Join us for a lecture presented by Brad Lepper and Jeff Gill on the topic of The Newark Holy Stones: “a mystery which time alone can dissipate.” The Newark Holy Stones consist of a number of carved stone objects engraved with Hebrew letters, which were found at various locations in Licking County, Ohio. They appeared at a time when archaeology was in its infancy; and the question of who built the ancient mounds in the Ohio Valley still had not been definitively answered. Some believed it might have been the Lost Tribes of Israel or some other European or Asian civilization, while others accepted that American Indian ancestors built them. To better understand the Holy Stones, Brad Lepper and Jeff Gill have immersed themselves in the historical context from which they emerged.

In this presentation, they reveal how they established that the Holy Stones were scientific forgeries, the identities of the likely perpetrators, the possible motives of the forgers, and what it means for the issues raised by the Holy Stones to still be part of public discourse in the present day.