CLAIMED SHIP PETROGLYPHS IN OKLAHOMA – PART 2:

On July 18, 2010, I published a posting about a number of reported petroglyphs in the Oklahoma Panhandle recorded by the ubiquitous Gloria Farley. I had been directed to the pictures and an article in the Winter 1978-1979 issue of Oklahoma Today magazine (Vol. 29, No. 1) (link below). This material had been kindly sent to me by someone named Catherine (last name anonymous). The article showed a number of supposed ship petroglyphs that had been recorded by Gloria Farley and interpreted by Barry Fell. Now Barry Fell has been proven to accomplish his interpretations from pretty loosely transcribed inscriptions and has even been known to alter what is there to make his “readings” come out right. I totally disagree with all of his claims and conclusions but I have to accept that others have the right to take this seriously.


I included the first two illustrations of supposed ships as Figures 1 and 2 in that July 18 posting, and I want to continue on this occasion.

Fig. 3. Identified as a Greek Roundship, ca. 500 B.C.

Figure 3 is identified as a Greek roundship of ca. 500 BC. Why is it not a petroglyph of a bird in front of a bunch of lines? With no photo or dating we cannot even adequately judge if the lines are even all part of the same image and of the same age, or represent a case of superimposition of a bird petroglyph over an abstract grid of lines.

Fig. 4. Identified as a Portugese ship, 1st Cent. A.D.

Now image number 4 does look like a ship - yes, even I can see that. However, what I see could have been created at any time up to the present. With no way to date the image all arguments about proof of ancient visitation fall apart. It could have been created the week or month before Gloria recorded it.

Fig. 5. A Rowing Ship, no sails.

Figure 5 – no sign of a ship – no resemblance, this one is just wishful thinking.

Fig. 6. Identified by Barry Fell as a Celtic yawl, 3rd Cent. A.D.

Figure 6 was identified as a Celtic ship by Barry Fell – enough said. I would like to suggest an alternative identity. I see this as an incomplete equestrian figure with an abstracted rider upon the body of an incomplete horse with the tail on the left. It might even have a brand on it in the initials on the body.

As I have explained previously I do not believe that Gloria Farley had any intention to deceive. She was, I believe, an enthusiastic amateur who believed that she was part of a great untold historic epic and that she was contributing to the truth and to human knowledge. I assume the same for Catherine (Anonymous) who sent me this material. And, were these stories of ancient Celtic, African and Middle Eastern expeditions wandering prehistorically around the Oklahoma, Texas, Colorado, New Mexico region actually true it would be a marvelously exciting story to be sure. The major fault for these figments has to be apportioned to Barry Fell who purposely made leaps of “truth” not back up by fact, and falsified data to support it. We have no proof in any of this, only varying degrees of maybe. Ernest Hemingway has been quoted as having said that “an artist needs a built-in crap detector”. That wouldn’t be bad advice for students of rock art either. What do you think?

The link to the Winter 1978-1979 issue of Oklahoma Today magazine (Vol. 29, No. 1): ttp://digital.library.okstate.edu/oktoday/1970s/1979/oktdv29n1.pdf

CLAIMED SHIP PETROGLYPHS IN OKLAHOMA – PART 1:

On June 3, 2010, I received an e-mail from a Catherine (last name anonymous) who sent me some photos of petroglyph panels in the panhandle of Oklahoma. One of the panels supposedly contained an ancient petroglyph of an Indo/European ship. As back-up material Catherine included links to an online copy of the Winter 1978-1979 (Vol. 29, No. 1) issue of Oklahoma Today magazine, which includes an article by the ubiquitous Gloria Farley about ship petroglyphs in Oklahoma. Now I have written before about my disagreements with Gloria Farley’s epigraphic interpretations of rock art in the area of western Oklahoma and southeastern Colorado as inscriptions in ancient European, Middle Eastern, and African languages and scripts. Additionally I have confessed my lack of belief in images of ancient gods from ancient Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, in rock art in the area of western Oklahoma and southeastern Colorado.


Let me say this, I am sorry I never met Gloria in person. I had close friends who did know her so I think (I hope) that I am giving her a fair review even if I do not believe with her. I think that I probably would have liked her as a person. On December 19, 2009, I had posted a critical book review about a book by Gloria Farley, In Plain Sight: Old World Records in Ancient America (1994), but this book did not specifically deal with the supposed discovery of ship petroglyphs. In that review I confessed that I almost totally disagree with the epigraphic interpretation of rock art in the region being discussed. But my position has always been that until I can offer a better explanation of the imagery under discussion the question has to remain open. I feel strongly that Gloria had a great imagination and would probably have been very interesting to know.

In the interest of fairness I have decided that I should include some of the supposed ship images in a posting and let people decide on it for themselves.

FIGURE 1 - Supposed Nile Freighter.

Figure 1 is identified as an Egyptian Nile ship. It could be a poor representation of a Nile freighter from the last millennium or so but it has absolutely no resemblance at all to any ship image from ancient Classical Egypt, which was the era of Egyptian naval expeditions and exploration.

FIGURE 2 - A rebus reading 'Ship

of Ra' according to Barry Fell.

Figure 2 should speak for itself. Nothing about it looks like a ship. and without the supposed translation by Barry Fell it would never be proposed as such. As I have stated elsewhere Fell is known to alter images to make them fit his interpretations better. Take another good look at this image. It is obviously a dog sled and proof that ancient Inuit explorers accomplished an expedition to the Oklahoma panhandle.

One obvious problem is that we do not have photos of the supposed ships and we have no way of knowing the accuracy of the drawings. In the end it comes back down to Occam’s razor. I just find it to be much more likely that a Native American killed some time pounding on a rock to make an oval shape with a few of lines than that a crew of Middle Eastern explorers in an Egyptian Nile freighter crossed the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, entered the gulf of Mexico to ascend the Mississippi River to the mouth of the Arkansas River, and followed that to the western Oklahoma panhandle, only to end up carving such a crude and unrecognizable image.

I think that a fascinating thesis project for a psychology graduate student might be to use rock art imagery in a Rorschach test and try to analyze the hang-ups and enthusiasms of rock art enthusiasts based upon their interpretations of the images. In reviewing my responses above I suspect that the psychologist would find that I am intellectually conservative with little willingness to adopt radical or cutting edge interpretations (actually I have done so a time or two but that is a story for another time). I prefer to think of my position as careful.

There are a number of other images which I will post in the near future. Anyway, thank you Catherine for the information and pictures. It is an interesting debate and I, for one, have always enjoyed it.