Henriette Mertz

Henriette Mertz (1896 – August 17, 1985) was an American patent attorney from Chicago and a proponent of pseudoarchaeological hyperdiffusionism in relation to ancient American history. During World War II, she worked as a code-breaker for the U.S. government's cryptography department. She published several controversial works during the 1960s and 1970s relating to the early discovery and settlement of America.

She died on August 17, 1985, in Chicago at 89; her book The Mystic Symbol was published posthumously.

Career Mertz was a cryptographer for the U.S. Navy during World War II. She then worked at the U.S. Copyright Office in Washington, D.C., as a patent lawyer. Later Cyrus H. Gordon, scholar of Near Eastern cultures and ancient languages, suggested that the inscriptions were derived from a Hebrew alphabet from the 1st century AD. Today archaeologists consider it a fraud.

Chinese voyages In her work entitled Pale Ink (self-published ), Mertz proposed that two accounts of Chinese travels to Fusang—one found in the Shan Hai Jing (which Mertz dates to 2250 BC) and the other by Buddhist missionary Hui Shen in 499 AD—describe visits to the American continent. The hypothesis had long been rejected by academic sinologists having been first advocated in English by Charles Godfrey Leland in 1875, but apparently Mertz was unaware of these facts. In her book, Mertz also proposed that Quetzalcoatl was Hui Shen, the 5th century Buddhist traveler to Fusang. About Mertz's hypotheses, sinologist Joseph Needham writes in a footnote that "the proposed identities in general require a heroic suspension of disbelief".

Published works 1986: The Mystic Symbol: Mark of the Michigan Mound Builders. Global Books. 1976: Atlantis: Dwelling Place of the Gods. 1974: Gods from the Far East: How the Chinese Discovered America. Seattle, Washington: Ballantine Books. 1964: The Wine Dark Sea: Homer's Heroic Epic of the North Atlantic, ASIN: B0006CHG68. 1958, 1972: Pale Ink: Two Ancient Records of Chinese Exploration in America. Swallow Press. 1957: The Nephtali: One Lost Tribe, ASIN: B0007EYTXS.