Googling around using the phrase, "Grand Traverse Bay," I found the photos above by Robert Charity ( www.pbase.com/bobc/image/83933534 and http://www.pbase.com/bobc/image/83954564). 
And then these 3 above, by Matt Callow who captions the first one with: “… took a lot of pictures of the glacial erratics scattered all over the area. This is on the Lake Michigan shore near Pyramid Point, and that's one of the Manitou Islands in the background, South Manitou I believe.”http://www.flickr.com/photos/blackcustard/79345351/
But last and not least, the photos by Chris Doyal of the Archaeologist Dr. Mark Holley and Mastodon Stone in Grand Traverse Bay, MI. He calls it " the almost famous Michigan Mastodon Petroglyph Stone." He asks not to reproduce them without written permission, so click here:
"It would be the only visual representation of such in the whole hemisphere," said a skeptical Charles Cleland, retired curator of Great Lakes archeology and ethnology at Michigan State University. "It would be a really spectacular find—if it turns out to be true."
ReplyDeleteMany years ago, I went to see a lecture at the Institute for American Indian Studies in Washington CT. A guy named John Cucinello, an NYC school teacher, had a whole bunch of stones with him (out of the thousands he has collected) that he called "Story Stones." One small enough to fit in your hand stone that he had was a pecked and polished "mastadon stone." This small white quartizite stone was a minature, remarkably similar version of the red outlined part mastadon stone.
When you turned John's stone over it was still aslo a mastadon, but with a hunter with a spear standing by it's foreleg...
I didn't see the last link at first. It contains pictures of the so called "Mastodon" stone from under Lake Michigan. Look at it closely you see all kinds of lines in the rock which are not part of the mastadon but obviously natural geology of the rock. That some of these configure like a mastodon is not surprising. A key principle of pattern definition and quantification is that the pattern has borders. Three stones in a line is a pattern when it occurs in isolation and not in the middle of hundreds of other stones. This mastodon pattern fails by this criterion - it has no border. So I strongly doubt it is a man-made carving.
ReplyDeleteA couple more links:
ReplyDelete"This would of course be very cool if true. I previously posted here and here and here on possible Pleistocene rock art and how rare it appears to be..."
http://stephenbodio.blogspot.com/search?q=%22Mastodon+petroglyph
When mastodons ruled northern Michigan
http://www.wzzm13.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=80355
(2007-08-13) John Bailey explains why an ancient rock carving in Grand Traverse Bay could bolster his view of the origins of Native Americans living in the Great Lakes.
http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/wiaa/news.newsmain?action=article&ARTICLE_ID=1129504
“It was part of a row of stones of varying sizes that might have marked the shoreline 6,000 to 10,000 years ago, Holley said. Some -- although not the boulder -- were arranged in a circle. That could indicate human manipulation although it's unclear, said Rob Houston, a geology instructor at the college who has inspected the site. The boulder with the markings is 3.5 to 4 feet high and about 5 feet long. Photos show a surface with numerous fissures. Some may be natural while others appear of human origin, but those forming what could be the petroglyph stood out, Holley said.
http://www.record-eagle.com/local/local_story_248101751.html/resources_printstory
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2007/09/05/mastadon_arc.html?category=archaeology&guid=20070905101500