An ideal egg-shaped stone was found in the United States more than a hundred years ago. But until now, scientists have not figured out: Who and when carved a human face and some symbols on the stone? How could this be done? What is its purpose?
Mysterious stone
As the story goes, in 1872 in New Hampshire (New England), USA, near Lake Winnipesaukee, while digging a pit for the foundation, workers found a piece of clay from which something dark was sticking out. Inside was a dark stone, egg-shaped, with very strange carvings. On one side of the stone egg, a man's face was carved, on the other an ear of corn, circles, spirals, a crescent. Before that, no one had ever found anything like it. A lot of questions arose: Who made the stone? What is he for? How old is he? How is it cut out?
Today, there is no reliable answer to any of the questions, and no one is able to say for sure what kind of artifact it is, which is why it was named "The Mysterious Stone".
Photo of a stone from different angles
Local businessman Seneca Ladd, who was hiring workers, registered the opening. Ledd, being a naturalist, already had an extensive collection of relics and specimens. He was delighted with the new discovery and exhibited the relic with enthusiasm. Ledd died in 1892, and in 1927 one of his daughters donated the stone to the Historical Society in New Hampshire. He is now in the Museum of New Hemshire History. The stone was surrounded by mirrors showing all the symbols from all sides. The stone is 4 "long, 2.5" thick, open on all sides. On one side there are dots, spirals, on the other side an ear of corn, a circle with three figures. The American naturalist Ledd suggested that the stone could be a symbol of a treaty between tribes. Others said the stone was Celtic or Inuit.
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Artifact research by specialists
A 1931 letter from the Historical Society described it as a machined “mysterious stone” embedded in a piece of clay surrounded by hard rock or coral. A curious detail was that at both ends of the stone there were holes of various sizes. Each channel had a straight, rather than tapered, bore. According to analyzes done by government officials in 1944, scratches in the bottom hole suggest that the stone was mounted on and removed from a metal shaft, several times.
Archaeologist Richard Boyswerth concluded, "I have seen several holes drilled in stone, consistent with technology associated with prehistoric North America." A certain unevenness in the hole pattern could be natural for that time. Boyswert suggested that the holes could have been drilled with power tools in the 19th or 20th centuries: "What we saw may have been made several hundred years ago."
Hole in the top of the stone
As a result of the analysis carried out by the geologist Evgeniy Budette, they came to the conclusion that the stone consists of quartzite obtained from sandstone or mylonite, fine-grained, layered rocks. Such material is formed as a result of displacement of rock layers along faults. Rocks of this type could not have originated in Hampshire, but the origin of the stone is unknown. It is very difficult to find out the origin of the mysterious stone. The problem is that during its discovery, no one fixed, even approximately, the depth where it was. The focus was more on the object itself, rather than details such as the soil and depth where it was found. Perhaps there was something near him and how far from the lake it was. The environment, the context can sometimes be more informative than the artifact itself. This information could clarify a lot,but she will never be known.
The director of the Society of Collections and Exhibitions Wesley Ball suggested one of the ways to explore the mysterious stone. It could be a search for similar symbols. There is always a hope that such images will be found in some manuscripts, especially since the artifact was processed around the 19th century.