| Howard Barraclough Fell |
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Though Fell was an accomplished and respected marine biologist, outside of his academic specialty he is best known for his highly controversial work on Epigraphy . This interest began early in his career with a study of Polynesia n Petroglyph s published in 1940 . However, his most famous work came much later, starting in 1976 with the publication of the book '' America BC '', in which he argued that Old World scripts can be found on rock surfaces and objects throughout North and South America. This was followed in 1980 by '' Saga America '' and in 1982 by '' Bronze Age America ''. As an example of Fell's claims, he and his followers have speculated that Irish monks reached North America centuries before Columbus . This is based on Fell's interpretation, published in 1983 , of rock-cut inscriptions located at archaeological sites in West Virginia . According to Fell, these inscriptions narrated the story of Christ's nativity and were written in old Irish script called Celtic Ogham dating back to the 6th or 8th Century A.D. Within the Academic Community , Fell's claims on epigraphy are almost overwhelmingly dismissed. His critics charge him with violating scientific archaeological protocols in order to make fantastic claims of pre-columbian discoveries to a nonspecialist audience. One example of his linguistic methods is his translation of an inscription containing the word "PIA", found on a rock face on Turkey Mountain near Tulsa , Oklahoma . The most straightforward explanation would be that these were Roman characters, and were either somebody's initials or a word in Spanish meaning a pious, devout woman or a common woman's name in Spanish. However, Fell interpreted it as a Punic word meaning "white", and a nearby marking as a line of Ogham reading "GUIN", also meaning white in P-Celtic, asserting that it was a bilingual inscription {Link without Title} . Fell's life, however, was in other ways notable. He moved to New Zealand with his mother in the early 1920 s, after his father, who was a merchant seaman, died in a shipboard fire. He received his Ph.D. at the University Of Edinburgh in 1941 , after which he served in the British army during World War II. In 1946 he returned to New Zealand where he resumed his academic career. In 1964 he joined the Museum Of Comparative Zoology at Harvard, where he stayed until voluntary retirement in 1979 . EXTERNAL LINKS |
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