The hoax checklist run on Bat Creek, Los Lunas and Paraíba

SUMMARYThe hoax checklist run on Bat Creek, Los Lunas and Paraíba (Nov 3, 2026).
BAT CREEK (Tennessee):
(1) Sealed layer: yes. Found Feb 14, 1889, by John Emmert, a Smithsonian Mound Survey field assistant, under the skull of a burial in Mound 3; two "copper" bracelets and wood were in the same burial.
(2) Lab: wood associated with the burial gave a radiocarbon date of about 32–769 AD (McCulloch 1988). That dates the burial, not the carving. A 1970 Smithsonian test found the bracelets are leaded yellow brass.
(3) Hoax claim: McCarter (1993) and Mainfort and Kwas (2004) point to a near-match with a paleo-Hebrew illustration in Robert Macoy's General History, Cyclopedia and Dictionary of Freemasonry (1868/1870 editions). That is a documentary argument, not hearsay.
(4) Does it explain the lab date? Only if the stone was slipped into an older burial.
(5) Who gains? The forgery theory points at the Smithsonian's own man; the authentic theory breaks "no contact."

VERDICTDisputed; the strongest counter-case of the three

LENSeither an ancient Hebrew stone sat in a Hopewell burial, or a Smithsonian worker copied a Freemason book into a sacred mound. Either way, a Masonic text sits inside the burial (ties to the lodge threads, P152 and P158).
LOS LUNAS (New Mexico):
(1) Sealed layer: none; it is an open boulder.
(2) Lab: none possible; old weathering has been scrubbed off by visitors (Morehouse estimated 500–2,000 years).
(3) First recorded in 1933 by Frank Hibben, who said a guide saw it in the 1880s (secondhand). Hibben has been accused of fabricating data in other digs. The hoax case rests on grammar errors, mixed alphabets and no Hebrew trail in the Southwest

VERDICTOpen; the weakest receipt (no context, and a compromised first witness on both sides).
PARAÍBA (Brazil):
(1) No stone, no site: only a paper copy sent in 1872 by a "Joaquim Alves da Costa" who was never found.
(2) No lab possible.
(3) Ladislau Netto, director of the National Museum, first accepted it and then called it a hoax, saying it borrowed words from Plautus and that he matched the handwriting to one of the scholars he wrote to. Cyrus Gordon revived it in 1968 on grammar grounds

VERDICTOpen and unprovable without the stone.
RANKING for public use: (1) Calixtlahuaca head, strong; (2) Bat Creek, contested but rich; (3) Los Lunas, weak; (4) Paraíba, paper only. RULE: lead with the strongest and file the weak ones as Open, so the colonizers never get the easy win.