{"id":13304,"date":"2025-06-20T15:57:20","date_gmt":"2025-06-20T19:57:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/?p=13304"},"modified":"2025-06-20T15:57:20","modified_gmt":"2025-06-20T19:57:20","slug":"experts-finally-decipher-mysterious-rock-with-biblical-text-found-in-canada","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/2025\/06\/experts-finally-decipher-mysterious-rock-with-biblical-text-found-in-canada.html","title":{"rendered":"Experts Finally Decipher Mysterious Rock With Biblical Text Found in Canada"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_13307\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-13307\" style=\"width: 1200px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13307\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/409\/2025\/06\/Biblical-Carving_credit-Ryan-Primrose-OCARE.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1200\" height=\"900\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-13307\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ryan Primrose \/ OCARE<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Archaeologists have finally deciphered a mysterious rock with Biblical markings years after it was uncovered, but what they\u2019ve discovered may just lead to more questions. The rock was discovered in 2018 in Wawa, Ontario after a tree fell over. It bore 255 strange characters which appeared to be some 200 years old. The rock also bore a carved picture of a boat bearing sixteen people aboard and 14 X\u2019s. Images of the rock made their way to archaeologist Ryan Primrose, the director of the Ontario Centre for Archaeological\u00a0Education in New Liskeard, who continued to study the figures for the next five years. \u201cWell, it&#8217;s certainly among the least expected finds that I think I&#8217;ve encountered during my career. It&#8217;s absolutely fascinating,\u201d Primrose <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/news\/canada\/sudbury\/archeological-discovery-runestone-northern-ontario-1.7558069\">said<\/a> of the ciphers.<\/p>\n<p>Primrose recognized the characters as Nordic runes and enlisted the help of Henrik Williams, an emeritus professor at Uppsala University in Sweden and a leading expert in runology. After spending some hours in freezing weather with a flashlight, Williams recognized the ciphers as a 1611 Swedish version of the Lord\u2019s Prayer that had been republished in the 19<sup>th<\/sup> century, at the time the rock was believed to be carved into. Williams said the carving required quite a commitment. \u201cIt must have taken days and days of work. They are really deeply carved into the rock. Someone must have spent a couple of weeks carving this thing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>The rock doesn\u2019t offer up too many answers about why there is a 200-year-old Swedish text under a tree in Ontario, but Williams has one working theory. According to his research, the Hudson&#8217;s Bay Company hired Swedes in the 1800s to work at trading posts in the Canadian wilderness. The Michipicoten post is not too far from where the carving was found, so Williams believes the rock may have marked a site for a place of worship for either a group of Swedish workers at the trading post, or a single worker. The rock was found buried under only a few inches of dirt, indicating it might have been purposefully buried. The lack of any other artifacts with the rock makes gathering more information difficult. \u201cAnybody has to start wondering \u2018Why on Earth did they carve it here and why did they choose that text?\u2019 And there&#8217;s no answers,\u201d said Williams. \u201cBut mysteries, they do tend to attract people and this one will certainly do that.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Archaeologists have finally deciphered a mysterious rock with Biblical markings years after it was uncovered, but what they\u2019ve discovered may just lead to more questions. The rock was discovered in 2018 in Wawa, Ontario after a tree fell over. It bore 255 strange characters which appeared to be some 200 years old. The rock also&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":516,"featured_media":13307,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Experts Finally Decipher Mysterious Rock With Biblical Text Found in Canada<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A mysterious Ontario rock carved with 255 runes has been decoded as a 200-year-old Swedish Lord\u2019s Prayer\u2014but stills baffle experts.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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