Well, then of course we talked about what I was doing. . . Yeah, well, then he got to talking. He brought up about the rune stone, then again. He said to me, you should go to see Ohman now, he said, and visit Ohman. And then he says, you find out how we made the rune stone, he says. He says, you know it is false, he says. You know, he said to me, just like it was important that it was so. And I says Yeah. . . .

Anna Josephine. You see Papa was left-handed . . . and Ohman was right-handed.

Walter. You know I seen that sculpture [rune stone] had been examined and it said it had been two men working on that stone and because one was a left-handed man and one a right-handed man. Well, that fitted in for Dad and Ohman, but then I thought, by God it is something isn't it? . . ."

That's the story from Walter Gran's side.  Needless to say, supporters of the KRS don't accept Gran's report of a 40-year-old confession. Here is the take from one website:

"1972-1975 - The “Deathbed Confession”

As strange as the events that had swirled around the rune stone till now had been, it got even stranger. Walter Gran was the son of John Gran who lived at Kensington. Walter claimed in an interview that his father, while dying, had told him that the rune stone was a fake and that he and Olof Ohman had carved the inscription. Even though no-one around Kensington believed Gran and everyone spoke of his tendency to “exaggerate,” the story caught on. A subsequent interview with Gran showed him to not have a coherent story. A jury would never have bought it, but there was no jury. The rune stone and Olof were convicted of fraud without a trial. The “deathbed confession” suited the anti-stone atmosphere of the times and fit the template of hoax that the hungry media had adopted."
​
Anyone know where I can find that "subsequent interview"?

A comment by Arthur Faram on my last post about the Kensington Rune Stone led me to the website of the Faram Research Foundation.  On his site, Faram provides a list of archaeological/historical "mysteries" that he claims to have solved through the application of "geoglyphology."  The Kensington Rune Stone (KRS) is one of them. Here is what Faram wrote on my blog: 

The KRS has it's own section on Faram's site. `The short version of Faram's claim is that the KRS is an encrypted survey document that describes a pre-Columbian European claim to North America. Faram keys in on the numbers in the stone's text, interpreting them in terms of distances and orientations to various important locations. I'm not sure if/how he attempts to justify his assumptions about what the numbers mean (in one stanza, for example, the phrase "10 men" is decoded as '10 miles,' and in another it's decoded as "a 110 degree radial"). 

Two parts of the claim interested me.  One was Faram's suggestion that the runes on the stone were carved by two different people:

My knowledge of the KRS and the main claims about it is not exhaustive, so I don't know if this is an original idea or not. Knowing if the stone was carved by two different people could be relevant to understanding the circumstances under which the stone was created. If the two parts of the text were created at two different times hundreds of years apart (as Faram claims), for example, one would expect the time difference would be detectable based on differences in the physical weathering of the carvings. If there were two carvers roughly contemporary, however, and the stone can be shown to be a nineteenth century creation, then we're looking for at least two hoaxers rather than one (Update 6/18/2016: this short post discusses the issue of right- and left-handed carvers discussed in a 1976 Minnesota History article about the Gran tapes).

Although I can't claim to follow Faram's logic in decoding the stone in terms of distance and orientation directions, it was simple enough to evaluate his central claim that the KRS describes "new boundaries for the North American Territory for which Inspiration Peak is the central survey marker." Faram states that the number "1362" on the stone, in addition to recording the year the stone was carved, indicates that "Inspiration Peak [Minnesota] was exactly 1362 miles from the three corners of what would later become the United States." 

Faram provides latitudes and longitudes for both Inspiration Peak and the "three corners," making it simple enough to perform distance calculations. Here are the results that I got using this online tool: ​

None of the distances between the pairs of coordinates he provides is "exactly" 1362 miles, and the distances to the NE and S points aren't even close in pre-1592 miles (i.e., when a mile was defined as 5,000 feet rather than 5,280 feet).  The claim that Inspiration Peak, MN, is an equidistant 1362 miles from those three boundaries of the United States is demonstrably false.

The issue of why the length of the mile was changed from 5,000 feet to 5,280 feet in the late 1500's is an interesting one (you can read one take on it here and another here). Faram asks if the change was made "to mask all the measurements done before" 1592, hinting at a mapping conspiracy that could be easily overcome by a change in division.

One of the strangest ideas embedded in Faram's treatment of the KRS is that the number "1362" stands for both the year the stone was created and the distance measurement to each of the three corners of of the territory. Peculiar on its own (in 1362 a party journeyed to a point 1362 miles equidistant from opposing coasts and carved on a rock?), it becomes bizarre when you factor in Faram's claim that the lower portion of the writing, including the number "1362," was an amendment to the stone that was actually added after 1519.  So the original stone was placed 1362 miles from the opposing coasts in 1362, but the number "1362" was not added until much later? And, coincidentally, the third (southern) point that was added to the claim was also 1362 miles from Inspiration Peak, even though it was an amendment?  What good would the original marker have been without the date/distance recorded on it? And how would the carvers in 1362 have known that they needed to place the stone in a location 1362 miles from a point on the southern boundary of the territory which had not yet been defined? You almost need to invoke time travel to make the claim reasonable.

But these gymnastics don't matter, of course, since Inspiration Peak is not actually 1362 miles from the points that Faram specifies.

As usual, let me know if I've gotten anything wrong. I'm happy to fix errors.