New paper on the Iruña-Veleia findings

Dr. Koenraad Van den Driessche has published a new report that addresses the authenticity of the Iruña-Veleia findings from the viewpoint of the physical evidence. So far there had been only one such report (by Madariaga), which only studied a few samples and was rather inconclusive (the shards had been buried or artificially make to look old).

Luckily, once doubt was cast on the initial findings, the LURMEN team decided not clean any shard that had the slightest chance of having a text on it in the 2007 excavation campaign, allowing the evidence to remain intact, even if it hindered the research process.

Van den Driessche, a geologist, addresses both categories and denounces that this important part of the evidence was totally ignored by the committee set up by the provincial government (which, as I said before, let the archaeologists without the right of defense).

One of the many extraordinary findings

Conclusions (my translation):

1. The conclusion of the committee resulted from a scientific procedure that was intervened by the administration with irregularities.

2. The composition of the committee cannot be said to be independent: of the nine academic members, all are from the same university and seven from the same faculty. Some members have interests in the same "archaeology market" as the excavators of LURMEN.

3. The conclusions of the committee are based only on unilateral considerations on the cultural value of the graffiti. We cannot evaluate these conclusions but we find an aversion to the research of the material evidence. What is confirmed by the declarations of a member of the committee: "more laboratory research is the wrong way to go"*.
The arguments of the committee are almost exclusively arguments of authority, no falsifiable methodologies are provided. They did not apply statistical methods, something elementary in modern human sciences.

4. The only study of the physical evidence is the limited contribution of Mr. Madariaga, who researched only one kind of material and only in nine of the pieces. His only relevant conclusion is that the pieces were buried. We can say that the physical evidence of the exceptional findings have not been researched.

5. We notice in the methodology of the committee a total lack of research of the pieces as part of a set which may have an internal organization (coherence) or not. The existence of this internal coherence is in itself an important evidence for the falsehood - authenticity. The committee rather considers the set as a random one.

6. We have demonstrated the presence of different relevant physical evidence trough photographs that can give information on the time passed since the inscription. The main ones are:

• Various kinds of adherences which are proof of a state of burial with a meaninful duration since the inscription.
• Inscriptions on bone.
• Inscriptions on bricks - before cooking or not?

7. From the preliminary study on the inscriptions on bone it is deduced that they were realized on fresh bone, that is: in a short time frame after the death of the animal.

8. One of the key probes to research the falsehood - authenticity is the chemical and sedimentological correspondence between pieces of the same stratigraphic unit.

9. The meaning in terms of time of the adherences mentioned in point 6 must be researched.

*This sentence was made by Prof. Joseba Lakarra, the linguist who triggered by means of academic rumorology all the institutional persecution, apparently for fear that his theories on Basque language could be deemed false on light of the new evidence.


The paper (PDF in Spanish) can be downloaded HERE (click on "descargar"). Additional photographic data is provided HERE.