The trade wasn't publicly disclosed until 2002, when Mr. Pitt auctioned off a couple of smaller slivers of the rock. By then, the Museum of Natural History had gotten into a legal battle with the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde, who claimed that the meteorite, which was discovered in Oregon's Willamette Valley in 1902, was a sacred object and should be returned. The conflict ended in a settlement, giving the tribe has the right to hold a religious ceremony once a year in the Rose Center for Earth and Space.
September 13, 2007
Grand Ronde meteorite to be auctioned
Hot Rock Goes on the BlockThe Willamette Meteorite, which weighs more than 15.5 tons and is believed to be billions of years old, has been a centerpiece of the Museum of Natural History's collection since 1906. In 1998, the museum sliced a 28-pound section off the top and traded it to Daryll Pitt, the curator of the Macovich Collection, the largest private collection of meteorites, for a half-ounce piece of Mars, which is now on display in the Arthur Ross Hall of Meteorites. A spokesman for the museum, Steve Reichl, said yesterday that the piece of Mars is of vital importance to research.
The trade wasn't publicly disclosed until 2002, when Mr. Pitt auctioned off a couple of smaller slivers of the rock. By then, the Museum of Natural History had gotten into a legal battle with the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde, who claimed that the meteorite, which was discovered in Oregon's Willamette Valley in 1902, was a sacred object and should be returned. The conflict ended in a settlement, giving the tribe has the right to hold a religious ceremony once a year in the Rose Center for Earth and Space.
The trade wasn't publicly disclosed until 2002, when Mr. Pitt auctioned off a couple of smaller slivers of the rock. By then, the Museum of Natural History had gotten into a legal battle with the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde, who claimed that the meteorite, which was discovered in Oregon's Willamette Valley in 1902, was a sacred object and should be returned. The conflict ended in a settlement, giving the tribe has the right to hold a religious ceremony once a year in the Rose Center for Earth and Space.
Writerfella here --
ReplyDeleteInteresting to note that the fate of the 'sacred meteorite' artifact of the Anasazi people at this time is unknown. It was reported to have been discovered years ago and then nothing more of it ever has been said. This was found as an item in writerfella's research for his ANASAZI The Screenplay and so the Anasazi ceremonial cane carried by the character Nathan BigHawk had an iron tip made from that meteorite. Of course, Hopi claims to the contrary, there are no Anasazi around to protest the fate of their object. When they 'abandoned' their cities and citadels, they also 'abandoned' their 'sacred meteorite.' Or so the scientists likely would say...
All Best
Russ Bates
'writerfella'
Last time you mentioned the "Anasazi meteorite," you didn't provide any evidence of it. This time I did the work you couldn't or wouldn't do:
ReplyDeletehttp://sped2work.tripod.com/elden.html
Roughly thirty-five miles to the west-northwest of Meteor Crater, Arizona, along old Route 66, is the little town of Winona. About five miles northeast of Winona is a prehistoric Native American village called Elden Pueblo. A tribal people now referred to as the Sinagua occupied the site from around 1070 to 1275 AD before mysteriously disappearing. During the 200 years or so the pueblo complex was occupied it grew from a few pit houses to covering several acres and over 60 rooms. In 1928, during excavation of the site, archaeologists discovered a fifty-three pound meteorite, the Winona Meteorite, carefully buried in a specially designed man-made stone cist in the floor of one of the rooms. The manner in which it was wrapped and buried, nearly duplicating the exact same method of burial as a revered young child of the Sinagua culture would be, indicates that the pueblo builders most likely considered the meteorite a sacred object--possibly after witnessing its fall.
http://farshores.org/gad1.htm
The Anasazi also treated meteorites with reverence. One such sacred stone was discovered at Clear Creek ruin atop a mesa in the Verde Valley of Arizona. It was wrapped in a feather cloth and deposited inside a stone cyst on the northeast corner of a building, i.e., the direction of the summer solstice sunrise. Similar to the type used for infant burial, the grave of this fallen "sky child" also contained considerable pottery. The meteorite itself, which weighed over 135 pounds, was determined to originate at Meteor Crater nearly 53 miles to the northeast.
Of course, carrying and burying a stone is a far cry from smelting and casting it into an iron tip. Your screenplay is clearly fictional since the ancestral Puebloans ("Anasazi") had no metals or metallurgy.
ReplyDeletehttp://gorp.away.com/gorp/resource/us_national_park/co/his_mes.htm
Tools: The Anasazi were a stone-age people, without metal of any kind.
Writerfella here --
ReplyDeleteRob, your assumption that the Anasazi had to smelt or to cast iron from meteorites entirely is incorrect. Iron can be beaten, carven, and even shaped by abrasion into whatever forms that those who work iron might desire. Plus, the other assumption that supposedly 'pre-technological' cultures MUST obey EuroMan's procedures also is incorrect. Modern sculptors shape and re-shape iron and other metals into whatever forms they wish them to be by 'stone-age' processes and never question their own abilities by judging them as impossible. How else would modern scientists explain the iron cubes found in ancient peat deposits in Europe? These cannot form on their own and so someone had to have shaped or to have formed them. Just when was it that European cultures began to smelt and/or cast iron into the workable forms they could use? Sounds to writerfella that these occurred during 'stone age' times, much before smelting or casting...
All Best
Russ Bates
'writerfella'
I didn't assume anything. Iron normally doesn't occur in a pure form; it has to be extracted from an ore via smelting. Here, educate yourself about the substance:
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron
Iron is a metal extracted from iron ore, and is almost never found in the free elemental state. In order to obtain elemental iron, the impurities must be removed by chemical reduction.
Smelting has been around since the second millennium BC. But until you document the "iron cubes found in ancient peat deposits," they aren't worth discussing.
ReplyDeleteYour assumption that the "Anasazi" had or used metal in any form is just that: an assumption. You've yet to provide a single piece of evidence to substantiate this assumption.
In contrast, I've quoted sources who say the Anasazi had no metal whatsoever. That means you lose the debate once again.