The drone of the man’s oak didgeridoo reverberated off the granite. “Not that I know when Doomsday is,” he said, parting his lips from the mouthpiece and pointing toward the 19ft tall thick, grey stones a few yards from us. “But whenever it hits, this is right where I’d want to be.”
I met Anthony, a hitchhiker from North Carolina, at the site of the Georgia Guidestones, a mysterious six-piece granite monument atop a desolate hill in the small town of Elberton, Georgia. He had stopped at the site on his way to see the Coral Castle – another mysterious stone structure – in Homestead, Florida. I had stopped because I’m a sucker for roadside oddities.
“It's no wonder this was chosen as the site for the guidestones. Elberton isn't called the “Granite Capital of the World” for nothing,” Anthony said. Right now we're on a deposit 35 miles long, six miles wide and three miles deep. If there was ever going to be an earthquake or natural disaster, I'd want to be right here atop six million tons of solid stone. This would be where society would survive.”
It was this gargantuan granite deposit that attracted a well-dressed man under the pseudonym of RC Christian to Elberton in June 1979. He approached the Elberton Granite Finishing Corporation’s President Joe H Fendley Sr about the potential cost of building a monument of substantial size, explaining that he represented a small group of anonymous Americans foreign to Georgia who had been working on a 20-year-long project as a message for future generations. Fendley promptly put him in touch with his banker, Wyatt C Martin, who was soon chosen as the intermediary for the project. Both men were sworn to secrecy.
On 22 March 1980, the Georgia Guidestones – four giant rough-edged stones encircling a centre slab with a capstone balancing on top – weighing 119 tons, were revealed to a crowd of about 100 people. One crowd member, a local pastor, immediately professed his belief that the stones were built for cult and devil worship because of its similar appearance to Stonehenge. On each side of the capstone, engraved in four ancient languages, were the words: “Let these be guidestones to an Age of Reason.” And written in eight languages – English, Russian, Mandarin Chinese, Arabic, Classical Hebrew, Swahili, Hindi and Spanish – were cryptic instructions for rebuilding society post Doomsday:
“Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature; Guide reproduction wisely – improving fitness and diversity; Unite humanity with a living new language; Rule passion – faith – tradition – and all things with tempered reason; Protect people and nations with fair laws and just courts; Let all nations rule internally resolving external disputes in a world court; Avoid petty laws and useless officials; Balance personal rights with social duties; Prize truth – beauty – love – seeking harmony with the infinite; Be not a cancer on the Earth – Leave room for nature – Leave room for nature.”
After his encounters with Fendley and Martin, Christian left town and was never seen again. All he left was an explanatory stone tablet a few yards from the monument, detailing the astrological placement of the stones: the four main granite slabs were aligned with the celestial poles, while the centre stone was drilled with an eye-level hole oriented with the North Star and a slit aligned with the Sun’s solstices and equinoxes. The capstone, having its own slit, was to act as a calendar, revealing the date at noon each day when the sun shone through.
