Stone Serpent above the Old Cornfields (CT)

 Along the Old Indian Road

    The sun hit the "stone wall" just right, as Roberta and I were walking back to the van after we walked around the cornfield on the Minortown Road. The impression, from this far away is that of a Great Guardian Snake, as big around as a tree, basking in the sun below a hilltop, the other side of the road. It's a very old road, the one that led from the place where the Sachem Pomperaug's Village once stood to the place where the Sachem Nonnewaug's Wigwams were located when Captain John Minor and a group of settler colonists left Stratford CT arrived in 1673. It's also known as the CT Path - one of them anyway. Started as a game trail for mastodons and other megafauna, the sign downtown says.

      My wife had also timed the walk so that we'd see my granddaughters school bus pass by - look closely and I think I could see her waving back: 

There's a stone retaining wall in view there too. There's a lack of stone walls here - until you get out of the old plow zone and moss covered rows of stones snake off into the tangle of unmanaged "wilderness" along the River.  One of these days, I tell myself, I just might take a closer look...

And no, I haven't taken a closer look just yet, even if I've driven by here about a million times, asleep at the wheel, so to speak, snoozing again on Turtle Island. 

An overlay of the Snake from a distance, eyes, deer horns, and "Jewel" added to the image:

Google Earth magic shows the Stone Snake fairly well:

(The zigzags are made from old telephone poles!)

LiDar:

Around 4:20 pm on 4/20/2023:

Link to 2024:

https://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2024/06/2-floodplain-cornfields-along-2-rivers.html

Killingworth Facial Recognition Test

 Apparently, Ezra Stiles didn't collect this (probable) God Stone

An interesting row of stacked stones I once walked along in May 2016.

I just happened to look back at the photos - and then looked back at them again,

and now I'm doing it again, looking for faces in the stones.

At the time this one caught my eye, as they say,

but I wasn't sure quite why.

It seemed to be placed a bit differently than a Yankee Farmer might do,

Hardly "two over one and one over two:"

This stone:

Now, I'll tell you,

I think it's plain as the face on my nose,

It's quite similar in some ways to this one:

Just as in the

Pictograph from James Mooney, Indigenous ceramic decorations, and a stone or two,

I'm going to say that the Anthropomorphic Stone is singing:

The one at Nonnewaug was made

Using Dutch or English steel tools,

Acquired in trade perhaps,

While the Killingworth "Godstone" or Effigy

May have been pecked into the stone long before

1700 or 1620,

Weathered so much it's almost impossible to tell...

I recall that this dark colored stone caught my eye that day.

I remember thinking it might be two stones from a distance,

Looking down the row of stones:

Imagine my surprise!

Seemed like two of us were laughing:

Note the nice flat stone behind it.

A little grinding slick or something else?

Maybe nothing at all,

After all, they're "just tossed stones" from field clearing...

This may or may not be a Turtle by intention:

This may or may not be meant to be a Deer head Effigy,

here in the distance:

No, not this stone:

This stone:

This may or may not be a snake the size of the Great Serpent:

It's an interesting place, I tell you...

https://www.flickr.com/photos/34580529@N04/albums/72157668219809815

Mr. Quinn the Skeptic asks:

If pareidolia is the act of seeing significant patterns where they don't exist, is there a term for failing to see significant patterns where they do exist?

Mr. Denver, also a skeptic by profession apparently, replies:

Seriously, the IQ tests I've seen have an awful lot of pattern-finding exercises. So by that measure, the less you can find them, the lower IQ you have...

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=103428

The P-word

 

   "If pareidolia is the act of seeing significant patterns where they don't exist, is there a term for failing to see significant patterns where they do exist? I mean, other than things like obliviousness, unawareness, cluelessness, etc?"

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=103428

Outcrop Serpent Head Variation (SE CT)

   I was looking for post for Kelly Parsons, one that showed another Snake Effigy with a head that was part of an outcrop in southeastern CT, a variation on just how many ways there are to "make a stone snake." 

Kelly's photo:

   I found it and did a double take. Suddenly, as plain as the face on my nose, there were three Manitou Stones of different sizes, right by that snake head. And I'll have to remember to send Norman Muller an email - it's a repeated feature that he often calls attention to. 

The old post:

https://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2019/08/outcrop-serpent-effigy-01-cockaponset.html

   After finally noticing the Manitou Stones, while reviewing the photos from that day (in September 2015), I find I didn't capture a closer image of them. I did follow the row of stones that "decorates" the ridge of bedrock, and stepped down, to the south, below to capture an image of another boulder that connected to the east/west:

An Overlay Image:

Other Ceremonial Stone Landscape features around and including these last two snakes:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/34580529@N04/albums/72157668219809815

Dr. Curtiss Hoffman by another outcrop snake head, different river system farther west:

Paugussett Ceremonial Stonework (CT)

 

Not all that far away to the east: 

https://www.flickr.com/photos/34580529@N04/albums/72157658907773529

“…in their farewell journey across this land they left landmarks of stone monuments on the tops of high mountains and places commanding a view of the surrounding country. These landmarks we have kept in repair down through the ages in loving remembrance. I have seen many of these landmarks myself and often repaired them…Oh how little we know of the depths of the ages gone; how wide, how profound and deep is the knowledge we seek. A monument of stone, a stone bowl, a broken symbol, a hallowed spot, a lodge of ruins: all this makes a golden page glittering with diamonds that trills the emotions with mysterious longings for truth and light in the depths of the unknown.”

http://books.google.com/books?id=TEn1O3rGzPAC&lpg=PR22&ots=LYrIG8TgjK&dq=yurok%20cultural%20landscape&pg=PA67#v=onepage&q=yurok%20cultural%20landscape&f=false

Medicine Bowlder:

https://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2012/04/medicine-bowlder.html

The C Word (Celtic)

 

Closing the Comments on a Facebook post

"...on the path to Sudbury Plantations."

A photo of a fence line in the snow, modern property line with a wire fence

  Beside a row of stone, carefully stacked and “lacey” as they say,

With spaces between the stones,         

  Some say for the wind to blow through,

Some say for spirits to pass through,

Some say to make up for a lack of stones in a Sheep Fence

 

Of course the "fence" would have to look like this in order to be "legal," back in 1600 and something:

   The C-word shows up after someone comments:

                 “Mystery is, who build (sic) them.”

And you reply “Most likely built by Indigenous People.”

And the C-word is dropped when the person replies,

 “Some say that it was the Celtic people.”

And I think “Here we go again!”

(You see:)

Some think it was Vikings and Phoenicians, working together and alone,

Some are positive it was the White Knights of the Holy Grail

Some think it was those people in the Donovan song from

“Way down below the ocean (where I wanna be, she may be),"

A giant red-haired cast of characters with lots of teeth and a very light complexion to choose from,

With no bona fide empirical material evidence and a long history of hoaxes

And lots of wild speculation about "Lost Civilizations" that are a bunch of Graham Poppycock...

 

"Harmless," one might think,

But there are those who happily insisted the Celtic is actually Aryan

And we all know about them

And here we go again, adding "Neo" to that name, making the same claim.

And someone begins telling you that this isn’t in any way racist…

 

   My advice is, that if one doesn’t want people to think you are racist, then quit repeating the things that racists say…

February Snow

 Nonnewaug