Re: Burrows Cave --Artifacts --
The Burrows cave: African gold in Illinois
The story of the Burrows Cave is more about human behaviour than archaeology. It is the story of an alleged cave containing the tomb of an African king who reached North America in the 1st century AD – and the subsequent controversy that the artefacts created.
Philip Coppens
snip
What sense can we make of all this? Could a golden sarcophagus, allegedly found in an Illinois cave, be evidence of pre-Columbian transoceanic travel between the "Old World" and the Americas, as so many people have claimed? While Burrows described what the cave looked like and what it contained, fortunately most of the artefacts removed from the cave were photographed early on, in part due to the efforts of James Schertz and Fred Rydholm. Various researchers have looked at this collection, and archaeologists have been quick to point out the mismatches. But most cultures are a mismatch of cultures! London and New York are prime examples of how various cultures create a new one. Things were no different in ancient times, Alexandria probably being the best example. An important clue is that some of the stone slabs displayed a signature that was known in the Old World. It belonged to one Alexander Helios, son of the infamous Cleopatra and Marc Antony and twin brother of Cleopatra Selene, the future co-ruler of Mauritania (in Africa's western Sahara). This is the angle that Hubbard and Kelly built upon. Amongst Burrows's earliest team of amateur researchers were Jack Ward and Warren Cook, the latter who died in 1989. Cook's analysis of the artefacts made him conclude that creating them would have taken thousands of hours. But more importantly, Cook continued Ward's analysis of their possible origin and argued that they were most likely the remains of a Libyan–Iberian expedition. He identified Mauritania's King Ptolemaeus I (1 BC – 40 AD), son of Cleopatra Selene and King Juba II (52-50 BC – 23 AD), as the man responsible for this transoceanic voyage. Could this have been possible? The rulers of Mauritania had fallen foul of the Roman emperors, if only because of the economic power that Mauritania had become, turning the scales on who was in control of whom. When the Roman Empire decided to redress that balance, the Mauritanian king Juba II and his family had to flee. It's possible that he used the knowledge of the seas that his ancestors, the Phoenicians, had gathered: he knew the location of the Azores, whose goods he was able to sell at the highest prices in Rome and elsewhere. So, if the Burrows Cave artefacts are genuine and the interpretation correct, it's possible that the Phoenician-informed Mauritanian royal family sailed further west, beyond the Azores, to the Americas.
Mausoleum of Juba and Cleopatra Selene in Tipaza
If they ended up in Central America, perhaps they entered the Mississippi River and travelled north until reaching Illinois—where they settled, far removed from the squabbles of the Old World. The cave artefacts are not the only evidence of the presence of an enigmatic people in the first century AD. According to one Native American legend, the region contains the tomb of a king who was not native to America. The tribe once knew the location, but this information is now lost. Could this location be the same as the Burrows Cave? Furthermore, it is known that Juba II ordered a golden sarcophagus to be prepared for the mausoleum that had been built for him in Tipaza (in modern-day Algeria). This was one of the prized possessions that the Romans had tried to get their hands on, but they never did find the sarcophagus or the Mauritanian king. Official history is silent on the fate of both. Yet it is clear that King Juba II must have died and that he and his sarcophagus must have ended up somewhere, perhaps in Illinois. That seems "obvious" logic to me—and logic may be all that we can work with for the foreseeable future.
Read more here:
http://www.philipcoppens.com/burrowscave.html recall! This is very interesting - thanks for posting. I had never heard of this before.