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Petroglyphs of Scotland, found in Lurgan by George Currie. Source: George Currie

Comparing the Prehistoric Stone Symbols of Scotland and the Judaculla Rock

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Within the rolling green hills of Scotland, slumber thousands of ancient stones bejeweled with mysterious glyphs. Across the proverbial pond, hidden in the great Appalachians of America’s North Carolina, a near identical stone sleeps near a mountain summit – the Judaculla Rock .

How can it be that the same symbols appear in both Prehistoric Scotland and North Carolina? These symbols whisper a cryptic message to us from a forgotten time. Scholars and amateurs alike can only stare in wonder, scratching their heads and sputter myths and contradictory theories none of which have been satisfactorily explained.

Native Americans, Vikings, vanished races of giants, and early Christian explorers have all been proposed and rejected. But the fact remains, somebody in the distant past carved the same motifs into stone on separate continents.

The Judaculla Rock

The Judaculla Rock is the name locals give to an archaeological site in Jackson County, near the Caney Fork Creek, North Carolina. The stone itself is a massive boulder of soapstone, and is covered in petroglyphs.

The symbols are tightly packed together and include many stick-like figures, two strange seven-digit hand/claw prints, thousands of “cup marks,” as well as many other carvings. Soapstone has been utilized by humans for thousands of years across many cultures due to its softness, the fact it is not porous, and its heat absorption.

Soapstone absorbs heat, then radiates it slowly. Combined with the ease with which the stone can be worked, this makes it ideal for making pipes, cooking vessels, and hearth liners. The ancient Egyptians often made their precious scarab beetle amulets out of steatite, which is soapstone that is nearly one-hundred-percent talc.

The Judaculla Rock. Note the cupmarks, the “boundary line” bottom right, and the two claw prints top left (QueenOfFrogs / CC BY-SA 4.0)

The Judaculla Rock. Note the cupmarks, the “boundary line” bottom right, and the two claw prints top left (QueenOfFrogs / CC BY-SA 4.0)

The Legend Of Judaculla 

The Judaculla Rock and surrounding area was considered sacred to the Cherokee Native Americans before their displacement. According to their oral tradition, Judaculla was a slant-eyed giant with seven fingers who lived in the area, and the stone was his territorial marker. They believed the seven-digit claw marks are his hand prints and a long, straight line drawn on the rock was a boundary: cross that, and they were impeding onto his hunting territory. The Cherokee attributed him with superhuman strength and capabilities like flying or teleporting from mountaintop to mountaintop.

Scholars insist it was the Cherokee who made the petroglyphs, and add that to suggest otherwise is offensive. However, the Cherokee themselves do not claim to have made the symbols. This academic contradiction crops up time and time again regarding anomalous megaliths and prehistoric cultures.

Indigenous people who have vague ancestral ties to a certain region have only myths and legends regarding the architects of their stonework, yet the mainstream experts will conclude otherwise: the ancestors of the indigenous people built these sites themselves. Then, in the same breath, the mainstream scholars make accusations of racial denigration while, I might say, hypocritically, they dismiss the oral tradition, imposing their own interpretations onto the culture.

The Stone Symbols of Scotland

Across the Atlantic, many more of these strange stone symbols can be found. Scotland contains a wealth of prehistoric stonework. Menhirs, dolmens, henges and cromlechs dot the landscape. And hundreds, if not thousands, of stones can be found engraved with identical cupmarks and cup and ring motifs to the Judaculla Rock.

Cupmarks in Scotland, very similar to Judaculla Rock (George Currie)

Cupmarks in Scotland, very similar to Judaculla Rock (George Currie)

Unlike in North Carolina, these symbols are plentiful, and new engravings are being discovered frequently. The Judaculla Rock on the other hand seems to be an isolated cultural motif. But something the Judaculla Rock and the Scottish stones have in common is the fact that their engravers are a mystery.

Another reflection is misguided attempts to connect the symbols to a cultural group who inhabited the region much later, and just as the Cherokee are in my view mistakenly ascribed the Judaculla stone, so too I believe the Picts of medieval Scotland are erroneously associated with these motifs.

The Pictish Stones 

Who were the Picts? That unfortunately is not an easy question to answer. The problem arises from decades of inaccurate lumping together of two distinct cultures which, in recent decades, have been determined to be radically different and distant in time. These types of errors are also related to the rigid orthodoxies of academic institutions and their archaeological paradigms.

Edinburgh University researcher Gilbert Markus, an expert in Celtic and Gaelic Cultures, tackles this issue in what he coins the “Ethnic Fallacy.” In brief, this land was originally inhabited by a culture that far predates the Picts, but who have not been considered separate until recently.

The term Pict itself is an exonym (meaning a name that was given to a culture from external sources) and this came from the Romans as a derogatory term for the people living in the region around the third century AD. But the many megalithic structures and most importantly, the strange cupmarks and cup and ring symbols, are as much as 3,000 to 5,000 years old.

And it has now been definitively established by mainstream scholars that the later culture did not stem from the earlier. The earlier culture however, remains very mysterious and was indeed contemporaneous with the thousands of carvings. But it seems this civilization’s heart was in Orkney.

Neolithic Orkney 

Heart of Neolithic Orkney World Heritage Site is a wonderous cluster of archaeological sites dating from 3180 BC to 2500 BC. These sites, especially Skara Brae, are peculiar due to the fact that eight subterranean dwellings were discovered with doorways, beds, and ceilings fit to the proportions of some very little people.

Interior of a dwelling at Skara Brae (Daniel Bordeleau / CC BY-SA 4.0)

Interior of a dwelling at Skara Brae (Daniel Bordeleau / CC BY-SA 4.0)

The doorways and beds barely reach four feet (1.2 meters), and so, the only logical conclusion drawn from these dimensions is that the inhabitants were diminutive in stature, in other words, these were little folk living underground.

The Standing Stones of Stenness are a nearby collection of twelve enormous standing stones reaching nearly 20 feet (6 meters) tall, around a central hearth stone. This ancient henge predates Stonehenge, and there is a growing consensus amongst scholars that this may be the oldest henge in Britain.

The Ring of Brodgar is another spellbinding site within this Neolithic cluster, containing an astonishing thirteen artificial mounds (not properly excavated) alongside thirty to sixty more gigantic standing stones, all astronomically aligned.

The final site in this collection is Maeshowe, a supposed burial chamber or burial mound, containing massive stones and aboriginal runic inscriptions. All these sites are connected by a series of “low roads” which to me proves beyond any doubt they were built by the same dwarfish people who inhabited Skara Brae.

Trows, Trolls, Dwarves, And The Clurichauns

Cultural beliefs in ancient races of little people are reasonably common and widespread. Such people often possess supernatural abilities, a mischievous disposition, and guard hoards of treasure. Neighboring Ireland (which also contains similar megalithic mysteries) has probably the most well-known example of this with its Leprechauns.

Close behind is Iceland, whose modern citizens are often ridiculed for their persistent beliefs in the existence of little elves living in the countryside. In Scotland, the Trow are said to be a nocturnal race of diminutive, hairy, and generally malevolent hominids. They are fond of music, have a bad habit of kidnapping people, and live in “trowie knowes” which are dwellings beneath earthen mounds.

There are also the Scottish Clurichaun, essentially the same as the Irish Leprechaun. Indeed, there is much overlap between these various traditions, and the general Scandinavian tales of dwarves, trolls, or elves. They are all little folk, they steal treasure, and they like a drink (to support this, they did find processed barley within the ruins of Skara Brae.)

Maeshowe 

Another puzzling feature of this Orkney site is the structure known as Maeshowe. There is little consensus on what this structure is: a chambered cairn, a cromlech, or a tomb? Besides the surprising precision of design and astronomical alignment, Maeshowe is renowned for the thirty or so runic inscriptions in its interior chamber.

Maeshowe (Fantoman400 / CC BY-SA 3.0)

Maeshowe (Fantoman400 / CC BY-SA 3.0)

These runic symbols are known to be Nordic in origin, but strangely, they are found nowhere else in as dense a concentration as at this site in Scotland. These were discovered in 1861, during the haphazard excavations by the Parliament Member and antiquarian James Farrer.

The prevailing belief is that these runic inscriptions are “Viking graffiti” dating from the 12th century AD, when Vikings allegedly raided the chamber for treasure. As a theory it does not stand much scrutiny.

If Maeshowe is a tomb (and it may very well have been), where are the human remains and why is there no mention or published report investigating this matter? How can it even be determined that Vikings were responsible for these inscriptions? And if they plundered Maeshowe, why did they opt to leave so many other structures of Neolithic Orkney undisturbed? This theory asks us to believe that Viking raiders attacked the site, looted and vandalized Maeshowe, and then left without checking the other structures.

Could it be more likely that a culture out of the Norse tradition established themselves in Orkney, and they were responsible for all the Neolithic stonework, including the thousands of enigmatic cupmarks and cup and ring symbols?

Norse Mythology

Gaelic traditions of both Ireland and Scotland make references to the original settlers of the islands, who are identified as the “Fomorians.” The etymology of this word is fairly uncertain, but in Old Irish “fo” means below, or under, or nether, and the Old Irish “mor” means enormous or great.

The Fomorians, John Duncan, 1912 (John Duncan / Public Domain)

The Fomorians, John Duncan, 1912 (John Duncan / Public Domain)

This has led to the interpretation that the Fomorians were underworld giants. This name also fits with the mythology, as in the tales they are regarded as giants that live in the nether realms beneath the land and or the sea.

In later texts they are often depicted as oceanic voyagers who conduct malevolent seafaring raids. They are also portrayed as having anthropomorphic features like the head of a goat, or in other instances, they are described as having only one eye. All of the above has led to frequent association between these Fomorians and the Jotunn of Norse Mythology who bear a striking literary resemblance.

There are other, perhaps more tenuous theories. The seventeenth century Catholic priest, poet, and historian Geoffrey Keating, in his work The History of Ireland, claimed that the Fomorians were Eurasian seafarers descended from Ham, the son of Noah in the Bible.

More Norse Parallels

The Fomorians are almost always mentioned in direct connection to another group, the “Tuatha De Danann.” This phrase translates to “the folk of the goddess Danu,” and they are also referred to as the “Tuath De” meaning, “the tribe of the gods.”

Like the Fomorians, they are believed to live underground in the subterranean realm, although they do breach the surface occasionally to interact with regular mortals. They were said to have immortal lifespans, perform heroic deeds, and were regarded as royalty on account of their divine ancestry.

Of most interesting note is that they were closely associated with the megalithic structures of Ireland and Gaelic Scotland – the menhirs, dolmens, henges, cromlechs, and passage tombs. According to tradition they used these as portals into other realms.

They feuded with the Fomorians, but also interbred with them. They appear to be another clear echo of the Norse tradition of the Aesir and the Jotunn.

Tantalizing Clues But Nothing More

As usual, free-thinking researchers are left with more questions than answers. Could it be that some archaic/Neolithic culture emanated from Scandinavia, radiating south in waves of migration, taking their stone carving symbolism with them?

Why are such ancient carvings so similar across the world? (George Currie)

Why are such ancient carvings so similar across the world? (George Currie)

Why is it that so often this most ancient stonework is attributed to what seems to be an archaic species of human so different from modern Homo sapiens? Whether it’s a seven-fingered giant in North Carolina, or little people in Scotland, these ancient structures are held in the oral tradition to be the work of beings with extraordinary capabilities. In the case of Orkney, this seems to be validated by the genius of construction and astronomical alignment. Are all of these races myths?

It is tempting to dismiss such notions, concluding instead that because the stonework is so ancient it inspires fanciful tales. Similarly you could conclude that the cupmarks and cup and ring symbols found in wildly differing locations are somehow universal human expressions.

But these explanations, neat as they may be, do not hold water scientifically. We would do better to look at what is known – that in various, seemingly unrelated, cultures across the planet we find unexpected parallels in these mysterious stone carvings. And these come with similar stories of the people who carved them, fantastical (perhaps) races now lost to time.

At the very least this provides us with anthropological clues of cultural diffusion in the distant past. But to go further, we could ask the question: why is the traditional explanation for such sites treated so lightly?

Top image: The Judaculla Rock and petroglyphs of Scotland have similar markings. Here, petroglyphs found in Lurgan by George Currie. Source: George Currie

By Mark A. Carpenter

Edit 6-9-2021:  This article has been edited to remove ideas of a link with the mythology of Asgard, which were not the ideas of the writer.

References

Carey, John. "Fomoiri", The Celts: History, Life, and Culture. Edited by John T. Koch. ABC-CLIO, 2012. p.355

Carey, John. "Tuath Dé", The Celts: History, Life, and Culture. Edited by John T. Koch. ABC-CLIO, 2012. pp.751-753

Childe, V.; Paterson, J.; Thomas, Bryce (30 November 1929). “Provisional Report on the Excavations at Skara Brae, and on Finds from the 1927 and 1928 Campaigns. With a Report on Bones". Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. Retrieved 6 May 2020.

MacCulloch, John Arnott. The Religion of the Ancient Celts. The Floating Press, 2009. pp.80, 89, 91.

Smith, Nicole; Gareth Beale; Julian Richards; Nela Scholma-Mason (2018). "Maeshowe: The Application of RTI to Norse Runes". Internet Archaeology. 47.

 

Comments

the psuedo experts of the main stream make light of the past because they are afraid of the truth.  Its hard to skewer a narrative if people realize that you are full of stuff.    If the myths of cultures around the world are proven true then maybe there is a Great Spirit or God.  If that is the case then maybe the lessons and laws exposed by the Spirit in various cultures, all of which are fairly similar (though shall not steal, murder etc).  If that is the case then those who demand you worship government instead of Spirit will be in trouble when the masses decide to reject them in favor of the higher authority. 

Mark A. Carpenter's picture

Mark A.

My name is Mark-Andrew Carpenter and I’m an emerging author, filmmaker, and rogue cultural anthropologist based in Baltimore Maryland, U.S. I studied archaeology until I discovered that they were not practicing objective science. Before abandoning the program, I did take... Read More

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