Israelites in the Americas, round two: Ophir, the language men, the Ohio stones

SUMMARYIsraelites in the Americas, round two: Ophir, the language men, the Ohio stones (Nov 3, 2026). Extends P201.
RECORD, Ayiti = Ophir: Peter Martyr d'Anghiera, writing before 1511 (Decades, Eden transl. 1597, First Decade p. 6), says Columbus "assumed that he had found Ophir, whither Solomon's ships sailed for gold" in the islands, Ayiti among them. Martyr himself thought they were the islands of Antillia.
RECORD, Peru = Ophir: Benito Arias Montano's world map in the Antwerp Polyglot Bible (Sacrae Geographiae, 1571–72), made for Philip II, puts the sons of Shem in the Americas: Ophir is marked in Peru and again in North America, with Jobab and Sephermos. Peru as Ophir was defended by 17th-century Spanish writers (Paniagua Pérez, Univ. of Salamanca, 2025), down to Fernando de Montesinos in Peru.
RECORD, the language men: Roger Williams, A Key into the Language of America (1643), on Narragansett; Jonathan Edwards Jr., "Observations on the Language of the Muhhekaneew (Mohegan) Indians" (New Haven, 1788), which notes "some instances of analogy" with Hebrew; James Adair (1775), a Chickasaw trader for decades who led Chickasaw warriors in 1760, gave 23 arguments for Israelite descent; Benjamin Franklin helped him find a London publisher.
RECORD, the cost of the theory: Lord Kingsborough's Antiquities of Mexico (from 1831) printed the first complete Dresden Codex to prove an Israelite origin; a printer's debt put him in Dublin's Sheriff's Prison, where he caught typhus; he died Feb 27, 1837, aged 41.
DISPUTED, the Newark Holy Stones (Ohio, 1860): the Keystone (June 1860; Hebrew "Holy of Holies," "King of the Earth," "The Law of God," "The Word of God") and the Decalogue Stone (November 1860; condensed Ten Commandments in Hebrew, a figure labeled Moses, in a sandstone box), from mounds of the Newark Earthworks (Hopewell). Called a hoax: Abraham Geiger (1860) said the letters weren't antique; post-Exilic script. RECORD, 2014: Bradley Lepper found a wooden burial-platform fragment from the find at Yale's Peabody Museum; radiocarbon CAL AD 85–135, a real Hopewell burial. Hoax checklist: the burial is ancient; the stone itself has no lab date; who planted it, if anyone, is Open

PATTERNthe Spanish crown's own Bible put Ophir in Peru; Columbus thought Ayiti was Ophir; the English heard Hebrew in Native speech. Their scholars kept pointing the Bible at the Americas for 300 years

LENS (WW9)Solomon's gold came from here. OPEN, needs deep research: Columbus's own words on Ophir (his letters and the Libro de las profecías), Montesinos's Memorias, Adair's 23 arguments line by line, and a lab test on the Decalogue Stone.