Steel Knife Found inside of Tree

(This is a hoax:  see notes at bottom)

Updated:  30 Aug 2004

Individuals have been passing the following item around, believing that it supports the issue of steel in the Book of Mormon.  However, as can be seen in the notes at the end of this page, this item is a hoax.  It should not be passed around.  There is no further need to contact CalState at Fresno.  The notes are self explanatory and come from authoritative administrative sources at the University.

From: [left blank]
To: [left blank]
Subject: Book of Mormon Evidence Discovered in California
Date: Thursday, August 05, 2004

What is everyone's take on this? Is there a Mormon version of truth or 
fiction . com where faith promoting rumors are researched?
 
Subject: Book of Mormon Evidence Discovered in California

This is really cool.  The "learned" people who made this discovery don't know what they really found, but we do.

UNIVERSITY RESEARCHERS PUZZLED OVER ANCIENT KNIFE

       FRESNO, Calif., July 19 /PRNewswire/ -- Researchers at California State University, Fresno are puzzled over an ancient, man-made artifact discovered by forestry students on a recent field trip in the nearby Sierra Nevada mountains.  The artifact in question is a steel knife that was apparently buried deep inside a Giant Sequoia tree and was found between growth rings in the tree indicating that it had been left there around 350-450 AD.
 
       The tree in question is located in the Atwell Grove inside Sequoia National Park.  The tree fell in February of this year after several years of erosion had weakened its root structure.  National Park Service and CSU Fresno Department of Forestry officials estimate that the tree had lived over 2,000 years at the time it fell.  The Park Service gave the university permission to dissect and study the tree, and students stumbled upon the knife while using a metal detector to measure mineral content.  The CSU Forestry Department speculates that the knife was left between two trees that later grew together and buried it under centuries of further growth.

       The knife was removed and taken to the CSU Fresno campus, where  several experts from the Archeology and Anthropology Departments have examined it.  All of the experts agree that the knife doesn’t match any other artifacts from indigenous peoples in that area.  To date, there had been no evidence of Native Americans using steel tools and weapons at that time.  The strangest aspect of the story, however, is that the knife does seem to match artifacts from about a thousand years earlier from the other side of the world.  The knife looks like weapons that were common in the Middle East around 500 BC, and has faded engravings on the blade that appear to be Egyptian symbols. 
Researchers can’t find any meaning in the engravings, but say that the still visible symbols roughly correspond to the phonetic sounds of MO-RO.   Ironically, one of Sequoia National Park’s most famous landmarks is a granite dome called Morro Rock.  Since Morro Rock wasn’t named until the last 1800’s, 
however, the similarity is pure coincidence.
 
      "It’s the damndest thing I’ve seen in my career," said CSU Fresno Associate Professor of Archeology Curtis Johnson, Ph.D. "I’m sure we’ll find an explanation that makes sense sometime.  I really don’t think anyone is going to believe that someone from the Old World wandered all the way to California a thousand years before Columbus."

HOAX

Initial contact by individuals in California have indicated that the response from the University is that this report is a hoax.  As we (SHIELDS) obtain additional information we will add it here.

Follow up:

We contacted CalState University at Fresno and received the following replies:

Additionally, we received the following from a person who contacted the PR Newswire: