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An inscribed stone reportedly excavated by an employee of the Smithsonian Institution from a burial mound in eastern Tennessee, and published by Cyrus Thomas in his 1894 landmark report, has been promoted by transatlantic contact enthusiasts as incontrovertible proof of Precolumbian Old World contacts. The inscription is fraudulent, having been copied from a Masonic treatise. We present the source of the inscription and discuss other circumstances concerning the stone and its purported discovery.