Katherine Reece wrote:Tesselated pavement can look a variety of ways... I'll try to find more images for you tomorrow.
Actually, it is quite common for jointed bedrock to be mistaken for man-made blocks. A person need only look through the Internet at various pseudoarchaeological sites that are enshined in web pages. Such pseudoarchaeological sites include the "Rockwalls" of Rockwall, Texas; the "tiled pavement" of Battlement Mesa in western Colorado; the "Phoenician Furnaces" of Oklahoma; and so forth. Also, a person can find people questioning the natural origin of the "carpet rocks" of Petit Jean State Park in Arkansas and the whaffle rock of West Virginia.
This confusion largely comes from a mistaken assumption that nartural processes cannot produce complex, sometimes linear fracture patterns called "orthogonal' (rectangular) jointing by geologists. It is a demonstrated fact, understood by geologists, who are familiar with basic principle of geology; know what is written in the literature; and seen innumerable outcrops as part of their field studies, is that when stressed in right way, layer of rocks can break along reasonably straight lines as to naturally create rectangular blocks that have a superficial similarity to man-made bricks or blocks.
As illustrated by Katherine, my favorite example of nearly orthogonal jointed bedrock is the "Tasmanian Tesselated Pavement". The systematic and pseudo-artificial nature of the jointing exhibited by the Tasmanian tessellated pavement can be seen because wave action has cleaned the thick layer of soil, which normally hides such jointing where it occurs in bedrock.
Some other pictures of tessellated pavement can be found at:
1. "Tesselated pavement, Tasmans peninsula > Natural pavement, Tasmans peninsular [sic]" at:
http://images.statelibrary.tas.gov.au/F ... 1126183516
2. Tesselated Pavement, Tamsmania at
http://www.australienbilder.de/serien/s ... -tas21.htm and
http://www.australienbilder.de/serien/bilder/tas21.jpg
3. Eaglehawk Neck tesselated pavements: collection of postcards #1 at:
http://images.statelibrary.tas.gov.au/F ... -125142836
and
http://images.statelibrary.tas.gov.au/t ... 514283.jpg
4. Eaglehawk Neck tesselated pavements: collection of postcards #2 at:
http://images.statelibrary.tas.gov.au/F ... -125142885
In this postcard, If a person looks close enough, they find that the light, dark, and light areas within this postcard are three **separate** beds of orthogonally jointed bedrock lying on top of each other. In this outcrop, there are three layers of jointed bedrock **lying on top of each other**. Thus, if multiple layers of lithified sedimentary rock are lying on top of each other, it is possible to have multiple layers of jointed bedrock on top of each other that provide the illusion of a man-made platform composed of multiple tiers of stone blocks. Therefore, the presence of a layer of stone "blocks" lying on top of another layer of stones "blocks" fails as evidence of them being man-made.
5. Tesselated Pavement by Mike Lowe at:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikelowe/5 ... et-134851/
In the western United States, were bedrock is exposed at the surface without a layer of loose soil covering it and hiding the jointing in it, spectacular example of orthogonal / rectangular jointing cover acre after acre of the surface of Oil Mountian in Natrona County, Wyoming like a huge megalithic man-made plaza.
1. "Unsaturated Cross-Fold Fractures" at:
http://www.pe.utexas.edu/~jolson/utig-t ... age014.jpg
2. "Saturated Strike Joints" at:
http://www.pe.utexas.edu/~jolson/utig-t ... age011.jpg
These figure are from "Spatial organization of natural fractures: A geomechanics approach" by Jon Olson, University of Texas at Austin at:
http://www.pe.utexas.edu/~jolson/utig-t ... cument.htm
How pseudo-manmade orthogonal jointing is created is discussed in:
Hennings, Peter H., Olson, Jon E., and Thompson, Laird B., 2000,
Combining outcrop and three-dimensional structural modeling to
characterize fractured reservoirs: an example from Wyoming.
American Association of Petroleum Geologists Bulletin. vol. 84,
pp. 830-849.
Additional examples of rectangular blocks created by orthogonal jointing in sandstone can be seen at
http://www.pe.utexas.edu/~jolson/cedar-mesa.JPEG and
http://www.pe.utexas.edu/~jolson/nat.frac.html
A quite revealing example of orthogonal jointing can be seen in figure 1 of:
Bai, T., Maerten, L., Gross, M. R., and Aydin, A., 2002, Orthogonal
cross joints: Do they imply a regional stress rotation?: Journal of
Structural Geology. vol. 24, pp. 77-88.
The PDF version of this article can be downloaded from:
http://pangea.stanford.edu/research/geo ... G_2002.pdf
Figure 1 pf BAi et al. (2002) illustrates three examples of orthogonal jointing. Figure 1a shows Monterey Formation along the Santa Barbara coastline, California, which resembles the so-called bricks comprising the rockwalls of Rockwall, Texas. Figure 1b illustrates a jointed porcellanite bed of the Monterey Formation exhibiting Liesigang banding within rectangular blocks, which resemble the iron oxide banding within blocks composing the alleged "Phoenician Furnace" reported from Oklahoma. The sketch in Figure 3c of Joint patterns from Nash Point, Bristol Channel, United Kingdom, shows a jointed bed that looks remarkably like a man-made floor. This paper also discusses how such orthogonal (rectangular) joints are created.
Other examples of orthogonal jointing creating jointed layers of bedrock, which bare a resemblance to the jointed bedrock being excavated at a number of places on the Bosnian pseudopyramids, are illustrated in:
Shahabpour, J., 1998, Liesegang blocks from sandstone beds
of the Hojedk Formation, Kerman, Iran. Geomorphology. vol. 22,
no. 1, pp. 93-106.
This publications also illustrates Liesegang banding (rings), a very common and well-known natural feature, which Sam Osmanagic and his so-called experts have naively misidentified as man-made "decorations".
Another case, where jointed bedrock has been misidentified as a prehistoric wall
is the Kaimanawa wall of New Zealand as noted in:
Corliss, William R., 1997, Cracks In The Kaimanawa-wall Story?
Science Frontiers. No. 110.
This article can be found at:
http://www.science-frontiers.com/sf110/sf110p02.htm
The author of the Science Frontiers article stated:
"We have personally seen beach-rock deposits
so regularly jointed that they seem man-made."
Photos of the Kaimanawa Wall can be found at;
http://www.mysteriousnewzealand.co.nz/p ... hp?album=5
The "Mysterious Places - The Kaimanawa Wall" web page, whose URL is given above, shows how alternative archaeologists have problems with comprehending some rather basic
geologic concepts. One silly mistake is that they apparently believe that rhyolite and ignimbrite are mutually exclusives types of igneous rocks. The fact of the matter they are not because the author(s) of the web do not seem to understand that "rhyolite" refers to the composition of the rock. On the other hand, "ignimbrite" refers to the origin of the rock. Magma of ryholitic composition erupted as pyroclastic ("ash") flows form ignimbrites. It is possible, in fact quite common, for ignimbrites to be rhyolites. Rhyolitic ignimbrites,
i.e. the Lower Tikorangi and Taupo ignimbrites, are quite common in New Zealand. Ignimbrites of other composition are also found in New Zealand.
Finally, how badly people can confuse naturally jointed bedrock with manmade features is illustrated by:
Ancient floor a work of nature, not nurture (Colorado) By Gary
Harmon, Monday, August 15, 2005, The Daily Sentinel at;
http://www.gjsentinel.com/news/content/ ... l_WWW.html
This newspaper article discusses a layer of jointed bedrock, which was misidentified as an manmade "tiled floor" by a group of "experts" in 1937. About it, they concluded that there was "not the slightest doubt but that the work is of some prehistoric civilization" although an " Egyptologist" concluded that it was natural. Later investigation of this alleged "tiled floor" by the "Western Investigations Team" from Museum of Western Colorado and Mesa State College proved that this so-called "tile floor" was natural in origin.
Best Regards,
Paul H.
