If you’ve ever seen 2001: A Space Odyssey, you’re all too familiar with the monolith featured in the Kubrick classic. Now, it looks as though those fiction structures have made their way off the silver screen and into the real world.
A crew from the Utah Department of Public Safety and Division of Wildlife Resources were conducting a helicopter survey of the Bighorn sheep region in southeastern Utah on On November 18, when they discovered a mysterious metal monolith on the Mars-like landscape.
A few days later on November 27, the monolith disappeared as quickly as it appeared, sending internet sleuths around the world into a frenzy over what could have happened to the mysterious structure.
The monolith was reported missing by the Utah Bureau of Land Management, who wrote in a Facebook post that they had – ‘received credible reports that the illegally installed structure, referred to as the “monolith” has been removed from Bureau of Land Management (BLM) public lands by an unknown party’.
We may not know if an extraterrestrial or earthling installed the “monolith” structure, but we can confirm that it has been taken by an unknown party or parties. More: https://t.co/zmlHF4kPn9 #monolith #utahmonolith #utah pic.twitter.com/TiQMHK9cyM
— BLM Utah (@BLMUtah) November 30, 2020
Now, it looks as though we might have an explanation as to what happened to the Utah monolith. According to reports from SkyNews, photographer Ross Bernards claims he had seen four men uninstall the monolith late on Friday, November 27.
After Bernards and a couple of friends spent the day hiking to the site of the monolith (while it was still installed), he claims to have seen four men approaching the structure at around 8.40PM.
‘4 guys rounded the corner and 2 of them walked forward. They gave a couple of pushes on the monolith and one of them said “You better have got your pictures.” He then gave it a big push, and it went over, leaning to one side. Bernards wrote in an Instagram post.
View this post on Instagram
‘They quickly broke it apart and, as they were carrying to the wheelbarrow that they had brought, one of them looked back at us all and said ‘Leave no trace’,’ he added.
In case you thought the story couldn’t get any stranger, keep in mind we are currently living in the year 2020, a time where weird and unexpected events happen on what seems like a daily basis. And that is exactly what occurred in Romania’s mountainous Neamt county, when another, near-identical monolith was discovered on November 26.
The Romanian monolith did not survive for too long though, as it also seemingly vanished into thin air on Tuesday, December 1, according to reports from Reuters.
‘The 2.8 metre tall structure disappeared overnight as quietly as it was erected last week. An unidentified person, apparently a bad local welder, made it … now all that remains is just a small hole covered by rocky soil,’ journalist Robert Iosub of the Ziar Piatra Neamt local newspaper told Reuters.
A shiny metal monolith vanished from Romania’s mountainous Neamt county, four days after its sudden appearance close to an ancient Dacian fortress sparked speculation it may be related to a mystery structure seen in the United States https://t.co/3gAljvbVoO 1/4 pic.twitter.com/x9jRy0GD1t
— Reuters Science News (@ReutersScience) December 1, 2020
The appearance and sudden disappearance of both the Utah and Romanian monoliths have left many scratching their heads trying to come up with a reasonable explanation as to why they were installed and subsequently removed. The most popular theory is that the structures were part of an elaborate art project, similar to Robert Smithson’s ‘Spiral Jetty’ sculpture he created in Utah’s Great Salt Lake in 1970. Others have credited England-based artist Banksy for the monoliths.
However, the fact of the matter is that without having the ability to study the actual monoliths for any artist markings or manufacturing stamps, their story will remain a mystery.
Picture: Twitter/@brian_schnee
