Explosion rocks Georgia Guidestones, dubbed ‘America’s Stonehenge’

July 6 (Reuters) – A quirky granite monument some have called “America’s Stonehenge” but a conservative politician condemned as “satanic” was demolished by authorities in rural Georgia on Wednesday, hours after it was badly damaged at a bombing by vandals.

Investigators from several law enforcement agencies gathered at the site 100 miles (161 km) east of Atlanta looking for clues to the pre-dawn explosion that blew up part of the 42-year-old landmark, the Georgia Guidestones.

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) later posted to its official Twitter feed a video clip of the blast that was captured on surveillance cameras and separate images of a car pulling away from the crime scene at high speed.

It said the rest of the structure was deliberately demolished later in the day “for safety reasons,” with a photo showing the entire monument reduced to rubble. The initial damage was attributed to “unidentified persons” who “detonated an explosive device” at the site.

Before being vandalized, the 19-meter-tall monument consisted of an upright slab in the center of four larger tablets arranged around it, with one large rectangular capstone on top of the others.

The collection of gray monoliths was established in 1980 in the middle of a large field near the town of Elberton, Georgia, off Highway 77, and was listed as a tourist attraction by the state travel site and the Elbert County Chamber of Commerce.

The plates were inscribed with an enigmatic message in 12 languages ​​calling for the preservation of humanity by limiting the world’s population to less than half a billion people to live “in perpetual balance with nature,” according to official translations of the text. .

The Guidestones also functioned as an astronomical calendar, set up to shine sunlight through a narrow hole in the structure at noon each day to illuminate engraved dates.

But the monument occasionally sparked controversy as some linked the message to far-right conspiracies or religious blasphemy.

Prominent among them was former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Kandiss Taylor, who placed third in the May 24 Republican primary, who made removing the monument part of her campaign platform, a position falsified by television comedian John Oliver.

Following news of the Guidestone bombing on Wednesday, Taylor suggested on Twitter that the monument’s demise was an act of divine intervention.

“God is God all alone. He can do ANYTHING he wants. That includes knocking down Satanic Guidestones,” she tweeted.

Taylor later released a video in which she insisted that she would never support vandalism and that “anyone entering private or public property to destroy anything illegal should be arrested.”

No law enforcement officers have suggested that Kandiss was involved in the Guidestones bombing.

The exact origin of the ill-fated roadside attraction remains obscure. It was built by a local granite processing company at the behest of a mysterious benefactor who commissioned the work under the pseudonym Robert C. Christian.

The Elberton Granite Association, which had maintained and preserved the stones, estimated the cost to replace them at hundreds of thousands of dollars, according to local media.

According to official descriptions, the monument has come to be known as the American Stonehenge. But the site faded in age and grandeur to the original Stonehenge, a prehistoric monument in Wiltshire, England, believed to date as far back as 3000 BC.

Reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by Aurora Ellis and Neil Fullick

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.