Mysterious Stonehenge in Georgia Mysterious Stonehenge in Georgia-a small town that is not humiliated.

Recently, the challenge faced by Alberto is that foreigners from far away China immigrate to Alberto and take root. At first, life here was not much different from my hometown. Some small workshops revolved around agriculture. For example, making carriages, blacksmiths, mills and so on. Looking around, there are cotton and tobacco, corn and wheat, and there is no edge.

In the first 50 years of the19th century, the cotton fields here grew larger and larger due to slave labor. In this county, there even appeared Georgia's first millionaire. Then came the famous civil war. Albert's men enthusiastically joined the Confederate army. Later, General Sherman led the northern army across the whole central Georgia and made a famous voyage. In order to defeat the south psychologically, they burned houses, crops and slaughtered livestock along the way, which dealt a heavy blow to people's property and local economy. Fortunately, Albert was not on this military route and did not suffer much damage.

So when the war ended at 1865 and the surrounding area was burnt, Albert recovered relatively quickly, and he continued his old business before the war, growing cotton.

One day, however, the Albertans found that there was rich granite under their feet. Since then, the fate of the town has completely changed.

1882, the first quarry in Albert began production. At first, only local people mined coarse building stones to provide gravel for railway construction. Five years later, 1887, the first granite commercial company was established.

The granite here is blue-gray, and granite products began to increase, even used to make stone carvings. Throughout the United States, there are statues and tombstones carved from Albert granite everywhere. However, the first granite statue of Albert, a Confederate soldier, was not the one we saw in Little Square. There is also a tortuous story here.

At that time, shortly after the end of the Civil War, southerners were commemorating the dead Confederate villagers in various ways because of their complicated feelings, and this was no exception. Albert County and the chief executive of the small town paid a down payment and asked a local granite company to make a statue of a Confederate soldier. The company entrusted this important task to a local artist named Arthur Burt.

1898, a stone statue with a height of 18 feet was unveiled in Sutton Square in front of us. When the curtain covering the statue was lifted, the public was in an uproar. Elberton doesn't like him.

At that time, Albert still had some living Confederate soldiers. They said that this fat statue with a moustache, a coat like a northern military uniform and a flat-topped military cap like the French army was like a "Yankee soldier", so they nicknamed it "Dutch". "Yankee" is a derogatory term used by southerners for new york and northerners, while "Dutchman" is a transliteration of English. First, new york, a symbol of Yankee hometown, was originally built by the Dutch. Second, southerners think those two moustaches are just like Americans. The failure of "Dutch" naturally made the granite company it undertook completely humiliated. As soon as the unveiling ceremony was over, the sculptor Bert moved out of Elberton and never came back.

Today, some analysts say that Elbertons don't like "Dutch" because artists have never seen Confederate soldiers and their clothes are wrong. But I think the artist's choice of "clumsiness" as a means of expression is far from Albert's expectation of traditional portrait sculpture.

The "Dutchman" stood in the square for two years, and Mr. and Mrs. Elbe passed by him every day, which made him look less and less likable. Finally, on August 4th, 1900, a group of "mobs" dragged the "Dutch" off the pedestal in a rage. According to today's statement, they lynched the Dutch. The poor Dutchman was buried under the square. Soon, a traditional statue of Confederate soldiers was erected on the pedestal, which is the one in front of us. Such statues are found in almost every southern town, with exquisite and traditional shapes, but without any features.

19, at the turn of the 20th century, Albert Granite suddenly became an instant hit, which was well received at the Atlanta Fair and won the gold medal at the St. Louis World Expo. People here never lack confidence. In 1889 newspaper "The Star of Elburton", Elburton is called "Granite Capital".

It is entirely up to Italian experts to turn the rough granite here into exquisite products of various colors. Stone carving is a traditional industry in Italy. Somehow, Albert's reputation can spread so far. In the first 30 years of the 20th century, this town began to have a large number of European immigrants, especially those from Germany and Italy. Italy, that's Michelangelo's hometown! Surprisingly, granite actually saved people here in the Great Depression of1930s. When the whole country was suffering from the Great Depression, Alberton was still busy opening new quarries.

Now, there are 45 quarries and 280 granite companies in Elberton, and their products are sold to 50 states in the United States and all over the world. On the wall of Elberton, they proudly wrote: "The city with the most monuments in the world."

However, the center of Elton town is still so big, and the style is still so simple and not luxurious. A mining town, but it has a humanistic atmosphere. The stability of town style reminds us, but don't underestimate this place. The town is not shocked or humiliated, and it is a place with a certain "concentration" in its heart. It can maintain certain unchanging values and thinking, not a little after the outbreak. In recent years, Alberton has encountered new challenges, which come from distant China. Things as heavy as granite are all from across the ocean, and the price is much cheaper than here. The small town quarrying market has been hit hard, and no one knows whether it can survive. All we know is that they will go to church on Sunday and pray for the fate of the town.

Let's go back to the story of the Dutch.

This is really an old saying, who laughs last laughs best. The small granite company, which undertook to create "Dachai" in those years, developed several decades later and became the largest local enterprise. One day, they suddenly remembered the old things about themselves, so they decided to let the "Dutch" see the light of day again.

The people who lynched Dach and buried him in those years are all dead. Fortunately, in the past hundred years, this company still keeps the record of Dach's burial place. 1982, under the curious onlookers of a new generation of Elbertons, the town dug up their "Dutch". His face is covered with red clay peculiar to Georgia. "Dutch boy" was sent to a washing station, washed and washed, and gradually revealed its true colors. A century and a half later, he became a cultural relic and was sent to the Granite Museum in Elberton, where he found his place.

When I saw him in the museum today, I always felt that this "Dutchman" with a gun was clearly laughing there.

Leave some space for nature

Choosing what language to express is itself an "expression"

27 years ago 1979, a mysterious landmark appeared in Elberton.

This is one of the main purposes of our trip. We have heard about it for a long time, but we have never seen it with our own eyes. After visiting the town, it was getting late. We found a local and asked the direction of Stonehenge. By the way, how far is it? Answer: "3 miles." He said enthusiastically, "You can't miss it. It's on the roadside. Very conspicuous. "

We reset the odometer on the car to zero and set off for the north.

The story of Stonehenge began on a Friday afternoon at the end of June. 1979. A well-dressed man walked into the office of Vander, president of Albert Granite Fine Processing Company, claiming that he represented a group of anonymous people from other States and wanted to entrust a local granite company to erect a Stonehenge near Albert Town. He called himself R.C.Christian and declared that it was a pseudonym. Christian means Christian. He said he called himself that because he was a Christian himself. Vander asked him with a grain of salt, why did you build this Stonehenge in Georgia? The Christian gentleman's answer is that Albert's fine granite and the local mild climate are the reasons. Besides, his grandmother is Georgian.

This is all people know about the mysterious Stonehenge builder.

Once out of the town center, it was desolate. The wasteland in winter is desolate and sparse. I drove three miles and didn't see anything special. Three more miles, and still nothing. I already suspect that the direction is wrong. Three miles later, it finally appeared. On a hillside, a stone array stands in the sunset.

A * * * is six huge stones, one of which is covered on five huge stones erected. Each vertical stone is as high as 19 feet, that is, more than two stories high, each weighing 42,000 pounds, with a total weight of 1 19 tons. The placement of the stone array also has the significance of astronomical almanac. It is said that at night, Polaris can always be found through the oblique hole of the central column.

In the middle is a huge stone pillar, surrounded by four huge stones, like huge pages, pointing in four different directions and spreading eight pages. On these eight pages, according to the instructions of the anonymous founder of Stonehenge, several paragraphs with the same content were written in eight different languages. Of course, we noticed at a glance that there was Chinese that we were familiar with. Of course, in addition, there is English, as well as Russian, Arabic, Hindi, Hebrew, Spanish and Swahili used in some African countries.

This is different from the multilingual display law we usually see. Apart from English, it does not use strong European languages such as French and German, but tries to use languages of different cultures, even if it is only some weak cultures today. I think this language choice itself is an expression.

We are curious to read the above words, that is, the people who erected this stone array are expressing today's worries and exhortations to the distant descendants of this world. The Chinese on the stone tablet says this:

Let mankind stay below 500 million forever, and let nature stay below 500 million forever.

Guide fertility wisely, promote health and change.

Unite mankind with a living new language.

Control passion-faith-tradition-everything with calm reason

Protect the people and the country with just laws and courts.

Let all countries be autonomous and resolve external disputes in the world court.

Abolish trivial laws and useless officials

Maintain a balance between private rights and social obligations.

Cherish truth-beauty-love and seek harmony with the universe.

Don't be a cancer on earth.

Leave some space for nature

Leave some space for nature

On the four sides of the stone, four ancient characters were used: ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, ancient Greek characters, ancient Babylonian characters and ancient Sanskrit, and the same sentence was written: "Let these landmark stones lead to the era of reason."

"Mr. Christian" said that this small group of people had been discussing this stone array for several years. They want to use cautious language to make a moral appeal to all people of different nationalities, religions and political ideologies in the future. Some researchers think this is the work of the Rose Cross Brotherhood, a small Christian sect headquartered in California, because the expression of Stonehenge is very close to their requirements. But whether this is the case is still a mystery.

Some locals don't like this sneaky "mysterious stone array", but most people say, anyway, "it's an expression of peace."

After Stonehenge was completed, for various reasons and requirements, many people from different cultures and religions came from afar to hold ceremonies here. Whether people agree with the views expressed by Stonehenge or not, they regard Stonehenge as a symbol of "free expression".

Standing in front of this stone array, on the high slope, the winter sunset is changing the color of the clouds on the horizon, just like "God" is changing his mind. I suddenly remembered the ancient Stonehenge in England. They didn't carve words on the stone, but they also expressed themselves.

No matter what the ancients wanted to express, they struggled to erect a stone array to let us know that nearly 4000 years ago, people had a tenacious desire to "express", which was so irresistible and unstoppable.