Part of it’s in Missouri, part of it’s in Arkansas. There are huge stones out here. They are perfectly square. Some of them are ten and fifteen feet long, six inches by six inches. They’ve been cut from somewhere. And there are hundreds of them out here on the land. George Jessop, caller Coast to Coast, interview Jonathan Gray
77,082. On a remote mountain ridge, high in the Peruvian Andes, are the remains of an ancient city. It has survived almost six hundred years of torrential rain and mud slides. Thousands of stones make up the site. Placed with perfect precision, some weighing more than twenty tons. Machu Picchu: City in the Sky, A&E 1995
The Georgia Guidestones have been part of the landscape in Elberton, Georgia, for a quarter of a century. Tourists flood to Elberton each year to see the 19-foot-tall granite monument, often posing for pictures standing beside it.
After 25 years a Christian organization named The Resistance is calling for the monument’s immediate removal.
‘The satanic Georgia Guidestones must be destroyed,’ insists John Conner of The Resistance. ‘The Guidestones should be smashed into a million pieces, and then the rubble used for a construction purpose.’ Judi McLeod, Canadian Free Press, article 22nd March 2005 ‘Dismantling the Georgia Guidestones’
America has its own Stonehenge: these giant Stones suddenly appeared on a hillside outside of all places Atlanta in 1980. Brad Meltzer’s Decoded s1e10: Apocalypse in Georgia, History 2010
Almost nothing is known of the Stones at all. ibid.
So the Georgia Guidestones may have been built by a secret society known as the Rosicrucians. ibid.
February 2000: Archaeologists examine an unidentified site in Georgia’s Chattahoochee National Forest. A massive configuration of 300 stone mounds, it becomes known as the Track Rock Ruins. Controversial evidence has since emerged linking the site to Mayan prophecy. February 2012: Federal authorities prohibit access to the site. America Unearthed s1e1: American Maya Secrets, H2 2012
Dear Scott ... While hiking in the Mustang Mountains my friends and I came across a cave – there’s native American rock art ... There’s a stone with a mysterious inscription outside the cave – I think it’s a message written in runes. America Unearthed s1e2: Medieval Desert Mystery, letter
48 Stones ... They were scattered throughout the South. American Unearthed s1e7: Mystery of Roanoke
In 1984 New England fishermen spotted something strange [Narragansett Stone] sixty feet off the coast of Rhode Island. A giant boulder carved with cryptic 14th century symbols. One of the symbols is a Hooked X, used by only one group at that time – the Knights Templars. In 2012 the stone with the symbol was stolen. America Unearthed s1e11: Tracking the Templars, Discovery History 2014
Newport Tower, Rhode Island: Twenty-eight feet tall and made of thousands of intricately placed stones. No-one knows who built it, when and why. America Unearthed s1e12: America’s Oldest Secret
I seem to find clues to my Templar theory every time I’m here. ibid.
South Carolina: There was a bed of sediment in the canal; we were excavating and sifting that through screens. And I was standing there watching the material coming out of the screens and this suddenly popped into the screen. On careful examination you readily see that the chips that were taken from the stone were very carefully chipped off. This was no accidental manufacture. Mark Newell, archaeologist
Death Valley, California: here in a harsh, hot and deadly terrain it appears mysterious natural forces are at work. It appeared rocks were moving around totally independently on perfectly flat ground. This strange and seemingly impossible phenomenon has defied explanation for more than sixty years. Weird or What? s1e1: Strange Survival, Discovery 2010
In New Hampshire USA a mysterious stone structure found deep in the woods has experts baffled, debating what it is and where it came from. Could this strange ruin be a place of pagan worship and human sacrifice thousands of years old? Does this mean ancient Europeans crossed the Atlantic thousands of years before Columbus? What is this place? Who built it? And what could its existence mean for America? In Salem, New Hampshire, a mysterious grouping of megalithic stones, one standing four point two metres, surround a compound that houses a maze of long chambers and crypts set into the ground. The centrepiece a huge stone slab. Weird or What? s1e5: Human Popsicle
Why do we regard some places as being more sacred than others? Neil Oliver, Sacred Wonders of Britain I, BBC 2014
The coming of a whole new age, one that would see great monuments, sacred monuments rise from the earth around Britain. ibid.
The time of the stone circles had begun. ibid.
A case in Oklahoma in Heavener, where you had some coal miners going down two miles beneath the surface of the Earth, and they were blasting out what they called rooms in the mine ... and they found a wall. And this wall according to the report was made of six-inch polished blocks of stone. Michael Cremo, author Forbidden Archaeology, radio interview Hidden History of the Human Race
There is enough contemporaneous record in the stones. Richplanet TV: South Wales/King Arthur, interview Wilson
Joseph Smith wasn’t the only person who was wandering around with a seer stone looking for gold, but he was particularly good at it. Simon Worrall, author
A seer stone. He [Joseph Smith] would put the stone in the bottom of the hat. Daniel Peterson, Mormon apologist and phat boy
Leave no stone unturned. Euripides, Heraclidea
How does it feel
To be on your own
With no direction home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone? … Bob Dylan, Like a Rolling Stone, 1965
Under every stone lurks a politician. Aristophanes, Thesmophoriazusae
Stony seaboard, far and foreign,
Stony hills poured over space,
Stony outcrop of the Burren,
Stones in every fertile place,
Little fields with boulders dotted,
Grey-stone shoulders saffron-spotted,
Stone-walled cabins thatched with reeds,
Where a Stone Age people breeds
The last of Europe’s stone age race. John Betjeman, Ireland with Emily, New Bats in Old Belfries, 1945
With useless endeavour
Forever, forever,
Is Sisyphus rolling
His stone up the mountain! Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Masque of Pandora, 1875
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert … Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ozymandias, 1818
London, England, home to one of the country’s pre-eminent historical detectives: Adrian Gilbert ... He first hears of the Stone of Jacob while working as a student nearly forty years ago. Secrets of the Bible s1e12: The Stone of Jacob, 2015
‘How could this be? How could something like this have turned up in London? How can it possibly be true?’ ibid.
A British prime minister would come to his rescue ... The Stone returns to great fanfare and is placed in Edinburgh Castle ... The Stone is much more likely to have come from a quarry in Scotland and not from the Holy Land. ibid.
Stones are hollowed out by the constant dropping of water. Ovid, Epistolæ Ex Ponto II 7 39
These stones from this quarry were transported well over a hundred miles. Ancient Impossible s1e2: Monster Monuments, History 2014
If you believe in the rock [holds rock] then you automatically believe in God. Depack Chopra
In ancient Egypt a revolution is brewing. The most ambitious building project ever conceived sets off a chain of events that will transform the nation. Buried in the sands of Egypt is the tale of a powerful pharaoh who would become a god and revolutionise his country. This is the legend of the world’s first pyramid. Legends of the Pharaohs s1e1: Egypt’s First Pyramid, History 2021
Egypt’s pyramid-building age: 500 years during which some of the world’s most remarkable monuments were constructed, including the Great Pyramid of Giza. ibid.
When the underground burial chamber was complete, Imhotep turned his attention to the stone monument above … Imhotep would use stone masonry on an industrial scale. ibid.