The Dighton Rock is a 40-ton boulder, originally located in the riverbed of the Taunton River at Berkley, Massachusetts (formerly part of the town of Dighton). The rock is noted for its petroglyphs ("primarily lines, geometric shapes, and schematic drawings of people, along with writing, both verified and not."),[2] carved designs of ancient and uncertain origin, and the controversy about their creators. In 1963, during construction of a coffer dam, state officials removed the rock from the river for preservation. It was installed in a museum in the nearby Dighton Rock State Park. In 1971, it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP).
The boulder has the form of a slanted, six-sided block, approximately 5 feet (1.5m) high, 9.5 feet (2.9m) wide, and 11 feet (3.4m) long. It is gray-brown crystallinesandstone of medium to coarse texture. The surface with the inscriptions has a trapezoidal face and is inclined 70 degrees to the northwest. It was found facing the water of the bay.
History and mythology
In 1680, the Englishcolonist Rev. John Danforth made a drawing of the petroglyphs, which has been preserved in the British Museum. His drawing conflicts with the reports of others and the current markings on the rock.[2] In 1690 Rev. Cotton Mather described the rock in his book The Wonderful Works of God Commemorated:
Among the other Curiosities of New-England, one is that of a mighty Rock, on a perpendicular side whereof by a River, which at High Tide covers part of it, there are very deeply Engraved, no man alive knows How or When about half a score Lines, near Ten Foot Long, and a foot and half broad, filled with strange Characters: which would suggest as odd Thoughts about them that were here before us, as there are odd Shapes in that Elaborate Monument.[3]
During the 19th century, many popular publications and public figures mentioned the rock. The poet and critic James Russell Lowell suggested that presidential candidates' letters to newspapers should be written in its undeciphered script: "[I]f letters must be written, profitable use might be made of the Dighton rock hieroglyphic or the cuneiform script, every fresh decipherer of which is enabled to educe a different meaning."[4] Lowell made other references to the rock in his widely circulated satirical writing, and may thus have helped to popularize it.
The rock in 2015 is on display in a small museum
Hypotheses about the creation of the markings include:
…proposed in 1912 by Edmund B. Delabarre, who (after seeing Portuguese writing) believed that they then used the rock for their own inscriptions[9][10]Delabarre wrote that markings on the Dighton Rock suggest that Miguel Corte-Real reached New England. Delabarre stated that the markings were abbreviated Latin, and the message, translated into English, reads as follows: "I, Miguel Cortereal, 1511. In this place, by the will of God, I became a chief of the Indians."[11] Hunter (2017) provides copious evidence and analysis debunking the Corte-Real origin myth.[12]
In November 1952, the Miguel Corte-Real Memorial Society of New York City acquired 49+1⁄2 acres (20.0ha) of land adjacent to the rock to create a park. However, in 1951 the Massachusetts Legislature expropriated the same land for a State Park. More land was purchased. Dighton Rock State Park now has an area of 100 acres (40ha). The vicinity of Dighton Rock has been beautified and furnished with parking and picnic facilities.
Depths of inscriptions
Although Mather described these as deeply cut, a statement which has been repeated to the present day, early reports suggested that this was not exactly the case. DelaBarre wrote:
One thing is certain, that former descriptions of the depth of the incisions cannot be used as evidence for any change. The first who describes them calls them "deeply engraved" in 1690; but Cotton Mather had never seen the rock, so far as we know, and this statement of his is doubtless on a par with his other statement that the characters are on "a mighty Rock." Greenwood gives the first reliable description, in 1730. He definitely says that the "indentures are not very considerable," and his drawing and his other statements prove that he had as much difficulty in making out the real characters as has ever been experienced since then. Even on the lowest part of the face, which alone does show evident signs of much wear, Mather's draughtsman, and Greenwood, and their next followers, were even less successful in making out apparent characters than have been some later observers. Sewall in 1768 and Kendall in 1807 made definite statements to the effect that the greater part of the lines were so much effaced as to make their decipherment impossible, or wholly subject to the fancy.[13]
An exact copy of all symbols or petroglyphes by the Historical Commission of Providence, Rhode Island, published 1830Daguerrotype (mirror-reversed) image of Seth Eastman on Dighton Rock (c. 1853)
↑ Douglas Hunter: “Reconstructing the history of writing about Dighton Rock” The Place of the Stone: Dighton Rock and the erasure of America's Indigenous Past University of North Carolina Press, 2017
Douglas Hunter, The Place of Stone: Dighton Rock and the Erasure of America's Indigenous Past. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2017.
External links
Media related to Dighton Rock at Wikimedia Commons
Percival Lowell was an American businessman, author, mathematician, and astronomer who fueled speculation that there were canals on Mars, and furthered theories of a ninth planet within the Solar System. He founded the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, and formed the beginning of the effort that led to the discovery of Pluto 14 years after his death.
Berkley is a town in Bristol County, Massachusetts, United States, located south of Boston and east of Providence, Rhode Island. The population was 6,764 according to the 2020 census, making it the least populated town in the county.
A petroglyph is an image created by removing part of a rock surface by incising, picking, carving, or abrading, as a form of rock art. Outside North America, scholars often use terms such as "carving", "engraving", or other descriptions of the technique to refer to such images. Petroglyphs, estimated to be 20,000 years old are classified as protected monuments and have been added to the tentative list of UNESCO's World Heritage Sites. Petroglyphs are found worldwide, and are often associated with prehistoric peoples. The word comes from the Greek prefix petro-, from πέτρα petra meaning "stone", and γλύφω glýphō meaning "carve", and was originally coined in French as pétroglyphe.
The Los Lunas Decalogue Stone is a hoax associated with a large boulder on the side of Hidden Mountain, near Los Lunas, New Mexico, about 35 miles (56 km) south of Albuquerque, that bears a nine-line inscription carved into a flat panel. The stone is also known as the Los Lunas Mystery Stone or Commandment Rock. The stone has gained notoriety in that some claim the inscription is Pre-Columbian, and therefore proof of early Semitic contact with the Americas. Standard archeological evidence contradicts this, however.
"Westford Knight" is the name given to a pattern, variously interpreted as a carving, a natural feature, or a combination of both, located on a glacial boulder in Westford, Massachusetts in the United States.
Miguel Corte-Real was a Portuguese explorer who charted about 600 miles of the coast of Labrador. In 1502, he disappeared while on an expedition and was believed to be lost at sea.
The Calico Early Man Site is an archaeological site in an ancient Pleistocene lake located near Barstow in San Bernardino County in the central Mojave Desert of Southern California. This site is on and in late middle-Pleistocene fanglomerates known variously as the Calico Hills, the Yermo Hills, or the Yermo formation. Holocene evidence includes petroglyphs and trail segments that are probably related to outcrops of local high-quality siliceous rock.
Edmund Burke Delabarre, was a researcher and professor of psychology at Brown University. He graduated from Amherst College in 1886. He was a pioneer in the field of shape perception and on the interaction between mental processes and the involuntary movements of the body.
Selwyn Hanington Dewdney was a Canadian writer, illustrator, artist, activist and pioneer in both art therapy and pictography.
The Walam Olum, Walum Olum or Wallam Olum, usually translated as "Red Record" or "Red Score", is purportedly a historical narrative of the Lenape (Delaware) Native American tribe. The document has provoked controversy as to its authenticity since its publication in the 1830s by botanist and antiquarian Constantine Samuel Rafinesque. Ethnographic studies in the 1980s and analysis in the 1990s of Rafinesque's manuscripts have produced significant evidence that the document may be a hoax.
A number of runestones have been found in Oklahoma. All of them are of modern origin dating to the 19th century "Viking revival" or were produced by 19th-century Scandinavian settlers.
Kariong is a locality of the Central Coast region of New South Wales, Australia west of Gosford along the Central Coast Highway. It is part of the Central Coast Council local government area.
The Lenape Stone is a slate found in two pieces in Bucks County, Pennsylvania in 1872, which appears to depict Native Americans hunting a woolly mammoth. The image seems to have been carved some time after the stone was broken into two; for this and other reasons, it is generally considered an archaeological forgery.
The Bat Creek inscription is an inscribed stone tablet found by John W. Emmert on February 14, 1889. Emmert claimed to have found the tablet in Tipton Mound 3 during an excavation of Hopewell mounds in Loudon County, Tennessee. This excavation was part of a larger series of excavations that aimed to clarify the controversy regarding who is responsible for building the various mounds found in the Eastern United States.
Frederick Bligh Bond, was an English architect, illustrator, archaeologist, psychical researcher and member of the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia.
Kenneth L. "Kenny" Feder is an emeritus professor of archaeology at Central Connecticut State University and the author of several books on archaeology and criticism of pseudoarchaeology such as Frauds, Myths, and Mysteries: Science and Pseudoscience in Archaeology. His book Encyclopedia of Dubious Archaeology: From Atlantis to the Walam Olum was published in 2010. His book Ancient America: Fifty Archaeological Sites to See for Yourself was published in 2017. He is the founder and director of the Farmington River Archaeological Project.
Saymaluu-Tash is a petroglyph site and a national park in Jalal-Abad Region, Kyrgyzstan, south of Kazarman. Over 10,000 stones bear pictures—perhaps as many as 98,000 pictures in all—which are black-and-white rock paintings, making the site a globally important collection of rock art. The pictures have been pecked into the near black or grey shiny desert varnish covering many rocks. Most pictures are from the Bronze Age and show animals, humans and symbols. They may partly be seen as a sacred display of offerings of the ancient people of the lower valley.
Coso Rock Art District is a rock art site containing over 100,000 Petroglyphs by Paleo-Indians and/or Native Americans. The district is located near the towns of China Lake and Ridgecrest, California. Big and Little Petroglyph Canyons were declared a National Historic Landmark in 1964. In 2001, they were incorporated into this larger National Historic Landmark District. There are several other distinct canyons in the Coso Rock Art District besides the Big and Little Petroglyph Canyons. Also known as Little Petroglyph Canyon and Sand Tanks, Renegade Canyon is but one of several major canyons in the Coso Range, each hosting thousands of petroglyphs. The majority of the Coso Range images fall into one of six categories: bighorn sheep, entopic images, anthropomorphic or human-like figures, other animals, weapons & tools, and "medicine bag" images. Scholars have proposed a few potential interpretations of this rock art. The most prevalent of these interpretations is that they could have been used for rituals associated with hunting.
Stefan Ossowiecki was a Polish engineer who was, during his lifetime, promoted as one of Europe's best-known psychics. Two notable persons who credited his claims were pioneering French parapsychologist Gustav Geley and Nobel Prize-winning physiologist Charles Richet, who called Ossowiecki "the most positive of psychics."
The Gosford Glyphs, also known as Kariong Hieroglyphs, are a group of approximately 300 Egyptian-style hieroglyphs located in Kariong, Australia. They are found in an area known for its Aboriginal petroglyphs, between Gosford and Woy Woy, New South Wales, within the Brisbane Water National Park.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
