File: <comments.htm>

INTERNET COMMENTS ON PRE-COLUMBIAN

CONTACTS IN AMERICA

(Articles by Yuri Kuchinsky and others posted in Sci.Archaeology)

Barry Fell often went boldly where other researchers feared to tread. He customarily took extreme positions on these issues, but some of them seem quite valid nevertheless. These discussions about Barry Fell took place in late 1997. Yes, Barry was quite a character, a man of almost mythic proportions. His tireless dedication to his work was legendary. He often created big waves of publicity for himself and his work, and he inspired thousands of people to follow in his path, some of whom believed in him almost as if he was a guru of some sort. Perhaps one may say that his ego was quite proportionate to his undoubtable talents... And he was quite capable of cutting a few corners here and there in his research if he was "sure as sure can be" that he had The Answer to yet another obscure problem of ancient history.

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It is sad that no mention has been made of the roles that René Fell, wife of Barry, had in the tireless work of translating the Peterborough Petroglyphs. Also her photographic and literature search contributions to the discoveries were vast.

Erich Fred Legner, University of California

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Subject: Re: "America B.C." -- anything to this?

From: yuku@mail.trends.ca (Yuri Kuchinsky)

Date: 1997/11/10

Message-ID: <6469ls$n79$1@news.trends.ca>

Newsgroups: sci.archaeology,sci.anthropology,sci.anthropology.paleo

Fell's books contain huge amounts of highly controversial data, none of it, or very little, rigorously tested. The mainstream has never dealt with 99% of it. I would describe him as an "idea man", a kind of researcher who never stopped with one thing at a time and researched it in detail. He just kept suggesting more controversial ideas. He himself expressed hope that others will deal in more depth with the stuff he uncovered. So far, few have. I don't think anyone, even the hard core "Fellistas", would hold that all of his claims are valid. Even among the "diffusionists", the quesses are out as to how much of it is valid. The consensus is perhaps that it may be around 50%. Some said that even if 10% of his claims are valid, his place in history, and in historical scholarship will be assured.

Yuri Kuchinsky in Toronto http://www.io.org/~yuku

Comparative studies of primitive art have probably been jeopardized by the zeal of investigators of cultural contacts and borrowings. But let us state in no uncertain terms that these studies have been jeopardized even more by intellectual pharisees who prefer to deny obvious relationships because science does not yet provide an adequate method for their interpretation

Claude Levi-Strauss, ANTHROPOLOGIE STRUCTURALE, 1958

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Trans-oceanic Connections of the Ancient Americans. Was There A Link with Asia and other places?

articles by Yuri Kuchinsky posted and discussed in Sci.Archaeology

The really big news in American prehistory is the newest research that the fabled Clovis Hunters were actually the Solutreans! Of course it has been academic dogma for a few generations now that the Clovis Hunters were the earliest humans in America. But this theory has now been finally completely discredited -- and I'm surprised it took them so long...

"You've probably heard of those crackpot theories about ancient Phoenicians or Chinese in the New World. Maybe it's time to start paying attention.." So begins the recent article by Marc K. Stengel in THE ATLANTIC. This article is quite important because for the first time it tries to present a different picture of ancient American history in such an important publication that people tend to pay attention to. (It sure does seem like some people were ahead of others when trying to call attention to these important - but unfortunately so completely neglected by the academe - aspects of American history. Yes, yours truly has been laboring in this particular vineyard for quite a few years..) The Diffusionists Have Landed! Check it out,

January 2000 ATLANTIC MONTHLY ARTICLE

The following items have been added in the spring of 2000.

Was the original homeland of Polynesians really in the American Pacific North-West? Did Polynesians really originate... in Canada? Actually, this is what the Polynesian traditions, themselves, seem to say. Quite a few more links to my other articles on this subject are available in this file.

General discussion about the origins of American culture, and how the academe is not doing its job investigating the truth about them. Kuhn, American Archaeology, and Isolationism.

This evidence about old copper is quite amazing. For such a long time, nobody seemed interested! But now, since the Clovis Point is suggested to have come to America from Europe ca 15000 years ago, this evidence appears to receive plenty of new validation. Old Copper Culture in America.

Now, when there appears to have occurred a revolution in American prehistory, perhaps a similar revolution in Polynesian prehistory is in the cards? Isolationist anthropology seems to be on its way out! Dumbing down Polynesia, or the betrayal of history.

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Edo Nyland, working on an introduction to Linguistic Archaeology, has informed Dr. Legner, in November 2000, that he gave Barry Fell great credit for bringing his information to the world but did not agree with all his translations of Ogam. His opinion is that Gaelic did not exist at that time, but rather a language resembling Basque. Edo Nyland has examined the Peterborough petroglyphs and especially what Barry Fell considered Ogam, but he failed to see Ogam writing in it. Nyland noted that Fell took some isolated characters that look like Ogam, then assigned English letters to it, but none are connected into a sentence. If one looks at the Ogam inscriptions that Nyland works with, you see that they form a series of connected characters, a lineup of them, but that's not what Fell found.. Furthermore, Fell was using Gaelic to translate but Gaelic did not exist until about 700 AD. The early Gnostics used Basque exclusively. Nyland wishes that he could be more positive about Fell's work. As far as he can see his true strength is in transliteration, not translation.