So the preponderance of the evidence (the REAL evidence, not purblind anti-diffusionists' crazy theories about forgery) seems to point to a large colony of Gnostic Christians from Egypt or Mesopotamia who fled Orthodox Christianity's persecutions in the 4th century, crossed the Atlantic, landed on the East Coast and settled predominantly in Michigan, where they fought and blended with the Chippewa Indians and left in mounds scattered all over the peninsula 10,000 to 30,000 archeological artifacts that have come to light since 1850, many of them tablets with unidentified writing and Biblical scenes on them. All objects, whether they are axes or cups or pendants bear the "mystic symbol," which seems to be a cuneiform version of the Greek abbreviation for Iesos or Jesus, IHS. Henriette Mertz deserves large credit for investigating and bringing this colony to wide notice. It was so threatening to status quo beliefs 100 years ago that a syndicate was formed to persecute believers and "expose" them in newspaper ads across the country. All the museums that were gifted with Michigan Relics threw them away or otherwise disposed of them, including the University of Notre Dame, where they were taking up valuable storage space under the football field, and the Mormons in Salt Lake City, where no one would touch them with a ten foot pole. A small collection ended up in a Michigan museum, where the curator holds his nose and apologizes for the quaint forgeries of the state's pioneer past. Wayne May, the editor of Ancient American, who republished the work with updated information with the permission of Mertz's nephew and literary heir, calls the affair the biggest scandal in American historical research. It's pretty sure, as Mertz points out, that forgers could not have been active for seventy years and covered the state, every single county in it, sometimes sneaking out into places with old mounds that didn't even have roads to them to plant copper, clay and slate artifacts inscribed and illustrated in various hands with an unknown alphabet. So we are left with the fact of their authenticity, which few seem to want to deal with. This book covers just about all aspects of the scandal in an even-handed and learned fashion. Deal and May's updates in a series of articles from Ancient American are, to my mind, forced and of limited usefulness. I am not persuaded Deal's astronomical data are pertinent. I think Mertz was on the right track when she suggested the purpose of the "mystic mark" was like a passport to heaven. One should compare the absolutely insane iconography with the Nag Hamadi Library, which my wife suggested I look at. Woah! I had to put all my books on this subject somewhere I can't find them for a while. My mind just can't take it.