Updated: December 2, 2020 7:42:03 am
Last month, during a routine bighorn sheep inspection in Utah’s Red Rock Country, the U.S. state wildlife agency discovered a three-sided animal 10-12 feet tall. metal monolith at the base of a canyon. When the helicopter team came down to investigate it, they found there was no indication of how or when it appeared there or who had installed it so firmly on the canyon’s rocky floor.
In an official statement issued on November 23, the Utah Department of Public Safety announced the discovery and speculated that it was likely an art installation by a “new wave artist” or a joke by a “2001 fan: Space Odyssey “. The reference is to Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 science fiction film, co-written by Arthur C Clarke, in which a huge black monolith of extraterrestrial origin appears among a hominid tribe and influences the course of human evolution.
The Utah office of the Federal Bureau of Land Management announced that the Red Rock Country monolith had been removed “by an unknown party” on November 27, leaving rocks to mark where it stood.
Then, on November 30, there were reports of a similar monolith seen on the Batca Doamnei hill in Romania. The surface of the Romanian monolith, however, is covered in looping scribbles, unlike the Utah monolith. 📣 Follow Express explained on Telegram
Popular theories:
Extraterrestrial origins: The most popular theory, perhaps only half-jokingly being discussed, is that these monoliths, like the mysterious object in Kubrick’s movie, are artifacts left on earth by an alien race.
Art: Much more credible is the theory that these objects are works of art, created and installed in the vein of the Land Art movement that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s. The movement sought to reject the commodification of art using materials “from the land” , such as rocks, sand, water, to carry out artistic interventions in a landscape. These landscapes were generally in remote and inaccessible places. The most famous example of land art is Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty (1970), a gigantic sculpture created from rocks and salt crystals in Utah’s Great Salt Lake. In fact, it is widely speculated that the Utah monolith is the work of John McCraken, an acclaimed minimalist sci-fi sculptor. According to a New York Times report, the David Zwirner Gallery, a contemporary art gallery in the US representing McCracken’s heritage, believes it to be an authentic McCraken installed by the artist himself prior to his death in 2011. or an imitation made in homage to the late sculptor by a fan. However, based on photos shared by Utah authorities, many people have pointed out that the monolith lacks the delicacy expected of an artist, so it is highly likely that it was created as a joke.
Joke or deception: Another theory that has found much support is that it is a hoax along the lines of the crop circles that began to appear mysteriously in the fields of Wiltshire, England in the 1970s and that gained international notoriety as signs of extraterrestrial activity. on earth. While scientists searched for explanations in wind patterns for the geometric designs that would suddenly appear in the fields, conspiracy theorists sought to decode the patterns of the circles to extract what they believed to be extraterrestrial communications. These circles soon became popular tropes in movies and television shows about extraterrestrial life forms, such as Signs from M Night Shyamalan (2002) and The X-Files (1993-2002). However, in 1991, two Englishmen, David Chorley and Doug Bower, came forward to claim responsibility for the crop circles, saying they had created them as a “joke”, using rope and a wooden board.
Until now, of course, no one had come forward to claim responsibility for the monoliths in Utah and Romania.
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