Strange Rock Carving

reply to post by nenothtu


Thank you for helping continue my education.

Your photos inspired quite a bit of speculation on my part.

When I see the way that carving is situated in that dry branch, my gut tells me it can't be merely decorative. It had to have a function I can't fathom.

Makes me wish I'd listened even closer when Papa explained to us boys how to do things for yourself.

Here are the areas on the right of the picture that were indicated to be mortar, at the full resolution of the original pictures, showing that those areas are leaves:

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/9395f32f6058.jpg[/atsimg]
central, near the 'stem'

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/20549327c85a.jpg[/atsimg]
upper right

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/99e0e8a20645.jpg[/atsimg]
middle right

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/37d089f07961.jpg[/atsimg]
lower right

No, there isn't any mortar or mortar traces on it, just some silt (not even chunks, just a thin layer in places) that has been deposited there from the creek bed as the water flowed, and bits of decaying leaves.

The rock is neither soft nor crumbly, it's as hard as, well, a rock.


[edit on 2010/4/1 by nenothtu]

reply to post by MsAmen


a backassward spit of a town ?

Wow

Don't mean be rude, but

Couldn't your former neighors be visiting this thread?

If you're a native, spare me the self loathing.

I am sorry but couldn't this be a cleverly disguised mould sitting out to weather a few years?


edit after being corrected

[edit on 1-4-2010 by all2human]

all2human,

Pg. 11

reply to post by nenothtu


I want that camera! Hahaha! Can you show me the area in full resolution where I had marked it to be mortar "outline"? I believe it was the middle left.

From those pics you just posted, yes sir, lots of silt with impregnated leaves. What a gem of a find, atleast for me. Extremely cool.

reply to post by nenothtu
My post on the Shawnee will have to wait as the rocks composition is in question. I am nearly convinced by further description of the rock via pics and your observations that it is Phyllite. Phyllites solidity is similar to marble.... how to put this. It’s really more of a question to narrow down our rock options. You’re living in what was my world yet words escape me ahh!!! Marble is the closet I can come at the moment in describing texture ( not polished balls people, sorry I just had to clarify ) similar to granite only more likely to fracture soft but not smooth, I am attempting to date the process of Iron oxide (whether or not the rock is Phyllite, the pics clearly portray this element)I hope to have this info within the hour(We'll see. Geology is evidently not a high priority interest to the World Wide Web.)

Originally posted by okbmd
reply to post by nenothtu

 

Hey nenothtu, have you 'brushed' this thing to clean it up any, you know, with like a good mortar brush or something ?

No, I just sort of lightly wiped it with my hand, to brush off most of the sticks and leaf litter, but not hard enough to disturb the moss.

reply to post by 23refugee
LOL not a native more of a passer through due to family. That pass took 8 years but trust that my view of Pburg is shared.If youll excuse me Im on an obsessive quest to date iron oxide. I hope to sleep tonight. Can anyone here assist? Blue, Black, Green, Red, Yellow.

reply to post by nenothtu
csmres.jmu.edu... These are the most likely candidates as they are indigenous to the region ( I apologize to any moderators if I have not posted the link incorrectly)



[edit on 1-4-2010 by MsAmen]

Originally posted by Stockburn
reply to post by nenothtu

 

I want that camera! Hahaha! Can you show me the area in full resolution where I had marked it to be mortar "outline"? I believe it was the middle left.

From those pics you just posted, yes sir, lots of silt with impregnated leaves. What a gem of a find, atleast for me. Extremely cool.

It's a 12.1 megapixel Canon PowerShot A1100IS, maybe 150 bucks at your friendly local Wally World.

The pictures at full resolution are 3000x4000 pixels. I tried to crop that area out for you, but it came out to be 1280x around 1300 pixels, pretty big to drop on this page. I reckon I can either try to embed it here, or just e-mail the whole full-res image to you, as you prefer.

reply to post by MsAmen


I know what you mean.

I'm a native with roots that go way back. It does define who I am. Even though I chose to leave that culture years ago, I can't help but defend it.

Even when I travel in the most politically correct circles,as soon as I speak I find it's still okay to crack an incest joke.

OK OK I returned hoping to find awnsers but I just cant help it "West Virginia... Mountain Momma... Take me home.... Country Roads" ( RIP John Denver)

Im no Einstein though I do delve into mathematical theory this looks like French to me and its all I’ve encountered ( Feo/Fed ) . Any suggestions as to where I might locate an interpreter?????? I’ll keep digging for English

I given up attempting to post the link HA HA Success

Expert anywhere?



[edit on 1-4-2010 by MsAmen]

reply to post by nenothtu


"... but stone was especially venerated because it was here first. It was called Inyan... Inyan was wise; Inyan was revered ; Inyan was the father of all .

Inyan was imbued with such power that people would go to the stone for comfort ,and pray to the sacred stone to be healed , supplicate it for favors , and consecrate it with symbols encoded with meaning .

They would either carve or paint images onto the stone , or carve and then fill them with red or black pigment .

The imagery included birds , bird tracks ... Other markings included geometric forms such as circles , concentric circles , cross-in-circles , squares , lines , the pit-and-groove , and cup marks .

Marking Stone , Land , Body , and Spirit ... by Carol Diaz-Granados

reply to post by MsAmen


I looked those over, and it's probably phyllite, as you say. It doesn't have the long fracture marks apparent in the specimen on that page (look a lot like scratches in the stone to me), and the fracture surfaces in the carved areas are irregular, dare I say fractal, but the 'grain' of the stone looks pretty similar. The color is slightly more bluish than that specimen, color maybe a cross between the slate on that page and the phyllite, but since it's metamorphic, I suppose it could be at any stage between the two in the process of metamorphisis. I don't reckon any particular specimen has to hit the same particular stop-notch as all the others, but I'm no geologist, so I'm just guessing about that.

I still have relatives in Pburg. Okay, I have 'A' relative in Pburg. This rock is somewhere between there and Bulltown.

I live in NC now, and I agree, the hillbilly jokes can be onerous. I've found the best way to handle them, for me, is to make the tellers look like idiots, while maintaining my own doofus appearance. After all, if a doofus hillbilly such as myself can think rings around them, what does that say about their own mentality?

After a while, they figure out to ease up. Crushing the human spirit can be a beautiful thing, if they jump you first.

reply to post by nenothtu


Sure didn't mean to be rude on your thread.

I just can't type out my good ol' boy sarcasm delivered in my Gomer Pyle voice.

Beg Pardon.

reply to post by 23refugee


Dem hills ll stick to ya, like it or love it.

Originally posted by MsAmen
www.sciencedirect.com... canchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1277252926&_rerunOrigin=google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=4cc7114d8554ef5156fbefd6d0b81a72I ’m no Einstein though I do delve into mathematical theory this looks like French to me and its all I’ve encountered ( Feo/Fed ) . Any suggestions as to where I might locate an interpreter?????? I’ll keep digging for English

[edit on 1-4-2010 by MsAmen]

[edit on 1-4-2010 by MsAmen]

The abstract:

"Dating of fluvial deposits is essential for a more quantitative understanding of landscape evolution and soil development in floodplain environments."

= knowing the age of flood deposited dirt and stuff is needful in order to understand how landscapes and the soils that make them up develop in river bottoms.

"We collected soil layers in defined depth intervals down to 60 cm along a substrate age gradient in a floodplain of the Danube River near Vienna, Austria."

= we grubbed up dirt layers every few centimeters in a spacing we decided on beforehand down to 60 cm along an age graduation under the surface of the river bottom of the Danube River in Vienna Austria.

[EDIT: Since I don't know who all will be reading this, I have to explain that a "river bottom" is not what's under the river bed, it's the flat areas close to the river where erosion materials are deposited as mud by floods, which become dirt when they dry out. "Bottom land" is good to grow stuff in. - neno]

'Depth profiles of fallout 137Cs were used to assess short-term sedimentation, and optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating was used to attribute sediment deposits to time periods between the early last millennium BC and the 18th century AD."

= We then figured out the age of the recent (probably yearly? - neno) sedimantation layers, and dated the older dirt with OSL and assigned each layer to a time somewhere in a range of 2500 - 3000 years before right now.

"In the studied soils, the ratio of oxalate- to dithionite-extractable iron (Feo/Fed), which indicates the degree of iron oxide crystallinity, progressively decreased from ratios greater than 0.5 to values less than 0.2 with increasing soil age and proved to be a reliable indicator of soil maturity."

= The Feo/Fed iron ratios, which showed how far the iron had crystallized, got smaller ( from something over 0.5 to something less than 0.2) as the dirt got older, and was confirmed to reliably date the soil.

You mean translate like that?

They go on to say that this allowed them to date dirt that didn't have independently dateable artifacts in it, and they tested that out to make sure it worlke by dating some dirt known by other means to date to the La Tene Celtic period.

[edit on 2010/4/1 by nenothtu]

Originally posted by 23refugee
reply to post by nenothtu

 

Sure didn't mean to be rude on your thread.

I just can't type out my good ol' boy sarcasm delivered in my Gomer Pyle voice.

Beg Pardon.

Huh? Did someone say you'd been rude? Or did My commentary lose something in the translation? Nah, I ain't mad about nothing. It's pretty hard to offend me, even on purpose - much harder to do it by accident.