The Mystery of the Glozel Stones

Seventeen-year-old Emile Fradin was helping his grandfather on their family farm at Glozel, near Vichy in the heart of central France, when they stumbled – quite literally – across one of the most bitterly controversial mysteries of the century. It was 1 March 1924 when one of their grazing cattle fell suddenly through the apparently smooth and stable surface of the meadow. The ground collapsed under the poor beast, dropping it into a totally unsuspected, artificial chamber or cavity. This strange, man-made chamber was lined with interlocking bricks, some of them glazed as though by intense heat. The room resembled a primitive glassworks, or mediæval kiln. Young Emile rescued the unlucky bovine by passing broad webbing under the cow to lift it. Descending again to explore – without the impediment of sharing the chamber with a frightened cow – he made some extremely exciting discoveries.

The chamber was full of shelves and niches containing many ancient and unusual objects. There were several carved bones and a number of antlers. There were what appeared to be statuettes of primitive deities – resembling the heavily pregnant Stone Age ‘Venus’ – and, most intriguing of all, there were numerous clay tablets covered with an unknown alphabet.

In the years that followed, so many human remains were found in the surrounding area that locals named the place Champ des Morts (The Field of the Dead). When we visited in 1975, we noticed the curious, rather disturbing atmosphere there… as though something was waiting for an opportunity to deliver a message from the remote past.

Dr Albert Morlet, a medical practitioner in nearby Vichy, soon heard of young Fradin’s unusual discovery. Morlet was keenly interested in archæology and anthropology and went out to visit the Fradin farm on 26 April 1925. He was as impressed by what he saw there as we were some 50 years later when we met Emile Fradin himself in 1975 (left, with Lionel). Subsequent to his visit, Dr Morlet made an arrangement with the Fradins. Under the terms of this agreement, the artefacts would be theirs, but Morlet would have exclusive rights to the publication and reproduction of all the scientific information associated with the site.

There’s an old Greek proverb: “Never praise one philosopher in the presence of another.” Academia is stuffed like an olive with bitterly jealous rivals who would gladly sacrifice a limb or an eye to get their names on a learned paper – or better still a book. This acidulous, personal animosity now got right in the way of the serious, objective research that the Glozel discoveries richly deserved.

Dr Capitan, an eminent archæological expert (at least in his own opinion), now involved himself in the mystery. After visiting the Glozel site he wrote enthusiastically to Morlet: “You have a marvellous stratum here. Please write me a detailed report of your findings which I can pass on to the Commission for Historic Monuments.” But Morlet saw through this at once; Capitan would get most of the credit while Morlet did most of the work. Morlet and the Fradins had other plans; they produced a booklet of their own entitled: Nouvelle Station Néolithique (A New Neolithic Site).

Unfortunately, as we have suggested above, human nature often places formidable psychological obstacles in the path of objective truth. It would be an understatement to say that Dr Capitan was furious with Morlet and the Fradins for slighting his great reputation. Anger turned into action, and he now challenged the authenticity of their site and its contents. He even accused the Fradins of having made the objects themselves!

As the controversy escalated, other leading archæologistsbecame merrily embroiled. Professor Salomon Reinach of St Germain-en-Laye said he was favourably impressed with Glozel; the finds there supported his hypothesis that civilisation had originated in the Mediterranean area rather than elsewhere. It was a vaguely patriotic theory, popular in France at the time. Historian Camille Jullian sided with Morlet and the Fradins; he felt that the tablets provided important information about the Roman occupation of Gaul. There was a stone death mask among the finds, and this impressed Professor Loth of the Académie Français; he labelled it ‘The Beethoven Mask’ because he thought it looked rather like the dead composer. It was a piece of ‘evidence’ that cut in both directions. Professor René Dussaud declared that it was a copy of the real Beethoven death mask and was, therefore, proof that the finds were fakes! (Beethoven had gone to a better world in 1827, almost a century before Emile Fradin rescued the cow!)

The controversy deepened when Edmond Bayle, a forensic scientist, thought he could detect fragments of what might have been grass in some of the Glozellian clay tablets. He cast his vote against their authenticity – forgetting, perhaps, that recognisable foliage had been found in the remains of Siberian mammoths. Hunter Charles Rogers – reputed to be a notorious faker of relics – claimed that he had been responsible for some of the Glozel artefacts, but little or no attention was paid to his testimony. He was not generally regarded as a credible witness in matters archæological.

While Lionel was lecturing on ‘The Psychology and Sociology of Unexplained Phenomena’ for Cambridge University’s E-M Board in the 1970s, we visited the Glozel site as part of our research programme and had a long and very helpful interview with Emile Fradin himself, now aged 68. Having met him and examined, first hand, the site and the artefacts in the Glozel Museum, we were in no doubt that he was perfectly honest. Whatever mysterious history lies behind the strange objects and the unknown alphabet of Glozel, it was clear to us that Emile Fradin had no deceitful hand in it. All that he did was to make the initial discovery in 1924.

Nevertheless, the dark cloud of suspicion hung over the the Fradins and Dr Morlet for years… until the advent of the thermoluminescent (TL) dating technique (see panel). When samples of the mysterious artefacts from Glozel were duly subjected to TL tests, some were found to be centuries old and others were thousands of years old. Dr Morlet and the Fradins were vindicated; our estimate of Fradin’s honesty was confirmed; and the French academic archæological establishment’s savage criticism of the Glozel discoveries was sharply refuted. What a tragedy that thermoluminescence wasn’t around in 1925!

Some orthodox archæologists were sceptical about Glozel because of the wide time-range of the discoveries. The earliest and latest specimens were separated by as much as 3000–4000 years. What individual, or group, could have collected them there and, above all, why?

Before the recent development of scientific archæology and palæontology, much uninhibited speculation surrounded ancient flint artefacts, bones and fossils turned up by the plough. Stone Age cemeteries, tombs and monuments were variously attributed to Arthur, Merlin, pagan gods, giants, demons, angels, leprechauns or fairies. Bones of mammoths and dinosaurs were regarded as evidence that the Biblical, antediluvian giants – along with the monstrous Leviathan – had once roamed the Earth. Flint arrowheads were attributed to elven warriors and færie craftsmen.

Such artefacts were widely prized through the Dark Ages by seers, sorcerers, wizards, warlocks, witches, prophets, shamans and ‘cunning-ones’ – together with supposedly magically knowledgeable priests and exorcists and other ‘wise-people’ of various kinds – in the belief that they had magical properties. Stone Age objects were used in the manufacture of protective talismans and medicines. For example, it was widely believed that carrying a flint (‘færie’) arrowhead in a leather pouch prepared with the appropriate herbs and moonlit incantations would protect the bearer from arrow wounds. Similarly, a tiny portion of a ‘giant’s bone’ (perhaps one attributed to David’s Goliath) could be ground up, mixed with oatmeal and fed to an undersized boy to help him grow.

A mediæval magician or wise-woman would need somewhere safe and secure in which to keep his or her store of magical ingredients and equipment. Suppose such a person discovered the disused glass kiln. Here indeed was a well-hidden underground chamber, already lined with a glass-firer’s shelves and niches, in an ideally remote country area safe from prying eyes – safe, above all, from the Holy Inquisition and their army of secret informers. Is it possible that young Fradin rediscovered just such a subterranean magician’s warehouse in 1924 when his grandfather’s cow fell into it?

Glozel lies very close to the imposing ruins of the 13th century Château Montgilbert, built at the time of Templar ascendancy in France. Only two or three days’ swift ride to the south is Rennes-le-Château – citadel of many unsolved historical mysteries – with its fabled Arcadian Treasure and controversial Templar and Cathar connections. An astonishing series of real (but admittedly tenuous) connections could link the mysterious Glozel artefacts with the legendary treasure of Rennes and with the Oak Island Money Pit mystery off the coast of Nova Scotia. This would unite three of the most intriguing enigmas of all time.

Whatever the treasure of Rennes-le-Château may eventually turn out to be, more than a quarter of a century’s research and site investigation have convinced us that it has nothing whatever to do with Jesus of Nazareth. Neither is there a shred of truth in the romantic, sensational, but ever-popular ‘bloodline’ theories involving St Mary Magdalene and the old French Merovingian Dynasty. The treasure of Rennes-le-Château is probably something far older than our Christian era. In order to bring the flickering torch of theory into the gloom of the underground chamber on the Fradin farm at Glozel, it is necessary to go back a very long way indeed.

First, we need to consider Graham Hancock’s theories about the lost civilisation that, he argues, might once have existed below the present Antarctic ice sheets. If Hancock is right – and his evidence is convincing and well organised – refugees from the encroaching ice might well have made their way to Egypt millennia ago. Once there, they shared their advanced culture and technology with the earlier inhabitants of the Nile Valley. The Sphinx, for example, could well provide evidence of their vast, ancient knowledge and their sudden arrival in the Nile Valley about 15,000 years ago. Recent discoveries of significant pyramids in Brazil – bigger and older than the Egyptian examples – also seem to suggest that an advanced culture spread north to escape from the encroaching Antarctic ice.

The Biblical record is not specific about it, but when Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt, an immeasurably important part of that ancient Egyptian treasure and wisdom almost certainly went with him. Is that why Pharaoh made such a reckless attempt to recover it, at the cost of his hapless charioteers, once the loss was discovered by the Egyptian Court and after Moses was well on his way? This act of suicidal military stupidity is otherwise inexplicable and, whatever else he was, the Pharaoh of the Exodus was no fool.

Moses and the Israelites carried the Ark of the Covenant with them everywhere, and guarded it with their lives. It was of a pattern well known in Egypt long before Moses left. Suppose it was not constructed after his Sinai experience and the giving of the Tablets of the Law. What if it had been brought from Egypt at the start of the Exodus along with whatever mysterious pre-Egyptian ‘treasure’ it contained? Suppose that the core of that ‘treasure’ was something priceless, something that had originated in the ancient civilisation now buried far below the thick ice sheets of Antarctica?

The tides of war washed over the subsequent Hebrew Kingdoms. Conquerors came and went as they in turn were conquered. At last, the Ancient Unknown Object in the Ark could have gone to the Imperial Roman Treasury. When Alaric’s Visigoths conquered Rome at the start of the fifth century, it could have travelled on with their other precious loot to what was believed to have been the ancient Visigoth stronghold of Rennes-le-Château – safe and easily defensible on the rugged foothills of the Pyrenees.

Did the ever-questing Templars find clues about what it was and where it was, when they probed the ancient foundations of their lodgings in Jerusalem during the reign of King Baldwin? Or did they already have strange, ancient knowledge to guide them? Did their fellow Templars of southwestern France also know the secrets of Rennes-le-Château? Did these French Templars carry that secret knowledge to Château Montgilbert next to Glozel? Were further clues to that same incredible mystery hidden in the underground chamber at Glozel, in the very shadow of the ancient Château?

It is the adventurous and indomitable Templars who also provide the intriguing link with Oak Island near the coast of Nova Scotia. The mysterious Yarmouth Stone (above, centre), bearing what at first appeared to be a runic inscription, turned up in Nova Scotia in 1812. Many of those Yarmouth Stone runes accord very closely with the weird Glozel alphabet. One theory about the Oak Island Money Pit mystery suggests that it was the Templars who hid their treasure there in Nova Scotia. Some Templars certainly escaped from France in 1307, and the mystery of the Lost Fleet of the Templars is one of history’s greatest enigmas. What really became of it? Were those same Templars aboard it responsible for the Glozel tablets as well as the Money Pit on Oak Island?

Templars loved using codes and ciphers. They were experts at it. Is that what the Glozel tablets were… a Templar code? Did those esoteric inscriptions refer to the strange nature and secret location of the priceless object Moses brought out of ancient Egypt? The Glozel Alphabet could be even more important than the Rosetta Stone once its mysterious letters and characters can be properly understood.

THE DATING GAME

Some of the questions raised by the Glozel discoveries were only answered later by the technique of thermoluminescent dating.

The pioneering work on thermoluminescent (TL) dating was done at the Universities of Edinburgh and Copenhagen more or less simultaneously, but the technique is now used almost everywhere. The TOSL Research Laboratory, at Dalhousie University in the USA, for example, is one of several field leaders who offer their TL analytical services to interested museums, art galleries and private collectors, researchers and investigators.

Calcite, quartz, various feldspars and several other crystals – including diamond – absorb energy from ionising radiation: alpha, beta and gamma as well as cosmic rays. This energy liberates electrons, enabling them to travel through the crystal lattice. Some electrons get trapped in places where there are imperfections and faults in that lattice. If powerful energy is directed towards the crystal – or if it is heated – some of the trapped electrons can be released. Light is emitted from the crystal as these electrons leave.

It is possible to calculate how much time has elapsed since the energy was previously lost, by simply measuring the light that is released when heat energy is applied. Imagine that a piece of pottery was fired in ancient times (say 4,000 years ago). The energy in any quartz crystals in that pottery would be dispersed by the heat of the kiln firing. Suppose that for some 4,000 years the pottery fragment lay undisturbed in the ground and no heat reached it during those millennia; natural radioactivity would very slowly recharge it. If the 4,000-year-old fragment is then taken to the TL laboratory and heated in a light-proof cylinder with a luminescence detector attached, the ancient pottery sample would glow again. The temperature at which it glowed – calculated along with some other modifying factors – such as the level of background radiation at the site where it was found – would provide a satisfactory guide to the date on which it was previously fired.

Very old pottery and ceramic artefacts, first fired millennia ago, glow again quite rapidly at relatively low temperatures. Modern pottery – the cup dropped in the canteen last Wednesday, for example – have to be subjected to very high temperatures for quite a while before they will glow again.