Georgia Guidestones

The Georgia Guidestones are a granite monument erected in 1980 in Elbert County, Georgia, in the United States. A set of ten guidelines is inscribed on the structure in eight modern languages and a shorter message is inscribed at the top of the structure in four ancient language scripts.

Georgia Guidestones
North view
Location in the United States
Georgia Guidestones (Georgia (U.S. state))
Coordinates34°13′55″N 82°53′40″W
LocationElbert County, Georgia, US
MaterialGranite
Height19 ft 3 in (5.87 m)
Opening dateMarch 22, 1980

The monument stands at an approximate elevation of 750 feet (230 m) above sea level, about 90 miles (140 km) east of Atlanta, 45 miles (72 km) from Athens, Georgia and 9 miles (14 km) north of the center of the city of Elberton.

One slab stands in the center, with four arranged around it. A capstone lies on top of the five slabs, which are astronomically aligned. An additional stone tablet, which is set in the ground a short distance to the west of the structure, provides some notes on the history and purpose of the guidestones. The structure is sometimes referred to as an "American Stonehenge".[1] The monument is 19 feet 3 inches (5.87 m) tall, made from six granite slabs weighing 237,746 pounds (107,840 kg) in all.[2] The anonymity of the guidestones' authors and their apparent advocacy of population control, eugenics, and internationalism have made them an object of controversy and conspiracy theories.

History

In June 1979, a man using the pseudonym R. C. Christian approached the Elberton Granite Finishing Company on behalf of "a small group of loyal Americans", and commissioned the structure. Christian explained that the stones would function as a compass, calendar, and clock, and should be capable of "withstanding catastrophic events". Joe Fendley of Elberton Granite assumed that Christian was "a nut" and attempted to discourage him by providing a quote for the commission which was several times higher than any project the company had previously taken, explaining that the guidestones would require additional tools and consultants. To Fendley's surprise, Christian accepted the quote.[2] When arranging payment, Christian said that he represented a group which had been planning the guidestones for 20 years and which wanted to remain anonymous.[2]

Christian delivered a scale model of the guidestones and ten pages of specifications.[2] The 5-acre (2-hectare)[2] land was apparently purchased by Christian on October 1, 1979,[3][4] from farm owner Wayne Mullinex.[2] Mullinex and his children were given lifetime cattle grazing rights on the guidestones site.[2]

On March 22, 1980, the monument was unveiled before an audience variously described as 100[5] or 400 people.[2] Christian later transferred ownership of the land and the guidestones to Elbert County.[2]

The stones defaced with polyurethane paint and graffiti.

In 2008, the stones were defaced with polyurethane paint and graffiti with slogans such as "Death to the new world order".[6] Wired magazine called the defacement "the first serious act of vandalism in the guidestones' history".[2]

In September 2014, an employee of the Elbert County maintenance department contacted the Federal Bureau of Investigation when the stones were vandalized with graffiti including the phrase "I Am Isis, goddess of love".[7]

Description

Inscriptions

A message consisting of a set of ten guidelines or principles is engraved on the Georgia Guidestones[8] in eight different languages, one language on each face of the four large upright stones. Moving clockwise around the structure from due north, these languages are: English, Spanish, Swahili, Hindi, Hebrew, Arabic, Traditional Chinese, and Russian.

  1. Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.
  2. Guide reproduction wisely — improving fitness and diversity.
  3. Unite humanity with a living new language.
  4. Rule passion — faith — tradition — and all things with tempered reason.
  5. Protect people and nations with fair laws and just courts.
  6. Let all nations rule internally resolving external disputes in a world court.
  7. Avoid petty laws and useless officials.
  8. Balance personal rights with social duties.
  9. Prize truth — beauty — love — seeking harmony with the infinite.
  10. Be not a cancer on the Earth — Leave room for nature — Leave room for nature.

Explanatory tablet
An explanatory tablet is set alongside the stones

A few feet to the west of the monument, an additional granite ledger has been set level with the ground. This tablet identifies the structure and the languages used on it lists various facts about the size, weight, and astronomical features of the stones, the date it was installed, and the sponsors of the project. It also refers to a time capsule buried under the tablet, but blank spaces on the stone intended for filling in the dates on which the capsule was buried and is to be opened have not been inscribed, so it is uncertain if the time capsule was ever actually put in place.

The complete text of the explanatory tablet is detailed below. The tablet is somewhat inconsistent with respect to punctuation and misspells the word "pseudonym". The original spelling, punctuation, and line breaks in the text have been preserved in the transcription which follows (letter case is not). At the top center of the tablet is written:

The Georgia Guidestones
Center cluster erected March 22, 1980

Immediately below this is the outline of a square, inside which is written:

Let these be guidestones to an Age of Reason

Around the edges of the square are written translations to four ancient languages, one per edge. Starting from the top and proceeding clockwise, they are: Babylonian (in cuneiform script), Classical Greek, Sanskrit and Ancient Egyptian (in hieroglyphs).

The guidestones' "Astronomic Features"
Undated instructions for the site's time capsule

On the left side of the tablet is the following column of text:

Astronomic Features
1. Channel through stone
indicates celestial pole
2. Horizontal slot indicates
annual travel of sun
3. Sunbeam through capstone
marks noontime throughout
the year

Author: R.C. Christian
(a pseudonyn) [sic]

Sponsors: A small group
of Americans who seek
the Age of Reason

Time Capsule
Placed six feet below this spot
On
To be opened on

The words appear as shown under the time capsule heading; no dates are engraved.

Physical data

On the right side of the tablet is the following column of text (metric conversions added):

PHYSICAL DATA

1. OVERALL HEIGHT – 19 FEET 3 INCHES [5.87 m].
2. TOTAL WEIGHT – 237,746 POUNDS [107,840 kg].
3. FOUR MAJOR STONES ARE 16 FEET,
   FOUR INCHES [4.98 m] HIGH, EACH WEIGHING
   AN AVERAGE OF 42,437 POUNDS [19,249 kg].
4. CENTER STONE IS 16 FEET, FOUR-
   INCHES [4.98 m] HIGH, WEIGHS 20,957
   POUNDS [9,506 kg].
5. CAPSTONE IS 9-FEET, 8-INCHES [2.95 m]
   LONG, 6-FEET, 6-INCHES [1.98 m] WIDE;
   1-FOOT, 7-INCHES [0.48 m] THICK. WEIGHS
   24,832 POUNDS [11,264 kg].
6. SUPPORT STONES (BASES) 7-FEET,
   4 INCHES [2.24 m] LONG 2-FEET [0.61 m] WIDE.
   1 FOOT, 4-INCHES [0.41 m] THICK, EACH
   WEIGHING AN AVERAGE OF 4,875
   POUNDS [2,211 kg].
7. SUPPORT STONE (BASE) 4-FEET,
   2½ INCHES [1.28 m] LONG, 2-FEET, 2-INCHES [0.66 m]
   WIDE, 1-FOOT, 7-INCHES [0.48 m] THICK.
   WEIGHT 2,707 POUNDS [1,228 kg].
8. 951 CUBIC FEET [26.9 m³] GRANITE.
9. GRANITE QUARRIED FROM PYRAMID
   QUARRIES LOCATED 3 MILES [5 km] WEST
   OF ELBERTON, GEORGIA.

Guidestone languages

Below the two columns of text is written the caption "GUIDESTONE LANGUAGES", with a diagram of the granite slab layout beneath it. The names of eight modern languages are inscribed along the long edges of the projecting rectangles, one per edge. Starting from due north and moving clockwise around so that the upper edge of the northeast rectangle is listed first, they are English, Spanish, Swahili, Hindi, Hebrew, Arabic, Chinese, and Russian. At the bottom center of the tablet is the following text:

Additional information available at Elberton Granite Museum & Exhibit
College Avenue
Elberton, Georgia

Astronomical features

The four outer stones are oriented to mark the limits of the 18.6 year lunar declination cycle.[9] The center column features a hole drilled at an angle from one side to the other, through which can be seen the North Star, a star whose position changes only very gradually over time. The same pillar has a slot carved through it which is aligned with the Sun's solstices and equinoxes. A ​7⁄8in (22 mm) aperture in the capstone allows a ray of sun to pass through at noon each day, shining a beam on the center stone indicating the day of the year.[2]

Interpretations

Yoko Ono said the inscribed messages are "a stirring call to rational thinking", while Wired stated that unspecified opponents have labeled them as the "Ten Commandments of the Antichrist".[2]

The guidestones have become a subject of interest for conspiracy theorists. One of them, an activist named Mark Dice, demanded that the guidestones "be smashed into a million pieces, and then the rubble used for a construction project",[10] claiming that the guidestones are of "a deep Satanic origin", and that R. C. Christian belongs to "a Luciferian secret society" related to the New World Order.[2] At the unveiling of the monument, a local minister proclaimed that he believed the monument was "for sun worshipers, for cult worship and for devil worship".[5] Conspiracy theorist Jay Weidner has said that the pseudonym of the man who commissioned the stones – "R. C. Christian" – resembles Rose Cross Christian, or Christian Rosenkreuz, the founder of the Rosicrucian Order.[2]

The most widely agreed-upon interpretation of the stones is that they describe the basic concepts required to rebuild a devastated civilization.[2] Author Brad Meltzer notes that the stones were built in 1979 at the height of the Cold War, and thus argues that they may have been intended as a message to the possible survivors of a nuclear World War III. The engraved suggestion to keep humanity's population below 500 million could have been made under the assumption that war had already reduced humanity below this number.[11]

The guidestones were briefly shown and discussed in the documentary films Sherman's March (1986) and Endgame: Blueprint for Global Enslavement (2007), and were featured extensively in a 2012 episode of Mysteries at the Museum, a "Monumental Mysteries Special" featuring Don Wildman.[12]

Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) responded to a 2018 Facebook post endorsing a number of conspiracy theories, including one about the guidestones. Taylor Greene wrote, “That is all true. By the way, I’ve seen the Georgia guide stones.”[13]

References
  1. "America Unhenged". RoadsideAmerica.com.
  2. Sullivan, Randall (2009-04-20). "American Stonehenge: Monumental Instructions for the Post-Apocalypse". Wired. 17 (5).
  3. "Land parcel information". Archived from the original on 2008-10-17. Retrieved 2008-08-07.
  4. "Parcel map". Archived from the original on 2009-09-07. Retrieved 2008-08-07.
  5. Moran, Mark McGuire; Sceurman, Mark (2004). Weird U.S.. Barnes & Noble. p. 193. ISBN 0-7607-5043-2.
  6. "Defacement of the Guidestones". Retrieved 2009-05-09 – via Photobucket.
  7. Ford, Wayne (2014-09-08). "Vandals deface mysterious Georgia Guidestones in Elbert County". Online Athens. Retrieved 2014-10-03.
  8. Eveleth, Rose (2013-09-10). "Nobody Knows How to Interpret This Doomsday Stonehenge in Georgia". Smithsonian. Retrieved 9 October 2017.
  9. "Georgia Guidestones". Northeast Georgia Mountains Travel Association. Archived from the original on January 12, 2009. The four large upright blocks pointing outward are oriented to the limits of the migration of the moon during the course of the year.CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
  10. Gary Jones (2005-05-18). "The Georgia Guidestones: Tourist Attraction or Cult Message?". The Elberton Star. Archived from the original on 2012-04-21.
  11. "Apocalypse in Georgia". Brad Meltzer's Decoded, episode 110 (February 3, 2011).
  12. Monumental Mysteries. Travelchannel.com (2012-07-13). Retrieved on 2020-11-28.
  13. Hananoki, Eric (January 21, 2021). "On Facebook in 2018, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene endorsed conspiracy theories that 9/11 was an inside job and that Sandy Hook was staged". Media Matters for America. Retrieved January 21, 2021. The second commenter also said there are messages in the Georgia Guidestones and claimed that certain people “are all about killing off 6.8 Billion of the 7.3 billion people on Earth.”

Further reading
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