You know, one time the scientists came to the Hopis and they said, "We want to take a piece of the stone tablets." They said, "We want to take the stone tablets to a scientific laboratory to determine how old they are. The Hopis said, "We know how old they are. "Well the scientists said, "We want to confirm it. "So the Hopis let them take a little piece, and they tested it by the carbon dating method. They found these tablets were at least 10,000 years old, maybe 50,000. So when I say, "Thousands of years ago, there were Native people that spoke of these things," that's exactly what I mean. They told their children and thousands of years ago, their children grew up and told their children, and then their children grew up and told their children. And they spoke about the people that will live in this time.

The following extraordinary Hopi prophecy was first published in a mimeographed manuscript that circulated among several Methodist and Presbyterian churches in 1959. Some of the prophecies were published in 1963 by Frank Waters in The Book of the Hopi. The account begins by describing how, while driving along a desert highway one hot day in the summer of 1958, a minister named David Young stopped to offer a ride to an Indian elder, who accepted with a nod. After riding in silence for several minutes, the Indian said: