Utah highway patrol/Ziar Piatra Neamt
- A mysterious metal monolith was found atop a hill in Romania, the same day a similar one was reported missing in Utah.
- The Utah monolith was discovered in the desert south of Moab on November 18 but vanished on Friday, The Bureau for Land Management said Saturday.
- On Friday, a similar obelisk was found near the northeastern Romanian town of Piatra Neamt, local news outlet Ziar reported.
- The Utah monolith was said to be three meters tall. The one discovered in Romania is three or four meters tall and covered in linked circles
- The Utah monolith, believed to be a work of art by John McCracken, appeared between August 2015 and October 2016, Insider reported.
- Visit Insider’s homepage for more stories.
A mysterious metal monolith was found atop a hill in Romania, the same day a similar one in Utah was reported missing.
On November 18, Utah state employees out counting sheep by helicopter over federal lands south of Moab spotted a metal structure at the base of a red-rock formation.
Authorities were puzzled, joking that it could be aliens. On Saturday, The Bureau for Land Management said the monolith had disappeared and had been reported missing the previous day.
That same day Romanian news outlet Ziar Piatra Neamt reported the discovery of a monolith on Bâtca Doamnei, a hill near the northeastern town of Piatra Neamț.
Although similar, there are some differences between the two sculptures.
Facebook/Ziar Piatra Neamt
The Romanian sculpture is around three or four meters tall, and appeared hollow, Ziar Piatra Neamt said.
Images of the monolith show it to be mostly covered in interconnected circles, while the Utah monolith appeared smooth.
This video, published by ABC News, shows the surface in detail:
—ABC News (@ABC) December 1, 2020
It is not yet known when the monolith in Romania was but there. An examination of Google Earth's historical view by Insider showed that the Utah monolith appeared sometime between August 2015 and October 2016.
Equivalent satellite imagery to establish whether the Romanian monolith has been there for long was not available.
The leading theory suggest that the Utah monument is a work by US artist John McCracken, though its origin still remains a mystery.
Another popular theory circulating on social media, was that it was put there as a homage to the Arthur C. Clark's 1968 novel "2001: A Space Odyssey."
In the book, later adapted into a film of the same name by Stanley Kubrick, a monolith arrives on earth to dispense wisdom to monkeys.