Summary: In 1877 and 1878 amateur archaeologists from a gentleman's History Academy of Davenport, Iowa on the upper Mississippi River, dug up three incised apparently Old-World pre-Columbian stones from deep within several ancient Indian burial mounds outside the city. These artifacts, particularly the tablet now called the "Davenport stone" has triggered heated authenticity debates among historians that has continued for over a century. It contains a tri-lingual inscription said by some to be Egyptian, Libyan-Maroccan and Punic-Iberian that could define that Mediterranean people visited America and traveled as far west as the Mississippi River by the time of Christ.

In spite of significant evidence to the contrary, most academics today insist that these stones are a hoax even though no modern thorough unbiased study of them has ever been undertaken.