Barry Fell

Barry Fell , actually Howard Barraclough Fell (born June 6, 1917 in Lewes , Sussex , England , † April 21, 1994 in San Diego , California , USA ) was Professor of Zoology at the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology. His research area was starfish and sea urchins . However, Fell is best known for his controversial epigraphic research in the Epigraphic Society publications .

Life

Fell was born in England. His mother emigrated with him to New Zealand in the early 1920s after his father, a sea merchant, died in a fire on board a ship.

He returned to Great Britain to graduate and received his Ph.D. from the University of Edinburgh in 1941. During the Second World War he served in the British Army. In 1946 he returned to New Zealand and continued his academic career.

In 1964 Fell was employed by the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University and moved to the USA. In the same year he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . He worked there until his retirement in 1979.

He died of heart failure in San Diego, California, USA, aged 76.

Researches

Although Fell was a leading marine biologist at Harvard University , he was best known for his work in the field of epigraphy . His interest here began very early when he studied Polynesian petroglyphs and published the results in 1940.

His most famous publications came much later, in 1976 with a book on Ancient America (America BC). He interpreted allegorical inscriptions on rocks in North and South America as characters from the Old World .

The Maui Expedition

The Maui expedition is an attempt by Egypt to Papua New Guinea had advanced circumnavigation , which interpreted by Barry Fell because of rock paintings and inscriptions as petroglyphs was developed. It was named after Fell in 232 BC. BC (275-194) from Alexandria, Egypt, under the direction of the navigator Maui and the captain Rata. The journey went with the parallel to the east and was then related to the measurement of the degree of Eratosthenes .

Fell published his theses since 1974 in his book The Polynesian Epigraphic Society Occasional Publications and The Epigraphic Society Occasional Publications . So far, they have not found recognition in historical and archaeological research. Some of his theses were checked by the hobby researcher Heinz B. Maass from Bremen and published in German in 1998.

One of Fell's theses is that a rock drawing found in the caves of Mac Cluer Bay in Papua New Guinea is a historical navigational instrument. Fell suspects it is a torquetum that was already used for the ancient circumnavigation. In fact, knowledge of this instrument in the Old World was not known before the 12th / 13th centuries. Century attested.

West Virginia petroglyphs

Fell triggered further controversy with the petroglyphs found in West Virginia when, as in the case of the Maui expedition in 1983, he published an article about his deciphering of this symbolic language. They are written in Ogam , an Irish Celtic script dating from the 6th to 8th centuries , and are in fact a detailed description of the birth of Christ. Fell created a theory that North America was visited by the Irish, Spanish, Libyans and Egyptians "some 2,000 to 2,500 years ago".

In truth, Fell was countered, his way of interpreting was an almost arbitrary grouping of signs. He represented these as the consonants of the Ogam alphabet and inserted vowels that seemed appropriate to him. Likewise the horizontal stem lines, which should enable him to determine the consonants. Fell's work was later described as nonsense by linguists and archaeologists in several countries, to which Fell responded with the accusation that they were "damned too lazy" to read his work and "uneducated".

literature

Fell, Barry: America BC, New York 1976.
Fell, Barry: Saga America. New York 1980.
Fell, Barry / Maass, Heinz B .: Nordic written documents and Atlantic seafaring of the Bronze Age, Lemwerder near Bremen 1998.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME	Fell, Barry
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Fell, Howard Barraclough
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	British zoologist
DATE OF BIRTH	June 6, 1917
PLACE OF BIRTH	Lewes , Sussex , England
DATE OF DEATH	April 21, 1994
Place of death	San Diego , California , USA