Summary

Camera location	34° 13′ 55.14″ N, 81° 06′ 19.78″ W	View this and other nearby images on: OpenStreetMap	34.231983; -81.105494

.source Atlas Obscura ELBERTON, GEORGIA

Georgia Guidestones A mysterious monument meant to be a guide into "an Age of Reason." Georgia Guidestones

In June of 1979, a man going by the pseudonym of R.C. Christian approached the Elberton Granite Finishing Company with the task of building a monument. He said that no one was to ever know his true identity or that of the group that he was representing. He seemed to have an endless supply of money to fund the project and by the terms of the legal contract all plans had to be destroyed after completion and all information about him withheld from the public.

In 1980, the stones were finished. They carry a tablet in front proclaiming, “Let these be guidestones to an Age of Reason.” Engraved in the stones are ten guidelines meant to re-establish the planet and society, perhaps after an apocalypse. They are written in eight different languages, English, Spanish, Swahili, Hindi, Hebrew, Arabic, Chinese and Russian, and among other commandments preach to:

- Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.

- Rule passion – faith – tradition – and all things with tempered reason.

- Balance personal rights with social duties.

- Be not a cancer on the earth – Leave room for nature.

The guidestones also serve as an astronomical calendar, and every day at noon the sun shines through a narrow hole in the structure and illuminates the day’s date on an engraving. The names of four ancient languages are inscribed on the sides near the top: Babylonian cuneiform, Classical Greek, Sanskrit, and Egyptian Hieroglyphics. Additionally an instructional tablet at the site speaks of a time capsule buried underneath the surface, though the dates on which the capsule was buried and when it is to be re-opened are missing. Whether this is intentional or the capsule was never buried is unknown.

The Guidestones continue to be a point of controversy. Conspiracy theorists and fundamentalists believe them to be the work of Satanists or the New World Order, – fueled particularly by certain commandments such as “Guide reproduction wisely – improving fitness and diversity” which can be ominously interpreted – and the guidestones have been seriously vandalized by such conspiracy theorists. Others believe them to be a message of wise prophecy, possibly the work of an eccentric man of science.

However, if the past thirty years are any indication, we may never know who built them besides what is engraved on the guidestones itself: “Sponsors: A Small Group of Americans Who Seek The Age Of Reason

Licensing

Photograph

I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby publish it under the following license:

This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

You are free:

• to share – to copy, distribute and transmit the work
• to remix – to adapt the work

Under the following conditions:

• attribution – You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
• share alike – If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same or compatible license as the original.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0CC BY-SA 4.0 Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 truetrue

Sculpture

This work is in the public domain because it was published in the United States between 1978 and March 1, 1989 without a copyright notice, and its copyright was not subsequently registered with the U.S. Copyright Office within 5 years. Unless its author has been dead for several years, it is copyrighted in the countries or areas that do not apply the rule of the shorter term for US works, such as Canada (50 pma), Mainland China (50 pma, not Hong Kong or Macau), Germany (70 pma), Mexico (100 pma), Switzerland (70 pma), and other countries with individual treaties. See this page for further explanation. Deutsch ∙ English ∙ español ∙ français ∙ italiano ∙ 日本語 ∙ 한국어 ∙ македонски ∙ português ∙ português do Brasil ∙ русский ∙ sicilianu ∙ slovenščina ∙ 中文 ∙ 中文（简体） ∙ 中文（繁體） ∙ 中文（臺灣） ∙ +/−

This image was uploaded as part of Wiki Loves Monuments 2017. Afrikaans ∙ Alemannisch ∙ azərbaycanca ∙ Bahasa Indonesia ∙ Bahasa Melayu ∙ Bikol Central ∙ bosanski ∙ brezhoneg ∙ català ∙ čeština ∙ Cymraeg ∙ dansk ∙ davvisámegiella ∙ Deutsch ∙ eesti ∙ English ∙ español ∙ Esperanto ∙ euskara ∙ français ∙ Frysk ∙ Gaeilge ∙ galego ∙ hrvatski ∙ Ido ∙ italiano ∙ latviešu ∙ Lëtzebuergesch ∙ Malagasy ∙ magyar ∙ Malti ∙ Nederlands ∙ norsk ∙ norsk nynorsk ∙ norsk bokmål ∙ polski ∙ português ∙ português do Brasil ∙ română ∙ shqip ∙ sicilianu ∙ slovenčina ∙ slovenščina ∙ suomi ∙ svenska ∙ Tagalog ∙ Türkçe ∙ Yorùbá ∙ Zazaki ∙ Ελληνικά ∙ беларуская ∙ беларуская (тарашкевіца) ∙ български ∙ кыргызча ∙ македонски ∙ русский ∙ српски / srpski ∙ українська ∙ ქართული ∙ հայերեն ∙ नेपाली ∙ हिन्दी ∙ বাংলা ∙ മലയാളം ∙ ไทย ∙ 한국어 ∙ +/−