From
Wikipedia:
"In 2014, the Smithsonian Department of Anthropology issued the following statement concerning the stone:
Quote
While recognizing that a diversity of opinion continues to circulate around the authenticity of the Bat Creek Stone, the curators in the Department of Anthropology at the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, believe that the inscriptions on the artifact are forgeries and that the artifact is a fake. This opinion is widely shared by other professional archaeologists as represented in the article by Robert Mainfort and Mary Kwas ‘The Bat Creek Stone Revisited: A Fraud Exposed’, American Antiquity 2004. Along with other known fraudulent artifacts, we retain it in our collections as part of the cultural history of archaeological frauds, which were known to be quite popular in the second half of the 19th century."
This was done by email to the education director of the Museum of the Cherokee Indian in Cherokee, N.C. where it now resides. Slight problem for Wikipedia, I hope that this is made official somewhere as we need something official.
Doug
(Edited - formatting - Hermione)
Doug Weller
Director The Hall of Ma'at
Doug's Skeptical Archaeology site::
[
www.ramtops.co.uk]
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/26/2014 04:06AM by Hermione.
