A huge metal monolith has appeared on a hillside in Romania just a week after a near identical monolith was discovered the United States by government workers in Utah.
The shiny object, said like the monolith in Utah to be around 10 to 12 feet tall, was found near the city of Piatra Neamt on Batca Doamnei Hill, just yards from the ancient fortress of Petrodava that dates back almost 2,000 years.
The news of the discovery in Romania came at almost exactly the same time as it was revealed that the Utah monolith had mysteriously disappeared. Authorities in the United States had kept the exact location of the monolith secret as they did not wish to encourage sightseers to an area that has such a hazardous surrounding terrain.
Many have already compared their structure to the mysterious object that appears at the very start of the classic Stanley Kubrick film '2001: A Space Odyssey' in which the monolith is believed to represent a higher technological or spiritual power imparting its knowledge to humankind. Utah state workers even joked that some of them should stay behind when inspecting it in-case they were all sucked into another dimension.
Rocsana Josanu, an official with the Romanian Neamt Culture and Heritage organisation, said of the new discovery:
"We have started looking into the strange appearance of the monolith. It is on private property, but we still don't know who the monolith's owner is yet. It is in a protected area on an archaeological site. Before installing something there, they needed permission from our institution, one that must then be approved by the Ministry of Culture."
Utah officials have also said that they played no part in removing their monolith and that it had been put in place and then removed by parties unknown. It is unknown whether those that originally placed the monolith are also those that later retrieved it.
The Utah Bureau of Land Management said in a statement:
"We have 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."
It is currently suspected that a group of artists is behind both the placements, the Utah desert has long been used by avant-garde and new-wave artists wishing to display their works publicly. What is not known is whether the American group and Romanian group are at all linked, and many across the world are now wondering where the next monolith will pop-up. The mystery continues!
COMMENTS