Pynchon? I'd Like to Ogham and Kissham! (M&D, p. 600)

[Sojourner]

At 11:42 AM 6/27/97 -0400, Sherwood, Harrison wrote:

>More years ago than I care to enumerate I came across a book written in
>1976 by a Harvard fella (oh, then it _must_ be true!) named Barry Fell,
>called _America B.C._ In it he presents an occasionally very
>compelling--and occasionally utterly wacky--argument that America was
>routinely visited in ancient times by Celtiberians, Libyans, and
>Egyptians. As evidence he submits a rather bewilderingly (and
>suspiciously?) large array of paleographic inscriptions, archeological
>finds, and lexicological similarities between ancient European and
>African languages and Amerindian ones. 
>
>Concentrating on one site in particular, Mystery Hill in southern New
>Hampshire, he builds his case for the Celts as early visitors to
>America. The site is a smallish stone shelter, built with
>post-and-lintel construction (not a common Amerind technique), atop a
>hill, surrounded by stone plinths that seem to act as astronomical
>markers. Standing in the center of the site and sighting down toward the
>markers, points toward various astronomical phenomena--solstices and
>equinoxes and all that. It appears to be an astronomical observatory,
>similar in style and purpose to Stonehenge. What is compelling about the
>site, and what argues against it as a _native American_ construction, is
>the Ogham inscriptions Fell and others  claim to have found on many of
>the plinths and in the shelter itself.
>

This flower of this thought has another branch.  Many people (esp. Charles
Berlitz) feel that the reason some rather unusual coincidences between two
"separated" cultures/peoples is that earlier in history there was no
"separation" by the Atlantic Ocean.  This is, of course, the famous
"Atlantis", from which the name of the ocean is derived, and of which Plato
wrote so descriptively.  This theory unifies the facts you related by
stating that the "superior" culture of the Atlanteans had influences to
both its eastern and western boundaries, which would of course be the "old"
and the "New" world (Europe/Africa and America).  

To take this one step further, the theory of Atlantis is also promulgated
on the existence of the "World Flood", of which we in the west are familiar
with through the stories of Noah in the Pentateuch and Gilgamesh of the
Babylonians.  When the World Flood occurred, the island/region of Atlantis
was said to have been destroyed, and the remnants of its peoples spread
throughout the world, bringing aspects of its culture wherever it went,
which were eventually assimilated into the Mayans, Celts, Mali(an?) and
other ancient civilizations.  Of course this is a rough theory, and I
neither espouse it nor contradict it, as I am not well versed in the
"evidence" of Atlantis.

On the other hand, it would explain how these things could be possible
(similar language roots, architecture, etc.).

Y'r Ob'd'nt S'rv'nt.

        "Because the tolerance to water loading is highly 
         dependent on the operating conditions, in particular 
         the carrier gas flow rate, it is important to verify to
         what extent the plasma remains under robust conditions 
         when the flow rate is modified."


                        ---Spectrochimica Acta Part B (v. 51, no. 12)