| Show 94 10 14 0 M 0 0 K 01 R s V ma 11 A R ia AW mav 1110 A 00 U s N A 50 e N arx X 4 P 45 A V jc by ly JOHN KINSON SHERMAN HAT Is it who made it what floes does it say it Is a carved chunk of granite just dug up on the western wester xi edge of rocky MoRn mountain tain national park in colo rado a sort of oc rock image mage n I 1 the slightest idea myself noe ot surprising but n neither either does anyone anyon else apparently and that Is tog pg consi considering dekIng the export expert knowledge of tho the men who frankly admit that they them dont know and cant cadt aven guess i but it Is evident that this strange chunk of granite cannot bo dismissed with a shrug and a smile P for or hero here Is what J allard jeancon curator ot of tho the colorado nistor historical leal and natural history society eo cloty and former special arclie for tho the bureau of american anthology of tile smithsonian institution atit ution says about it bif if this stone can be proven genuine it Is the biggest find in all anthropological research and antedates anything on the american continent going to establish the remote antiquity of man I 1 have never nevar seen such remarkable outlines of dino baura and mastodon Is it genuine aye theres the rub the first question I 1 ask and you ask end and everyone asks genuine it Is in in a sense beyond a doubt that Is to sit y W I 1 U chalmers Oh almors who lives on willow low creek in the grand lake district of colorado was enlarging the irrigation reservoir on his homestead A man with a pick was breaking ground about six feet below the surface his pick struck this chunk of granite the chunk was unearthed naturally mr chalmers Oh almers was interested he spread tho news I 1 the tourist and publicity bureau of tho the denver civic and commercial as got the details photographed mr chalmers Chol mora and his hie carved chunk of bf granite and sent out the story with pictures good chance for publicity I 1 but the fact that the denver tourist bureau sponsors tho the story is pretty much proof positive that the finding of the stono itono la Is as told here you see this tourist business Is on an important matter in denver i which proudly claims to be th the e gateway to the national parks and national monuments and national forests of the scenic west the bureaus publicity work Is IB high class the scenery of the scenic west Is easy to look at and attracts millions of visitors each year moreover colorado Is well fixed antho in the matter of antiquities with its world famous relies relics of the prehistoric cliff dwellers in mesa verde national pork park so the bureau doe fint have to do any faking in fast fact harry y N burhans the live wire executive secretary detary of the bureau would k ably lose his fits job it lie he di did dany any so its safa to soy say that mr clial chal mere did dig up by accident this identical chunk it 0 granite on his homestead near grand lake now as to the stone the photo graphs yo reproduced produced herewith give a very fair idea of it hero here ore are some details tile the stone Is fourteen fourte Qu inches high nine inches across the tablet and about twelve inches through to the back it weighs 00 pounds it is granite of a bluish tint tim and is about as hard as ir teel aw W in effect tile tho stone la Is the imago image of a n sitting man who holds in f front of him with hands bands that have buts but three fingers a tablet ins inscribed with un known characters one picture shows the representation above the arm find and leg of the man holding the tablet of a huge land reptile some borne of the experts say it la is a ea a vegetable eating dinosaur another picture shows a different kind of dinosaur this tho the experts say Is a carnivorous dinosaur beneath it Is it a carving of a mastodon ns as anyone can see As to the symbols symbols or hieroglyphics carved on the tablet they are undecipherable to date the experts say they are not anything known to archo arche what anro the relative periods in the earths making of man mastodon and dinosaur well hero ore are the principal divisions of geologic time cenozoic recent life ent em its duration Is from to years according to various estimates this era Is divided into two periods as follows quaternary period divided into recent and pleistocene great ice age epochs this to Is the ago of man and of animals and plants of modern types tertiary period this Is the age of mammals of the possible first appearance bearance pe arance aranco of man and of the rise and development of the highest order of plants the next erit cm la Is the moso intermediate terme ter mediate diato life with a duration variously estimated at from to years it Is divided into three periods cretaceous jurassic and triassic this era la Is the age of reptiles of the rise and culmination of huge land reptiles dinosaurs of great flying reptiles of birds and mammals of palms and hardwood trees and of coal according to these divisions of geologic time which are according to the standard table accepted by ceolo fists it looks as if the dinosaurs were pretty much extinct before man put in an appearance find and that the earliest man and tile the mastodon may have been contemporaneous that being the case tho prehistoric roan man who carved this chunk of granite may have drawn the mastodon from life but where did he get ge models for his two very lifelike dinosaurs this question however amount to a great deal for every day in every way roan man Is apparently getting older and older from a geological viewpoint time tillie was when tho the cro magnon man of the french cavo cave WEIS considered tho the oldest human exhibit but he dates back only about years yeam the neanderthal man found in prussia was perhaps 1 years oll old then the scientists found 16 14 tava java tho skull of an erect man kanap alq pithecanthropus er or ectus reckoned to be about years old and ana now dr J G wolf a canadian anthropologist has just found in pat agonia a fossilized skull of which the fossilization Is of sandstone of the tertiary period of the cono cenozoic zole era dr franz boas anthropologist at columbia university says that this skull if authentic will bo be much older possibly by years than that of the missing link of java he declares clars that it if it definitely establishes that man existed in the tertiary period it will upset all accepted scientific views concerning the american continents and the antiquity of man this discovery he says may prove that man originated in the western hemisphere As between colorado and patagonia every good american will rally to the support of colorado moreover the colorado stone was dug up in a spot that once was waa just tho the pet stamping ground for dinosaurs and such auch like you see before the colorado rose up at about the end of the cretaceous period and the beginning of the tertiary period colorado the country to the north and south was covered by a great inland sea and swampy plains plaids hero here lived mariada myriads of tile the grotesque monsters of the age of reptiles the largest of these monsters were plant eaters and some of them were 85 feet long and weighed 20 tons some of their carnivorous enemies were nearly its as large many of these monsters got mired and we now find their petrified bones all tile the way from new mexico to canada so bo if the carver of tile the colorado for far enough lie he cor had every opportunity to make hla his studies from life and it Is sure that the carvings agree perfectly with the restorations of these monsters mado made from a study of their fossilized skeletons by the museum experts A glance at the map given herewith shows grand lake aln in its relation to rocky mountain national park the village of grand lake Is the western entrance to rocky mountain national park grand lake lies lie a at an elevation of feet and wits WAS dug out by glacial action the tb continental dl DI vide runs diagonally through t the be nat na lional park the grand lake inko grand lake inko region Is full of mo moraines moral raines neg deposited by gla clora working on the west side of the divide altogether it must be conceded that the sculptor whoever ho he was and whenever nevar ho he did his bis work Is an artist his dinosaurs and mastodon are ard ills hla three fingered man stirs the tha imagination his hieroglyphics ore are apparently unia unique u 0 but we end where we began what la Is it itt who made ande ita U what does it say |
