Posted on 01/09/2006 6:45:23 PM PST by Muleteam1
It is a mystery in the desert hills near Los Lunas, New Mexico. It has puzzled experts for more than 50 years. It has been referred to by many different names -- Ten Commandments Rock, Mystery Rock, The Los Lunas Decalogue Stone. It is most commonly known as the Mystery Stone.
Mystery Stone is located at the base of Hidden Mountain, on New Mexico state trust land, about 16 miles west of Los Lunas. It is a boulder weighing an estimated 80 to 100 tons and is about eight meters in length. Nine rows of 216 characters were chiseled at a 150 degree angle into the north face. The characters resemble ancient Phoenician script. Like the rest of Hidden Mountain, the boulder is volcanic basalt. The site was first documented in 1936, when visited by Anthropology Professor Frank Hibben, from the University of New Mexico. Any other reported visits prior to that year are unconfirmed.
See remainder of story at the Source URL above.
(Excerpt) Read more at nmstatelands.org ...
Muleteam1
The Latin is a misquotation from Juvenal.
I was thinking the Mormons would pay a mint for it.
Rock varnish dating is extremely controversial and likely not so very accurate. But looking at the photos that "MTM" on the rock above this one looks more weathered than the actual 'inscription'.
I'd guess an old hoax.
Oh and Frank Hibben is best known for finding "Sandia Man", which is also a rather controversial stone tool assemblage.
It's been over twenty years since I looked at the subject but I seem to recall that you are correct.
Muleteam1
The stone exhibits periods (punctuation). It appears to me to be of 19th- or 20th-Century age. Either a prank, or a message meant for Knights of the Golden Circle.
It was created at a Kinkos in Abilene, Texas.
My guess is that it's not exactly a hoax. Rather, it's probably a real inscription, really made by somebody religious -possibly Jewish, possibly Mormon - from Europe or America - perhaps reading the scroll out of a mezusah and copying it - sometime between Spanish exploration in the 1500s and the 1800s.
If it was found with lichens and vines growing around it, it had a few years to sit there, but not 1000 years.
The archaeologists observed that inscriptions in that state are usually 500 - 1000 years old. We should remember that 1500 was 500 years ago, and the Spanish - very religious folks - were in this area about then. There are Spanish missions in the Southwest that date from the 1500s. St. Augustine in Florida dates from the 1560s.
Beyond that, inscriptions they're looking at are usually in caves and tombs. This has always been in the open air. Let's say it's 200 years old, meaning that somebody religious carved the thing out there in New Mexico in 1805 - 300 years after Spanish settlement. It's been sitting in the open desert air and having raid and acids working on it, exposed, for that long. The tombstones in Old Trinity in New York City have been in the open air for 250 years, and the inscriptions are in that shape.
So, you've got a 200 year old inscription, made by some religious person out in the desert, in a place that had already been settled by very religious Europeans for almost 300 years by then.
That's not exactly a hoax. It might have been intended as a deeply devotional exercise. It might have been the work of some religious hermit type from a monastery in Santa Fe who went off to the hills and got inspired to reproduce Moses' feat on the mountain and make his own stone tablets. He needn't have been a scholar if he was copying a Jewish scroll.
Are we sure this image is not a mirror image? there's a lot of backward "E's", "P's", and "K's". My .02.
Thanks for the comment. Keep in mind that some things can last many many years, even in the open, in the southwestern deserts. For example, some of the petroglyphs in the basaltic lava flows west of Albuquerque date back to around 1300. Many of these are exceedingly clear. Also, the features of Meteor Crater near Winslow, Arizona are preserved so well simply because of the dry desert climate. That feature is believed to be about 50,000 years old. A single wagon wheel track can remain visible for a hundred years or more. I provide these examples only as possible reason that these inscriptions may elicit such interest. Beyond the few arrowheads and pottery chips I have found as a young man, I have no experience or training in anthropology. I just thought this article was pretty interesting. Thanks again for your comments.
Doesn't look like Elvish.
The punctuation is strong evidence of recent origin. Probably about 1820, as a guess.
I thought I read somewhere that the Latin phrase is a rough translation of "The changing vine, the living vine."
You're both wrong, it's the secret of how to please a woman.
That would then be worth a fortune.
No, then it would surely be a hoax.
Everyone knows THAT'S impossible!
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Filling
2 tsp hot water
1/4 tsp salt
2 cup marshmallow creme
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1/2 tsp vanilla
imo the picture is upside down.
dawrvish? seriesly, it looks like a code made up of more than one alphabet probably something modern - 19th or 20th century, more likely 20th. Could be mirror image writing (fwiw daVinci wrote in mirror image, too) because it appears to be carved to read right to left. The letters look like a combination of Cyrillic (~ Russian) and Latin (~ English) with some mathematical symbols thrown in.
I don't think it's a hoax, it is a real message. But it certainly isn't ancient, nor is it a known language. I'm sticking to the code theory. It's more like a puzzle than anything else.
I didn't take the photo.
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