Ok, now that I finally have my posts back. 10 is NOT enough! First off, 10 yrs ago Gojira & I started writing a fiction novel regarding ancient history, including the legend of Atlantis, phoenicians, Sumarian's etc, so we did A LOT of ancient civilization research. Including this area.
I don't know if the stone is a hoax or not, but just to share some interesting quick facts about a few things.
Sante Fe is the oldest U.S state capital. It was established in 1610. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Fe,_New_Mexico
There is evidence of people inhabiting this region since 2900 b.c. Chaco Canyon is a major central Native American ruins that is well known for its ancient observatory. So they watched the stars http://www.exploratorium.edu/chaco/HTML/canyon.html
The Rio Grande river was a major trade route. Even as late as the 1800's there are records of them having the large paddle boats on it. There is also the Salt Mission Trail: http://www.newmexico.org/salt-missions-trail/ I happen to live 5 miles from the Quarai Mission. But this was a major trade for the Native Americans and the Spanish.
Below is a picture of my personal finds on our property when we were building our house. They were found approx. 8 inches deep beside a circular rock foundation that was littered with pottery shards.
The surveyer/engineer that had to come and do our survey was the son of an archeology professor from the University of New Mexico, [ which he helped on many digs and did this as a serious hobby] I showed these 'Dart points' to, told me that the one on the left is the newer one. it is black obsidian and is fairly new at only 500-1200 years old. The one on the right he said was interesting, because of the material it is made from [I don't remember what he called it] but he said that one dates from 3500-5000 yrs ago.
With that in mind...
Hoax? Then it is even more amazing and miraculous because then that means that someone from PRE-Computers time knew the following:
"But there are those who think that a context does exist for the stone. James Tabor , chair of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, says that the archeological context is to be found at the top of the mountain, where there are the remains of dwellings and more Hebrew writings. The organization of the dwellings on the mountaintop plateau is reminiscent of Masada. But even more convincing to Tabor is the star map engraved on one of the stones that records a solar eclipse dated to Sept. 15, 107 BCE. That was the date of Rosh Hashanah of that year. All this adds up to a context compelling enough to rule out the possibility of it being a hoax , Tabor explained to me in a phone interview in February."
So think about this: Whomever carved those rocks had to have known about that solar eclipse and the position of the stars & zodiac constellations on 9/15/107 bce.
I correct the dates on our earlier post that the Boy Scouts cleaned the rocks in the 20/30's. It was actually the 50's. But still they were covered with lichens and the writing was inlegible. Lichens in this part of the Southwest are estimated to grow at approx. 1 millimeter per year! So do the math. A 6 ft rock covered by lichens in just a few decades? It would have taken longer than that to cover the carvings.
Jgnat: The tetragrammaton was not the Hebrew one we all recognize,
"The Hebrew letters are named Yod-Heh-Waw-Heh: ????; note that Hebrew is written from right to left, rather than left to right as in English. In English it is written as YHWH, YHVH, or JHVH depending on the transliteration convention that is used. The Tetragrammaton was written in contrasting Paleo-Hebrew characters in some of the oldest surviving square Aramaic Hebrew texts, and it is speculated that it was, even at that period, read as Adonai, "My Lord", when encountered."
The point to all of this? It could reasonably not be out of the realm of POSSIBILITY. That is all I am saying.
