In the mid 1980's, how did the word PIA come to insinuate that Columbus was beaten to America by the Irish, and who was responsible for this?

mementoflash

As an example of Howard 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... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Fell Feb 05 06, 7:51 PM

peasypod

Nice One momento, that's the one. Feb 06 06, 5:43 PM