Strange stone structure

[Raymond]

Spoke with a local authority just a few minutes ago. I removed the original thread because the man was worried that someone may see it and visit the area and damage the site. So please don’t be too specific about the location under discussion. I wouldn’t want to be responsible for it getting wrecked after however many hundreds of years it may have been there!

He says that a New England organization believes it to be an astronomical structure. The wall is an equinoctial (pertaining to the equinox) wall; it runs due east-west, and the, as he called it, ‘‘pregnant’’ part of the wall may be a viewing platform or a platform for a visionquest.

The other part, the trough-like section, is near a spring, but I don’t recall what else he said about that, if anything.

I think he said there are 1600 sites around here as part of the Nashoba Indian Praying Village.

So I guess it’s a lot older than we’d originally suspected.

 

[Red Oak]

Just curious here..Did he believe the astro theory?(if you could tell.sounds like a quiet dude)

 

[Raymond]

I think so. I believe he also said he led a solstice hike last month to see the sun line up with some rocks on a nearby hill.

 

[Little Rickie]

This is sooooo cool.

When I was researching this I was thinking a Pagan angle since many people came to America to escape religious persecution. As I read and looked at more pictures there were a lot of reference to pre-columbus history, soltice and equinox so all this make sence. FASCINATING stuff.

 

[spider solo]

Yes, very interesting.
I was walking some property over in Derry NH...only this time I was looking at the stone walls much more carefully than ever before.

 

[cooperhill]

Similar type structures (if this is one) out in the southwest in Chaco Canyon.

Mystery of Chaco Canyon

 

[Little Rickie]

I will be looking a "stone piles" much diferently for now one. Can you imaginge a stone pile sitting there for hundreds if not thousands years and the story behind it?

I also read the Mohawk Valley are in New York is one of the richest locations for these type of structures, over a thousand. Makes you wonder who was there and what were they doing back then. Ceratinly not primitive of savages.

 

[Chip]

Interesting related article: http://s8int.com/page38.html . Can't verify their sources, but seems pretty straight forward.

One of the really sad aspects the article points out is that how the early locals, like what happened to Fort Ticonderoga, dismantled many of the ancient structures to use the stone.

 

[Red Oak]

another angle...

Is the bottom pic. connected with the pics you removed?It looks different.I was lucky enough to show your other pics to a retired old time new englandaahhh,who is a retired professor of history and a amateur stone wall mason.He dates the wall to between 1830-1870.I made notes of his 2 theories which were basically your thoughts about it being a agricultural or pastural clearing location to put the rocks or maybe a platform to load hay or something similar.He did not seem to believe it was a log loading place.He also said he has seen many similar rock piles,some which were tear drop shaped or rectangular.I am going to take the 5th on this one.It seems you and forester jake might have been on target all along.I have noticed over recent years a trend to seek "new age" explanation for a lot of mysteries around us.I will ask my buddy what he thinks of the indian question.My guess is a logger or old time land surveyor will know the answer...

 

[Raymond]

The lower picture, showing what I can only describe as an L-shaped trough, is a little deeper in the woods than the upper photo. Maybe 30 feet further along the wall from where I took the first photo, and I was facing approximately in the same direction (west in the upper photo, slightly south of west in the second). You can barely make out the round pile of rocks just right of center near the top of the second picture. A branch and a small tree are sort of pointing at it.

I’m starting to sound like the Dennis Moore sketch: You see the three trees ... the ones behind the hillock ... not the big hillock, the little hillock ...

 

[Forester Jake]

Very very cool!! Thanks for sharing the photos and information! I appreciate your concern for the preservation of the site and respect your deleting the original thread. I too closely guard the location of special stone sites. We don't have anything quite like this up here in the mountains of northern Vermont... at least that I'm not aware of... yet... I'm always on the lookout for similar astrological stone sites and structures but will be even more so now than ever. All the best!

 

[Raymond]

That NEARA website didn’t have photos of anything in Northern Vermont, but did have one in Newfane that looks familiar.

 

[nietzschescat]

There are a lot of "weird rock piles" in the Catskills and also some debate on their origins. There is an extensive field of large cairns on Spruceton Road on the trail near Diamond Notch Falls. It's hard to imagine an agricultural purpose for them and they are not just piles of rocks, but large carefully made cairns. There are some on Halcott near the falls also.

There are a lot of cellar holes and stone walls, some really beautiful. I like the stone walls a lot on the old road that goes over S.Vly.

 

[Little Rickie]

Think about this. The trees around these stones weren't even seeds when these were built. What did the landscape look like 500 to 2000 years ago?

 

[Red Oak]

What did the landscape look like 500 to 2000 years ago?

The landscape was all wooded which was very typical of a lot of Eastern north america at the time before the europeans came and deforested the land.
This neara group has pics up all over the net on mound locations,if those old pics are on public land it would be cool to see the pics again....Any 300 year or older stone wall would be in much rougher shape then the ones originally shown.There does not seem to be any doubt as to the fact there are nashoba relics around this area but that stone wall shown seems to be a simple stone wall with a mound of excess stones as to not make the wall higher.The evidence seems to point in this direction...1)closeness to previous pasture land
2)type of tree regrowth next to wall which reflects how the tree canopy evolves.3)Color of the stone wall 4)the wall follows a natural boundary line which was very typical of land plots circa 1830-1860. 5)would a farmer leave a stone wall in the middle of his land?
Never the less this thread is very cool.Thanks raymond!
personal note;I am at least 20% mapuche indian from chile,so I would love if it was indian in origin,just do not believe that wall is.

 

[DougPaul]

The landscape was all wooded which was very typical of a lot of Eastern north america at the time before the europeans came and deforested the land.

While I cannot speak for this area in particular, we should note that the pre-European-contact Indians burned large areas to kill woody growth and keep them as grasslands to increase the population of prey species.

There are also a large number of pre-European-contact archaeological sites and evidence of farming in the SW and the Inca built large cities with water distribution systems (canals).

A number of mega-fauna species, such as mastodons, became extinct--human hunting is believed to have been a factor.

Thus pre-European-contact humans had a significant impact on the landscape and ecosystems in a number of areas in the Americas.

Doug