The Utah Monolith Has an Ancient History
Gideon Avni
Haaretz
Published on 14.01.2021
Lately we were apprised of an odd phenomenon that occurred almost simultaneously in a number of places: the mysterious appearance of shiny metal pillars, monolithic in appearance (from the Greek: mono, “one”; and lithos, “stone”). These monument-like structures were placed in remote locations, difficult to access, in different corners of the globe.
The story begins in the United States. ...
This odd story went viral in the world media. The mysterious circumstances of the appearance and disappearance of the large metal pillar fired people’s imagination. What could it signify? ...
Indeed, when this phenomenon is examined from the perspective of archaeologists, the feeling is that “we’ve been here before.” The work of megalithic cultures, so called because they used huge stones to craft impressive sites, existed in various places and forms in the ancient world: from vast monuments in Europe, including Stonehenge in southern England, to graves on which were placed immense stones in the shape of a table, known as dolmens, and large standing stones across the Eurasian Steppe that reflect the spiritual world of the steppe peoples. ...
Monoliths – huge stone monuments that were generally placed across the deserts and plains, below towering mountains or on summits with commanding views – were a widespread phenomenon in the ancient world ... The questions the scholars ask focus on two areas: How did the ancients acquire the engineering knowledge necessary to quarry and transport prodigious stones weighing tens of tons? And how did these megalithic cultures spread in the world – as an invention in one place and the subsequent transmission of know-how to distant parts, or as a parallel human response in places distant from one another? ...
One of the amazing sites that changed the view of scholars about the pace of development of human technology, is Gobekli Tepe ...
The site was dated to about 11,500 years ago (Pre-Pottery Neolithic period). This was one of the most significant periods in the history of human development, when the process began of the transition from hunter-gatherer societies to societies based on agriculture. The massive stone pillars decorated with human and animal figures found at Gobekli Tepe raise questions about the extraordinary technological capabilities of the population, which enabled them to quarry and emplace the huge works, together with the question of the religious motive and idea that underlie the structures. Possible interpretations include a wish to satisfy the desires of the gods, or to create a ritual framework for a successful hunt. ...
What stands out in a global, multiple-era view of these monuments is the existence of the same conceptual underpinning in different parts of the world. There is no likelihood that the sites are the physical expression of an idea that emerged from one specific place and spread across the globe, among cultures between which there was no connection. ...
In light of this interpretation, the appearance of modern monoliths in different places can be likened to the ancient megaliths. The concept is apparently similar, stemming from the human desire to give expression to the spiritual world of the individual and the community by physical means. The obvious difference has to do with modern communication networks that transmit information across the globe in seconds. ...
Gideon Avni is the chief archaeologist of the Israel Antiquities Authority and a professor of archaeology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.