New Mexico's Mystery Stone

New Mexico State Land Office website ^ | Unknown | New Mexico State Land Office

[Muleteam1]

Crustose lichens are a good bet. I never did hear back from the fellow who posted the picture at Coast to Coast. I don’t know if he ever got any professional opinions. I was a biologist for many years but paleobotany went beyond my learning.

[R_Kangel]

.

Some of the inscriptions resmble the inscriptions on the tablets pictured above.

[Zack Attack]

I am no scholar in ancient Hebrew, but I am able to read bits and pieces of it.

[Muleteam1]

I think they were meant to.

[Lijahsbubbe]

Why is it so bright and perfectly inscripted? It looks fake!

Disclaimer: Not an expert.

[Muleteam1]

Of course in the southwestern desert, geological and even historical artifacts, can remain unchanged for many years. I have never personally seen this stone but I’m surprised someone hasn’t tried to place a date on the rock varnish.

Nor am I am expert. Just curious.

[monkapotamus]

[Lijahsbubbe]

I’m surprised someone hasn’t tried to place a date on the rock varnish.

Especially when they could just ask someone at Home Depot. ;)

[Bender2]

bump for later read...

[EternalVigilance]

Yer GOOD!

[Liz]

Heheh---another monka goodie. Love it.

Translated, that says "Don't vote for this liberal scumbag."

That's why Rooty's grimacing (or does he have to go real bad).

[whitelady]

Though I cannot find it on the Internet as of yet, Mystery Rock has another meaning, I read it in a very resourceful book. It is the sad story of a man who is dying from thirst and hunger. Though most would say it was a hoax, a figure, the E, was not realized to be the letter it was, until 30 years after the first documentary of the stone. I am a firm believer that mystery rock was carved before Columbus even had the notion to go around the world. I believe it was carved by an unlucky man, reject by his family and friends, forced to wonder, who stumbled upon the new land before any one, it is very possible. Vikings had given account of a secret land where they hid treasure, and such, America could be this land.

[SunkenCiv]

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[woofie]

Im headed out soon to see this rock...have you got any thoughts on whether or not it is real?

[SunkenCiv]

I thought I had posted something, but apparently not. Whoops.

http://www.econ.ohio-state.edu/jhm/arch/loslunas.html

...In 1996, Prof. James D. Tabor of the Dept. of Religious Studies, University of North Carolina - Charlotte, interviewed the late Professor Frank Hibben (1910-2002), a retired University of New Mexico archaeologist, “who is convinced that the inscription is ancient and thus authentic. He reports that he first saw the text in 1933. At the time it was covered with lichen and patination and was hardly visible. He was taken to the site by a guide who had seen it as a boy, back in the 1880s.” (Tabor 1997) At present the inscription itself is badly chalked and scrubbed up. However, Moorehouse compares the surviving weathering on the inscription to that on a nearby modern graffito dating itself to 1930. He concludes that the Decalogue inscription is clearly many times older than this graffito, and that 500 to 2000 years would not be an unreasonable estimate of its age... [end]

How old is the los lunas inscription?
William R. Corliss
Science Frontiers # No. 43: Jan-Feb 1986
http://www.science-frontiers.com/sf043/sf043p02.htm

Volume 13 of the Epigraphic Society’s Occasional Publications (one of two volumes for 1985) contains several articles of great interest to anomalists with an archeological bent. We have space for only two in this issue of SF.

In the first of these, Barry Fell deals with the criticism that the now-famous Los Lunas (New Mexico) inscription cannot be the work of ancient Hebrew-writing visitors to the New World because it employs modern punctuation marks. Fell counters this by reproducing several ancient texts that use similar punctuation conventions, thus blunting this attack on the antiquity of the Los Lunas inscription.

For readers unacquainted with the Los Lunas inscription, it consists of the Decalogue (the Ten Commandments) engraved in ancient Hebrew on a large basalt rock near Los Lunas, NM.

In the second paper, geologist G.E. Morehouse comes to grip with a second criticism leveled at the inscription; namely, that the engraving looks fresh and lacks the patination characteristic of great age. Morehouse concludes that the freshness actually derives from the frequent, recent scrubbing of the inscription (with wire brushes on some occasions) to improve its visibility. Taking this into account, Morehouse estimates the age of the Los Lunas inscription by comparing its weathering with a nearby 1930 inscription. Conclusion: the Los Lunas inscription is much older than 1930. Any length of time from 500-2000 years or more older would be “quite reasonable.”

We are, therefore, still left with the possibility that Old World travelers with a knowledge of ancient Hebrew visited what is now New Mexico perhaps as early as the time of Christ.

(Fell, Barry; “Ancient Punctuation and the Los Lunas Text,” Epigraphic Society, Occasional Publications, 13:35, 1985, and Morehouse, George E.; “The Los Lunas Inscriptions, a Geological Study,” Epigraphic Society, Occasional Publica tions, 13:44, 1985.)

[SunkenCiv]

Note: this topic is from 2006.

• Ancient Romans In Texas? [2002]
• Romans In Brazil During The Second Third Century? [2003]
• Romans In Brazil During The Second Third Century? [2004]
• The Roman Head From Tecaxic-Calixtlahuaca, Mexico: A Review Of The Evidence [2004]
• Ancient stones a mystery for archeologists, scientists [ Los Lunas Decalogue ] [2011]