“What do you make
of these stones at this gateway, Dr. Possum?” said
Sherlock Stones. “Which
draws your eye first?”
“Well it’s anchored
by boulders on either side. Colonial farmers did that to keep the wall from
falling apart at a gateway, they say,” answered his friend and Rocket Surgeon, Dr. John Possum.
“So they say, Possum, so 'They' say,”
Stones said. “There’s also another repeat of the pattern we’ve seen in other
places – observe, Possum, don’t just see...”
“Why there’s
those ‘diamonds’ again!” Possum exclaimed. “One on each side, approximately the
same distance away from the boulders.” Stones and Possum had spent several days
travelling about this town and a few neighboring towns, making observations of
similar gateways and certain stonewalls that ended in boulders. “Technically, I
suppose you could call the shape a rhombus, as they are designated in the Geometry
branch of Mathematics,” Possum added.
“Only if all sides
are exactly equal, my dear Possum,” Stones replied. “Without careful
measurement, we don’t know that - they may well be ‘rhomboidal,’ yet each not a
true rhombus.”
“So now, step
closer to the one that actually caught my eye first, Possum,” said Stones
moving to the left of the gateway. “Note well, my friend, that we have seen
that many of these – call them ‘end stones” for convenience sake – are
triangular in shape. Perhaps "Beginning Stones" may be the better term, as I will soon elaborate on. I find the white band of stone interesting.”
“Interesting
indeed,” said the Doctor. “It looks as if some natural process that shaped the
boulder has resulted in something that trigger’s one’s mind to imagine that there
is an eye on this boulder! It’s a phenomena known as Pareidolia, when the mind
perceives a familiar pattern of something where none actually exists. Quite
common, in fact. Clouds in the sky that ‘look like something’ - and all those
sightings of religious figures in water stains or pieces of burnt toast. In the
field of psychology, it is sometimes termed Pareidoliatic apophenia, or just
plain old apophenia - the human tendency to perceive meaningful patterns within
random data.”
“I’ve asked a
geologist friend, interested in Mimetoliths, to take a look at this boulder,”
Stones replied.
“Eh?” Possum
pondered a second. “Stones that “mimic” objects, perhaps? Sounds like the Greek
mimetes - an imitator - combined with
lithos – a stone of some sort.”
“Very good,
Possum! There’s hope for you yet! In most cases these stones are purely
accidental cases of the seeming playfulness of Mother Nature. In some
instances, on certain stones, however, microscopic examination reveals that the
human hand has enhanced the natural. This particular stone is lichen free for
the most part, unlike most that we have observed. It is also a very hard type
of stone that has resisted the weather much more than others. I suggest that
this stone may be more like a “sculpture” than a natural and unintentional
similarity to a snake.”
“Good Heavens,
Stones! That’s quite a leap – a simple boulder to stone snake!” Possum paused
to think a moment before asking, “You do recall that we are standing at a
gateway to the property originally owned by the first Puritan minister in this
town? What the Devil is a stone symbol of the Devil doing on such a property?
Granted that the first fences of the times were easily constructed wooden rail
fences, but surely the descendants of a minister or the farm hands they
employed would not be making monuments of the Serpent who urged Eve to eat the
apple in the Garden of Eden.”
Stones was on
bended knees now, looking closely at the two depressions in the stone slightly
below and slightly behind the perceived “eye” of the perceived snake.
“Considering how this stone does, as well as does not, resemble an actual snake,
these depressions may resemble actual features of the head of a pit viper.
Snakes have no visible ear, so they don't hear sounds as we do, but it's not
quite right to say that snakes are deaf. They have vestiges of the apparatus
for hearing inside their heads, and that setup is attached to their jaw bones,
so they feel vibrations very well and may hear low-frequency airborne sounds.
This uppermost depression may represent that spot.”
“While the other
may resemble the pit that gives the “pit vipers” a common name,” said Possum,
nodding. “So we are looking at not only a stone snake, but a venomous stone
snake at that!”
“Perhaps, Possum,
perhaps.” Stones stood back up. “I noted similar such marks on other similar
boulders, albeit covered in lichen. The number of instances implies a pattern, a
repeated one at that, rather than mere coincidence. Consider the Indigenous
stonework one finds in Mexico and southward, down into South America. A Great
Feathered Serpent occurs in many different kinds of stonework, carved into softer
stone, but a snake-like being none-the-less.”
“Yes, that’s
true,” Possum said, “And there are many places around the world where this
snake business enters into myths and legends, spiritualties and religions, artwork in other media and,
yes, architecture too. Shared by humans world-wide, you could say, this snake
fascination.”
Stones was looking
closely now at the “eye.”
Possum did as
well, said “These could be several events recorded in stone, so to speak, as
the boulder was shaped by the glacier, moved along the ice, tumbled out of it, stuck by other stones, eventually deposited nearby.”
“True, Possum,
true,” Stones said. “But recall that not too very far from here is the site of
one of the state’s oldest archaeological discoveries. There were people here
much farther back in time than our good minister ever imagined. We stand at a
place considered a virgin wilderness by those Puritans, that some believe was
actually more of a widowed Cultural Landscape, created and tended by the use of
fire for countless generations of the Indigenous Peoples we call Native
Americans – and Indians because Columbus believed he was in India. The Puritans
claimed that Indians enclosed no land, but the famous dissenter Roger Williams
made some statements that recalled that Indian Sachems knew the “bounds” of their
lands, especially when using fire in their hunting practices. Williams never
mentions stones as “bounds,” but I know of nothing that is naturally more
fire-proof than stone to ensure that fire does not spread further into anyone
else’s bounds – or burn up all the resources within one’s own bounds, like a
hearth inside a wigwam or long house. In the last thirty years, much has been
discovered about this practice of burning by Indigenous People the world over,
the reasons for it going well beyond the hunting aspect. Those Puritans, by the
way, were quick to define what a legal fence was just after the argument was presented by the founder of Providence Rhode Island, how high in particular, allowing the claiming of vacant land and
setting the precedent for legally establishing ownership with the simple act of building of wooden rail fences. A closer
look at some of these stone walls or stone fences may be necessary to establish
whether or not what those Puritans were saying was actually true – placement,
stacking techniques and Indigenous Iconography. The sheer number of these walls
of stone alone perhaps suggests that they pre-date a Golden Age of Stone Wall
Building that lasted roughly 100 years." Sherlock Stones paused a second or two before saying, "I wonder what a soil scientist, someone familiar with the dating process known as OSL or Optically Stimulated Luminescence, could
tell me about the ground beneath this stacked stone feature? Something that might contradict what these Puritans claimed that is the basis of the belief that Indigenous Peoples of New England were not intelligent or motivated enough to stack stones like these?”
“Oh Stones!” Dr.
Possum exclaimed. “Next you’ll be telling me that these Puritans weren’t 100%
correct with all their information about witches!”
Sherlock Stones
didn’t answer, although he smiled. He was already walking toward the boulder on
the opposite side of the gateway...
