The initial stance you need to take if you are being confronted with this kind of laundry ist of claims, is to insist that each claim be made specifically by exactly quoting (not paraphrasing) the caim and providing a full bibliographic citation in order to be able to check the exactness of the proposed quotation. You will see that the numbr of claims drops off exponentially because these laundry lists are circulated among afrocentristswho never check a citation. For example, most of these "supposed" medieval Arabic scholars (Idrisi, etc.) are nt cited with exactitude or in a language that is accesible. The percentage of misquotation and misinterpretations in Afrocentric cites are equal to those of the worst "scientific creationists". I have boatloads of Van Sertima and Winters examples (and these are better citers than most !).

Now to some input- I'll break it up into separate posts to diminish the volume. I have not, personally, looked into Barry Fell in depth because a lot of other people have already done so.
Another general rule of mine is that-- If an author is sloppy and unreliable in one area, he/she is probably untrustworthy in all areas. I have a very low opinion of Barry Fell as a "linguist." Here is a portion of a discussion on a ng on Barry Fell (Ross Clark is an expert on New Zealand, Polynesia, linguistics).

Subject: Re: Cherokee domestic animals
From: Ross Clark <drc@antnov1.auckland.ac.nz>
Date: 1997/06/18
Message-Id: <33A83DBD.2BD1@antnov1.auckland.ac.nz>
Newsgroups: sci.archaeology
[More Headers]

Bart Torbert wrote:
>
> In article <5o63t9$fbv$1@trends.ca>, yuku@mail.trends.ca says...
> >
> >Larry J. Elmore (ljelmore@montana.campus.mci.net) wrote:
> >
> >
> >: I have severe doubts that Maillard invented the Micmac hieroglyphs, for
> the reasons given above, and also, what was his motive? Why invent a
> cumbersome hieroglyphic script when he had a perfectly good alphabet and far
> superior writing system already (Latin letters, Arab numbers)???
>
> A parallel can be drawn to a script used by the Ojibways. Some folks say
> that it was invented by a missionary. Others say the Ojibways already had
> one and the missionary simply adapted it for his purpose.
>
> The proponents of the latter view say the orignal script contained only
> consonents. What the missionary did was use the existing letters, and by
> rotating them created a new system where the new symbol reflected a
> consonent and a vowel sound together. I think he added the vowels A, E, I
> and U. For example the letter is its normal position was that letter plus
> A, A letter rotated 90 degrees to the right was that letter plus E.
> I know the exact details are not right, but you should get the picture of
> the general technique.
>
> As additional note Barry Fell thought the orginal Ojibway script was a
> derivative of the Arabic Kufic script. To have a script of only
> consonents is a very Semitic thing to do.

And to think that everything in North America derives from the Middle
East is a very Barry Fellish thing to do...

No doubt (judging from Fell's other work) his task of proving this
relationship would have been made easier by the fact that the "original"
Ojibway consonantal script existed entirely in his imagination.

The Micmac hieroglyphic system, with over 5000 characters, is truly
bizarre, but not entirely out of context. Ideas of a "real character", a
writing system that would directly represent thought, were common in
Europe in the 17th-18th century. These ideas preceded (and perhaps even
impeded) the ultimate correct decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs. Ideas
like this could well have inspired the missionary. It would be good to
hear from someone who has looked at the original sources on this.
Needless to say, Barry Fell's attempts to show specific connections with
Egyptian are quite unconvincing.

All of what I've just said is quite independent of the question of
whether the missionaries (or Sequoyah) took some of the forms of their
characters from previously existing signs. All cultures that I've ever
heard about make visible signs (by drawing, carving, tattooing, sand
painting, or whatever) that have meaning. People will often point to
these and say "That's our writing". But the arguments about the origin
and diffusion of writing are based on a much narrower definition of the
term. In "true writing", the visible signs piggyback on spoken language,
which is already a highly sophisticated and complex system. With true
writing, anything you can say can be converted into visible form once you
have mastered a limited number of symbols. So it is quite possible that
the Micmac, say, were making some of these pictures long before the white
man arrived. But they were not writing. What the missionary did was to
use them to construct a (highly impractical) writing system.

My impression from some reading of early European accounts of the peoples
of North America and elsewhere is that most of these travellers would
have been most interested in the existence of writing among any Native
American people. The idea that they would go to great lengths to conceal
the fact in order to protect their cultural prejudices seems to me a
projection from the Age of X-Files onto a very different world. If we do
not find any mention of writing in early records, the most obvious
conclusion is that it wasn't there. If someone says "Aha, but it was a
secret, never revealed to outsiders"...well, I guess we'll never know for
sure.

Incidentally, my dismissal of the work of the late Barry Fell is based on
more than 20 years' acquaintance with his writings. One of my favourite
bits of Felliana was his "decipherment" of a series of Easter Island
rongorongo characters which appear in the background of one of Gauguin's
paintings of his Tahitian mistress. Now the simple explanation of how
they got there is that when Gauguin got to Tahiti he visited the local
museum in Papeete, where several artefacts inscribed with rongorongo were
on display. He sketched the characters, then later added them to the
painting as exotic decoration. But Barry Fell was never one to settle for
the simple and obvious. He proposed that the rongorongo script had been
used in Tahiti since ancient times, preserved as esoteric lore by a
priestly caste. Somehow, hundreds of extremely curious visitors who had
written many volumes of description of Tahiti over the previous century
had failed to notice even a hint of this, until suddenly a 14-year-old
girl blabbed the whole secret to her French lover!
If anyone still takes Fell seriously after reading stuff like that, my
powers of rational argument are unlikely to have any effect.
Ross Clark
******
From: bdiebold@pantheon.yale.edu (Benjamin H. Diebold)
Newsgroups: sci.archaeology
Subject: Re: transpacific contacts
Date: 29 Oct 1997 04:06:22 GMT
Organization: Yale University


Was it fraud or astounding incompetence when Fell produced wildly varying "translations" of what ultimately turned out to be cracks in a rock? And this was of a "Punic" inscription, allegedly one of Fell's strengths.

The case is documented by Thomas E. Lee, in the Anthropological Journal of Canada, vol. 15, no. 3, 1977: 11-14. (This journal, ironically, ought to be one of Yuri's favorites, since it had a strong pro-diffusionist bent and was a favored platform of George Carter's.)

In a case like this, utter incompetence is the most generous interpretation. Fraud is a reasonable inference. At the end, Fell is reduced to invoking the action of worms in simulating "Libyan", which the Libyan scribes then elaborated on. Unfortunately, the stone turned out to be schist, not limestone as Fell then mistakenly believed, which makes the imputation of earthworms even more problematic than it already was.

I've given this reference to Yuri before. I'm not surprised to see it's
made no impact.
Ben
******
From: bgrubb@acca.nmsu.edu (Bruce L. Grubb)
Newsgroups: sci.archaeology,sci.anthropology,sci.anthropology.paleo
Subject: Re: "America B.C." -- anything to this?
Date: Tue, 11 Nov 1997 11:14:11 -0700

In article <647ufg$nq0$1@titan.globalserve.net>, yuku@globalserve.net
(Yuri Kuchinsky) wrote:

> Laurie Davison <ldavison@pop.uky.edu> wrote in article
> <34677D47.D87@pop.uky.edu>...
>
> > A relative of mine was the team photographer for an archeaologist who
> > was tracing this sort of thing. I can't recall the names of the
> > researcher's, but my cousin, Warren Dexter, was a part. As I recall,
> > they found several examples of the Ogham, Ogham Consaine, and Tifinag
> > alphabets in America and used this to suggest a pre-Columbian presence
> > here. Last I heard they were catching a lot of flack from colleagues
> > elsewhere for bucking the established norm. I've seen the photos Warren
> > took and compared with other examples and, though I've got to say
> several
> > were "stretching it" in my mind, there were also many which I thought
> > very much resembled the Alphabets they claimed to. I should be clear
> > here that I am *not* an authority in this area!
> > Anyone familiar with this?
>
> Laurie,
>
> Sure. All this is quite interesting, and much of it is valid. Hu already
> posted a long article about this in this thread today.
>
> Of course some misguided people talk, mostly incoherently, something about
> "plowmarks" and how these could be confused for ogham inscriptions...
>
> If you ask me, the chances of plowmarks being confused for ogham
> inscriptions are about 1 in a 1000. Some of these "plowmarks" have also
> been found inscribed high up on rocks. Pretty high for a plow to jump up
> to! But maybe that was some biblical Methuselah plowing with huge
> pre-Flood oxen? I dunno...

Satire aside, Cook (1978) and Ann Ross (1978) cited in John R. Cole's
(1980) "Cult Archaeology and Unscientific Method and Theory" in _Advances
in Archaeology Method and Theory_ Vol. 3 article show that Fell wouldn't
know Ogham if it came up and shook his hand.

John Carey an expert in Old World languages is cited in Cook (1978:80) and
he points out Fell's translations involve Celtic two thousand years too
late. Ann Ross citation is simple to state that Fell's "Ogham" is not
Ogham at all. This is typical of the kind of things cult archaeologist do
- sloppy science at best. This stuff wouldn't past the giggle test of
most archaeologsts and most of the comments made were in the 1976-8 period
so you have a case been there did that so why do it again?


Cook, W, L. (editor)
1978 _Ancient Vermont_. Castleton, Vermont: Castleton State College

Ross, A. and P. Rehnolds
1978 Ancient Vermont. Antiquity 52(205):100-107
*****
From: Ross Clark <drc@antnov1.auckland.ac.nz>
Newsgroups: sci.archaeology
Subject: Re: "America B.C." -- anything to this?
Date: Fri, 14 Nov 1997 14:49:08 +1200
Organization: University of Auckland

RickFlavin wrote:
>
> Hello,
> Others SHOULD have done this, haven't, so I'll give it a go. First, in
> hypothesis, there's NOTHING wrong with being WRONG. Fell was many things
> (sloppy, lazy, un-academic, idea-oriented, zealous, eager, result-driven), but
> he did it. Fine. BIG QUESTION: what next? Well, the idea of DIFFUSION
> persists, though many (if not all) of Fell's claims pass away, DIFFUSION
> remains a standard hypothesis. Please recognize the DIFFUSION model as such
> and save your kiddy complaints for elsewhere.

I won't even guess what you consider "kiddy complaints". Barry Fell did not invent the "idea of diffusion", or even "the diffusion model". I can't think of anybody in the history of Western civilization who has denied the existence of diffusion -- the passing of ideas, artefacts, words, etc from one culture to another. The arguments are over whether diffusion is involved in this or that specific instance. So what's your point?

I can attest to Fell's
> skeptical approach in dealing with The KinderHook Plates, (with B. Rudersdorf)
> the identification of The Tucson Artifacts, and being among the first to
> denounce the fakes at BURROWS CAVE.

Fell was always willing to cut and run when he saw an untenable position,
and say "Okay, that's wrong, but look at all this other stuff", just as
Yuri and his other admirers are doing to this day.

Here was a man with ideas, some partially
> baked, but due recognition none the less. Remember your manners! Go for the
> truth, not throats...

Recognition? For what exactly? Manners? Fell was never anything but arrogant and dismissive of his critics. The truth? Here's another gem from the South Pacific I came across in my files. This goes back to ESOP Volume 14 (1985), p.126, if you want to look it up.

A guy named Farrell McCarthy obtained a piece of tapa (bark cloth) from Tonga during WWII. Like many Tongan tapa, in addition to geometric designs, it has a written text on it. McCarthy brought it along to a meeting of the San Francisco Bay Area Epigraphic Society, and a certain Russell Swanson passed it along to Fell.

Apparently it never occurred to McCarthy, Swanson or Fell to take this object to a Tongan -- there are thousands of Tongans in California -- and say "Is this writing? What does it say?" No, ever ready with a decipherment, Fell comes up with "Mohono baba ifa koe siso tuku aho", said to be "an old Tongan fishing charm from pagan times", meaning "Repeat this charm in correct sequence so that fish will bite your line when you lower it". (Fell seems to have been obsessed with fishing charms when he worked in the Pacific.)

Not only does "Mohono baba..." not mean this, it is complete gibberish. I checked with a Tongan speaker, and an anthropologist with many years of
experience in Tonga, who were incredulous and scornful of Fell's "translation". The actual text reads:

Ko e sisi o Tuku'aho, mo hono papai faa

"This is the festive costume of Tuku'aho, with its decorative
pandanus seeds"

(Incidentally the text is in the Roman alphabet, so Fell gets no special
credit for getting approximately the right letters.)

Tuku'aho was a famous chief of the early 19th century. I have more details in my notes if anyone wants them. Or if you think I'm just putting my interpretation against Fell's, check out the illustration in ESOP, show it to a Tongan and ask them which version they prefer.

To get back to my main point. Is this a serious scholar just making an
occasional slip?

No, this is the Kingdom of Bullshit.

Barry Fell got plenty of respect during his lifetime. The Royal Society of New Zealand recently gave him a nice obituary (for his work on starfish), with only the politest comments on his epigraphic work. De mortuis nil nisi bonum. He had lots of followers who worshipped the soles of his epigraphic feet. I don't think there's any need to add to that.
$$$$$
Bernard