Barry Fell

By Madison Echlin

Barry Fell

Howard Barraclough Fell or Barry Fell was born June 6th of 1918 and died in April 1994. He had a PhD in marine biology from Harvard and is considered the father of pre-columbian contact ideas. He has also been deemed the greatest linguist of the twentieth century because of his research on inscriptions. However archaeologists refer to him as a self-promoting pseudo scientist who is blindly trusted in anthropological matters and threatened to undo more than a century of careful progress in archaeological research. Fell thought that he could provide objectivity to controversial areas within archaeology and anthropology because he was a marine biologist and somewhat distanced from the controversy. Instead Fell brought to light many conspiracy and pseudo-archaological theories that furthered controversy because he had no idea what he was talking about since he wasn't versed in archaeology or anthropology.

Biography

Publications

Barry Fell wrote America B.C. in 1979, Bronze Age America in 1982, and Saga America in 1983. In these writings he proposed and supported with evidence that North America had been visited and colonized by practically everyone before Christopher Columbus stumbled upon the New World. His evidence ranged from linguistic to architectural. He argued that there were linguistic connections between Native American languages and different European languages. He also claimed that inscriptions found in the New World were written in many ancient European alphabets. He was really interested in writings and inscriptions especially Ogham. Ogham is an ancient British and Irish alphabet, consisting of twenty characters formed by parallel strokes on either side of or across a continuous line. Fell spent most of his career trying to find these inscriptions but his findings were either completely fake and just scribbles or they turned out to be plow lines made in the stone. Fell’s architectural evidence that there were colonizers before Columbus was that there were architectural similarities between stone structures in North America (mostly New England) and ancient Europe. His most famous examples or research subjects were Mystery Hill, especially the sacrificial altar stone, Poulnabrone Dolmen and the Bat Creek Inscription.

Mystery Hill and the Altar Stone

Mystery Hill is in North Salem, New Hampshire and it is otherwise known as America’s Stonehenge. It is called America's Stonehenge because of the rock creations that look as though they are in the same orientation as those at the real Stonehenge. There is a theory that they have something to do with the stars and the rising and setting of the sun, as if the stones are an astrological compass. Barry Fell gravitated towards Mystery Hill because it looked like European stone creations and, therefore, served as proof of colonization before Columbus. The sacrificial altar stone at Mystery Hill is a long stone slab that was supposedly used for religious sacrifices where the blood flowed into divots in the stone and was drained off the slab. This was supposedly proof of the ancient rituals and therefore ancient cultures created Mystery Hill. However, this was a completely false theory, the stone altar was actually used for the creation of soap in the 19th century. All of these claims about the builders, the time period, and the use of the structures have been purely speculation, which have been disproven by actual archaeological research and findings.

Poulnabrone Dolmen

Poulnabrone Dolmen is one of Ireland’s oldest megalithic monuments. It is considered a portal tomb which are used to mark burial places in a very distinct way, there are more than 100 throughout Ireland. Portal Tombs are relatively simple single chambered graves that are made out of massive stones that most archaeologists speculate that the construction of such structures involved ramps, rollers and lots of leverage to heist the main top stone on top of the side stones. However, Poulnabrone Dolmen was linked to the architecture at Mystery Hill because of the similar stone structure and building style. Therefore, Fell argued that it must be connected and constructed by ancient Europeans.

Bat Creek Inscription

Stone tablets had been found in mounds that bore supposed inscriptions in European, Asian, or African alphabets. The Bat Creek inscription found in 1889 claimed to be written in paleo-Hebrew or a pre-Hebrew text. This stone was held as the best evidence, basically proof, that there was pre-columbian contact between the Old and New Worlds. However, if this was true, if there was actual pre-columbian contact as Fell and many others proposed, then North American archaeologists should find Old World artifacts and inscriptions regularly. However, with the exception of L’Anse Aux Meadows there has not been a single example of either ever found in North America. L’Anse Aux Meadows is at the tip of Newfoundland and it was an actual Viking colony. The colony only existed for twenty years and then it was abandoned because that part of Newfoundland had long hard winters.

The lack of Old World contact evidence is not for the lack of trying. In the past two decades the most extensive excavations and archaeological investigations have been conducted in the U.S., but the evidence of Old World contact has not been found. The Bat Creek stone would provide the best evidence of Old World contact with the Americas, if it is authentic. However, the stone is a fraud and its inscription was copied or forged from a published source.

Pseudo-Archaeologist

Marine biology and archaeology are two completely separate disciplines, but because Barry Fell had a PhD people assumed he knew what he was talking about when it came to anthropological findings, never mind that PhD was in marine biology. Since Fell wasn't versed in archaeology or anthropology he ignored the usual rules of evidence for anthropologists. His publications were aimed at non-specialists and he did not publish his works in peer-reviewed journals which is the usual procedure of the field. He instead published in popular books or the Epigraphic Society of North America which was made up of his followers. In all respects Barry Fell was a bad archaeologist or a pseudo-archaeologist.

David Kelley

One of Fell's few academic supporters was David Kelly of the University of Calgary. Kelley is known for deciphering Mayan glyphs and has been published in the prestigious Review of Archaeology in the fall of 1991. He was the first to recognize that the Maya script was phonetic, and not ideographic. Kelley asserted that some of the Mayan glyphs were Tiffinagh, a script dating back to the 3rd century. However, Kelley did not confirm the existence of Ogham nor many other findings associated with Fell.