Clan Sinclair Archeological Finds ?

[dhinchey@together.net ()]

Dear Folks,

Please allow me to inform you of some very interesting developments. Perhaps you already know of them but they came to my attention from participating in a discussion list involving megalithic stones and archeology associated with the Gaels in general.

Today I received a post from one " Michael Bradley," of 
         38 Pacific Ave. 
         Toronto,  Ontario 
         CANADA  M6P  2P3 
         (416) 767-4257 Phone/Fax 
         E-mail: michaelbradley@sympatico.ca 

He has written an unpublished article about signs of Clan Sinclair in the environs of Lake Memphremagog of northern Vermont. The analysis is very exciting, and doubly so if one is of Clan Sinclair. I place hereunder an excerpt of the indicated text which is available with photos at:

http://sites.netscape.net/bradleymichaela/Memphremagog.htm

This article is of more than passing interest to me because I live only 70 miles away from the discussed site in Vermont. I hope you all enjoy reading about this and seeing the photos available at Mr. Bradley's website.The material is actually mind boggling, if authentic, as it appears to be.

Dale Hinchey

Clan Donald [Isles]
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Text:
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"On July 28, 2000, a Toronto resident with a cottage on Lake Memphremagog revealed two “discoveries” that may change North American history.  Lake Memphremagog, 100 kilometres southeast of Montreal, is a long narrow lake (some 45 kilometres long and only 7 kilometres wide) that straddles the Quebec-Vermont border in the beautiful foothills of the Green Mountains. 

About twenty-five years ago, Laura Beazley’s father discovered, beneath their cottage on Lake Memphramagog, an iron object that seemed to be a spear-head.  This curiosity was given to then-teenage Laura because she had been interested in archeology from an even earlier age.  Sensitized by this apparent spear-head, Laura kept her eyes open looking for other unusual things when the family, and later she alone, visited the cottage. 

 
In the summer of 1998, Laura noticed that a curiously disfigured boulder not far from the cottage on the shore of the lake seemed remarkably similar to the outline of an obscure 14th century coat-of-arms.   This coat-of-arms was that of Henry Sinclair, Baron of Roslin (Scotland) and Earl of Orkney as reproduced in an obscure 14th century heraldry book called the Armorial de Gelre.  American historian Frederick Pohl had first brought this coat-of-arms to notice in his book Prince Henry Sinclair in which he argued that this Scottish-Scandinavian nobleman (AD 1345-1400) had actually “discovered” North America in 1398 – ninety-four years before Christopher Columbus and ninety-nine years before John Cabot. 

Quoting an obscure medieval document known as “The Zeno Narrative”, thought to have been composed about AD 1400 by two navigators in Sinclair’s service, Pohl presented geographic evidence that the settlement Sinclair is said to have established in “Estotiland” had been in Nova Scotia.  Actually, University of Michigan geologist William Herbert Hobbs had previously argued the same thing in the January 1951 issue of the prestigious Scientific Monthly, but Frederick Pohl brought this obscure episode of history to more general knowledge in a popular book. 

Sinclair did not mistake the new land for the realm of the Great Khan, like Columbus.  The narrative of his transatlantic voyage states that “Estotiland” was part of a vast nuovo mundo – a “New World” – and so, so much for Amerigo Vespucci’s realization, or “discovery”. 

It was not until July 2000 that an acquaintance of Laura’s, Joelle Laurol of Toronto, noticed another illustration  opposite the coat-of-arms on the boulder.  Apparently carved, these features seemed to be a fairly accurate map of the North American Atlantic coast from Yucatan to Nova Scotia (although the “northeastern” coast was progressively obscured by a growth of lichen). 

The iron spear-head seems an indisputable “hard artifact” in both the literal and figurative senses of the phrase.  And, of course, Europeans commonly used iron spear-heads only up to about AD 1450-1500 when most hand weapons were superceded by firearms.  Colonials didn't normally make spear-heads either – while the “Indians” were not supposed to have used iron at all. ................

[Visit the web site to read the rest!]


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