[Image: Standing stones beneath Lake Michigan? View larger].
Posted on 01/08/2009 12:15:48 PM PST by BGHater
In a surprisingly under-reported story from 2007, Mark Holley, a professor of underwater archaeology at Northwestern Michigan University College, discovered a series of stones – some of them arranged in a circle and one of which seemed to show carvings of a mastodon – 40-feet beneath the surface waters of Lake Michigan.
[Image: Standing stones beneath Lake Michigan? View larger].
If verified, the carvings could be as much as 10,000 years old – coincident with the post-Ice Age presence of both humans and mastodons in the upper midwest.
[Image: The stones beneath Lake Michigan; view larger].
In a PDF assembled by Holley and Brian Abbott to document the expedition, we learn that the archaeologists had been hired to survey a series of old boatwrecks using a slightly repurposed "sector scan sonar" device. You can read about the actual equipment – a Kongsberg-Mesotech MS 1000 – here.
The circular images this thing produces are unreal; like some strange new art-historical branch of landscape representation, they form cryptic dioramas of long-lost wreckage on the lakebed. Shipwrecks (like the Tramp, which went down in 1974); a "junk pile" of old boats and cars; a Civil War-era pier; and even an old buggy are just some of the topographic features the divers discovered.
These are anthropological remains that will soon be part of the lake's geology; they are our future trace fossils.
But down amongst those otherwise mundane human remains were the stones.
[Image: The "junk pile" of old cars and boat skeletons; view larger].
While there is obviously some doubt as to whether or not that really is a mastodon carved on a rock – let alone if it really was human activity that arranged some of the rocks into a Stonehenge-like circle – it's worth pointing out that Michigan does already have petroglyph sites and even standing stones.
A representative of the University of Michigan Museum of Paleontology has even commented that, although he's skeptical, he's interested in learning more, hoping to see better photographs of the so-called "glyph stone."
[Image: The stones; view larger].
So is there a North American version of Stonehenge just sitting up there beneath the glacial waters of a small northern bay in Lake Michigan? If so, are there other submerged prehistoric megaliths waiting to be discovered by some rogue archaeologist armed with a sonar scanner?
Whatever the answer might be, the very suggestion is interesting enough to think about – where underwater archaeology, prehistoric remains, and lost shipwrecks collide to form a midwestern mystery: National Treasure 3 or Da Vinci Code 2. Even Ghostbusters: The Return.
But only future scuba expeditions will be able to tell for sure.
It got hushed up because the aliens got all PO’d and threatened to make Cuba disappear! Couldn't allow any threat to the last bastion of the Revolution!
Or maybe there wasn't as much as they thought? Who knows!
“I think in the coming year you’re going to see some discoveries announced that shed light on the New World/Old World contacts before Columbus came,” Powell said.
“We may realize that there was much more contact than we previously thought.”
That would be cool!
If you would like to be added or dropped from the Michigan ping list, please freepmail me.
If you look above the first mastodon, there is another with his trunk elevated. I posted a comment on this at the site.
I wish there were more text in that, I’d post it as a topic.
-or was it the site of castro’s secret hidey-hole. the one where they are having their weekendatbernie’s gathering.
You win a Heini!
That’s what I liked the book Underworld: The Mysterious Origins of Civilization.
It covered the beginnings of these underwater digs that are happening all over the world.
If we can keep ‘civilization’ going for the next hundred years or so, there should be lots of interesting history discovered.
Of course, then it will be lost again.....
Thanks fanfan.
I can see the mastedon, or whatever animal it is. I cannot see the stones are in any sort of circular formation though.
The circle in the middle of the picture is created by the photographer to show the center of his pic, right?
Looks to me like they have a whole lot of nothing.
No, if you turn it sideways and squint it looks like the Obama logo......
Lake Michigan's Stonehenge You never know what you might find when you go for a dive, especially if you keep your eyes open for something unusual. In 2007, the archaeologists were studying the Lake Michigan's floor, and they were surprised to find a Stonehenge-like stone formations on the bottom. The stones are aligned in a circle 40 feet below the surface of the lake. One of the stones features a picture of an animal that was extinct for over 10,000 years. [Image source: www.scubaq.ca]
Just an updated ping message.
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Note: this topic is from . Thanks BGHater.
Can't post this one, because of source restriction, but here's the link, related to this topic:
SCUBA Diving is much older than we thought...................
BKMK
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