Authenticity and Scholarship

The claim was that the stones proved ancient Hebrews in pre-Columbian Ohio. The evidence against authenticity is decisive and of several kinds. The Hebrew of the inscriptions uses a modern square script with post-biblical letter-forms, not any script that could plausibly date to antiquity; the carving is clean and uniform in a way inconsistent with prehistoric Hopewell stonework; and the geological and workshop character of the objects points to the nineteenth century.

The early observer Charles Whittlesey already recognised the writing as modern, and the fullest modern treatment, by the Ohio Historical Society archaeologist Bradley Lepper with Jeff Gill, lays out both the technical case for forgery and the social pressures, religious literalism and racial politics, that made such a forgery attractive and durable. No credible archaeological authority today defends the stones as genuine. They are retained and displayed as forgeries of historical interest, not as ancient artifacts.