Oldest Man Made Monumented Survey Line?

Baton Rouge?

Chaco Canyon "Observatory"

Not really a monumented "line", but observations, calculations and monumentation definitely makes it a "survey".

Anasazis of Chaco Canyon

It could have been the fence around Jamestown..
It was a possesion line...
I do remember reading a book about how they started selling plots around the town later though...

Jamestown was surveyed in the 1620s but I am thinking that Havana, Cuba may have been surveyed a century earlier by the Spanish.

Native Americans Did Not Own The Land, The Great Spirit Did

Therefore they would not have monuments defining ownership.

However they might they might have had markers defining areas of their responsibility to care for that land.

I would think they did have monuments marking sacred burial sites.

Paul in PA

Native Americans Did Not Own The Land, The Great Spirit Did

They didn't claim ownership, but they did have some disputes with neighbors over hunting and camping easements.

I would look to Saint Augustine, or Roanoke Island.

My guess would be Norse stone walls in Greenland (Physiographically if not culturally North America)

My vote goes to the [msg=99515]Heavner Rune Stone[/msg]

Heavner Rune Stone

On Poteau Mountain near the small town of Heavener, Oklahoma, near the Arkansas line, stands a slab of stone which is 12 feet tall, 10 feet wide, and 16 inches thick, like a billboard. There is writing on this billboard, consisting of 8 deeply pecked letters, whose edges have eroded to smoothness, even though the stone`s hardness on the Moh`s Hardness Scale is 7, where a diamond is 10.

In the 1830`s, the Choctaws of Indian Territory saw the writing but could not read it. Various citizens in the 1800`s saw the stone and named it "Indian Rock", although the Indians had no alphabets.In 1923 the lettering was submitted by Carl Kemmerer of Heavener to the Smithsonian Institution, who identified the letters as Norse runes.

In 1948, research to find out what the letters said, when they were made, and by whom, was begun by Gloria Stewart Farley, who had seen the inscription as a child.. She spent a total of 38 years finding the answers to these questions. She renamed it The Heavener Runestone in 1951. Based on her research, the Runestone State Park came into existence to preserve this stone in 1970.

By 1967 the runes were believed to represent the date of November 11, 1012 with the runes used as numbers in a Norse cryptopuzzle, according to Alf Monge, a cryptanalyst who was born in Norway. The authenticity of the stone being made by ancient Vikings was supported by the finding of two more runestones in the vicinity of Poteau Mountain, another smaller inscription of eight runes at a foothill of Cavanal Mountain, 14 miles away, and another stone bearing five runes at Shawnee, Oklahoma.

In 1986, it was found that these 5 runestones had apparently been made even two or three centuries earlier, before 800 A.D. Translations were made in words, not numbers, by Dr. Richard Nielson, whose doctorate was obtained at the University of Denmark. By making an in—depth study of the ancient literature and hundreds of Scandinavian runestones, he determined that the second and eighth runes are actually variants of the letter L, which permitted him to say that the Heavener runes are G—L—O—M—E—D—A—L, meaning Glome`s Valley, a land claim. The similar Poteau runes are a memorial to the same man, meaning, "Magic or protection to Gloie (his nickname)". The Shawnee runestone is the name MEDOK, and was probably a gravestone, but had been moved because of construction work. The other two runestones on or near Poteau Mountain do not have enough runes for a translation, but the four stones were placed in a straight line, miles apart. These five inscriptions are all from the oldest 24—rune FUTHARK, used from 300 until 800 A.D. in Scandinavia.

It is believed that these Norse explorers crossed the Atlantic, rounded the tip of Florida into the Gulf of Mexico, found the Mississippi River, and sailed into its tributaries, the Arkansas and Poteau Rivers, around 750 A.D. This date is indicated by the grammar used on the Poteau Runestone.

DDSM:beer:

An Archaeologist Examines The Oklahoma Rune Stones

The veracity of the Heavener stone as a Viking artifact is problematic. The linguistic evidence is ambiguous. However, historical evidence from the 19th century covering both the Viking Revival, Scandinavian immigration, and the lack of archaeological evidence of Norse excursions to the Western US, strongly suggests the stone is a 19th creation of a Scandinavian immigrant (likely a Swedish immigrant working at the local train depot).

> .....So, where and when did the first man made monumented line occur in North America?

Is there a limit as to the length of the line?

Found a cool sight here, through Dan's link........

Lots of good suggestions here and a good discussion in DDSM's link too.

Can you let use know; if or when you come to a conclusion?

Thanks,

Dougie

Oldest Man Made Monumented Survey Line?>Talk about BOGUS!

The Morse Payne project is a bogus attempt to create history where there isn't any. It's a bunch of malarkey. I was involved at the beginning but quickly realized what a bunch of whoeee it is...

Here's the defining quote form the crackpot " "There is a branch of history called imaginative conjecture,"

"Making it up" is a valid branch of study?

Oldest Man Made Monumented Survey Line?>Talk about BOGUS!

"The problem with quotes on the internet is you never know if they are genuine."
? Joseph Stalin

Oldest Man Made Monumented Survey Line?>Talk about BOGUS!

The problem with volunteer help:

You get what you pay for......

You probably shoulda stuck around; looks like they coulda used somebody that knew what they were doing......:snarky:

Oldest Man Made Monumented Survey Line?>Talk about BOGUS!

I heard him say it in public at a meeting at the local history museum. Not made up at all.

I recently visited the Ellicot Stone near Mobile. The Ellicot line meets all your criteria but was it "the oldest"? Probably not. Pretty cool job though. I read that both the American and Spanish surveyors had soldiers with them in case they couldn't agree. Having some "muscle" along on some of our surveys might come in handy sometimes, wouldn't it?

Muscle on the crew

Is there anybody here on the board from Oklahoma that remembers Calvin the Indian?

Calvin was great survey help. Calvin wasn't a small person. Calvin looked and acted like "Chief Broom" (Will Sampson) in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest".

Calvin didn't say much..didn't have to. Calvin could stand there with a range pole, hammer or machete, with "stoic dignity", and nobody ever messed with us.

I spent a week in Tulsa staking centerline on the Creek Turnpike with Calvin. The only thing I remember him saying all week long was, "Pink or Orange flagging?" and "McDonald's is fine."

I’ve seen Ellicott’s Stone twice and it would be a lot cooler had it not been adulterated with a benchmark. Also, it has been abased by its designation by ASCE as a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark, which is an ignominious distinction shared by other noteworthy survey markers such as the Initial Point of the PLSS. So far, ASCE has yet to find its way to Four Corners but it can only be a matter of time before it does.

Endicott Rock 1652 monument in NH

Endicott Rock is a state park located on the shore of Lake Winnipesaukee in the Weirs Beach village of Laconia, New Hampshire. Its principal attraction is a large rock originally in the lake that was incised with lettering in 1652 by surveyors for the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The rock provides definitive evidence of one of the earliest incursions of Europeans into the area.

(the actual monument from 1652 is the flat stone (scroll down and to the right))