Intriguing rocks with 'animal images' found in Pennsylvania
Submitted by Andy B on Thursday, 23 December 2004 Page Views: 10202
Date UncertainCountry: United States Region: Mid Atlantic Type: Not Known (by us)Internal Links:
Public gets first glimpse of local rock collection. By Karla Browne, The Sentinal
A steady stream of visitors from near and far kept volunteers busy at Frankford Museum's archaeological dig and exhibits recently on McClure's Gap Road in Lower Frankford Township, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania.
"I was not sure what to expect," said Diane Evitts, a senior at Shippensburg Area Senior High School who wants to study archaeology.
Evitts echoed the comments of several visitors who responded to ads in The Sentinel or e-mails from a society volunteer inviting them to the site's first public event.
"It was definitely a worthwhile visit," said Diane's father, Tom Evitts of Shippensburg Township, after an hour-long guided tour of exhibits in the 18th-century farmhouse.
What visitors saw was a rock collection that may go back to prehistoric times. Site founder Gary Yannone, lovingly holding up one specimen after another, challenged visitors to see animals and human faces in the convolutions of the surfaces.
"He held one stone," said Joe Kennedy of Harrisburg, "and it struck me right off the bat - canus lupus. It's a wolf."
Don Barrick, right, of Carlisle looks over some of the items at the museum's rummage sale as Jeff Kottmyer looks on.
His son, Michael Kennedy, a freshman at Central Dauphin High School, said what most interested him was that "these people are lugging these gigantic rocks in here and the only significance is in their minds. A lot of labor for nothing."
Kennedy, who "has wanted to be a paleontologist since he was in second grade," said his mother, Audrey Miller of Harrisburg, was repeating Yannone's theory that springs on his property were a ceremonial site for a prehistoric culture.
A stream of scientists who visited the site - archeologists and geologists among them - have fueled his excitement over the possibility.
Yannone says one scientist told him, "It's not Iroquois, not Susquehannock, not Delaware," but much older.
And excitement is growing over the upcoming visit of Moscow's Arsen Faradzhev, a cultural anthropologist who responded to Yannone's world-wide mailing to scientists and has examined e-mailed photos of the finds. (See sidebar.)
"What separates this site" from others in the U.S. "is the animal images," Yannone says, which he says are more similar to the Lascaux, France, cave paintings than any artifacts found in this country.
Yannone knows it's an uphill battle to convince scientists to rewrite North American archaeology over his site, and he's not fighting for it. He just wants to know "who and when" and is willing to let the scientists hash that out.
[Oct. 2012, bat400: Previously listed links have been broken over time. Currently available web information includes:,br/>"The Lost Valley" ("Vallis Ante Artis"), and
a Pennsylvania Archaeology Society Newsletter from Winter 2004-2005.
Gary Yannone later wrote a book about the finds: Vallis Ante Artis : archeological site hypothesis , and also a "novel," The Coming of Religion .
The land on which Yannone found these stones was sold in 2004. See The Sentinal. ]
Note: Are they or aren't they? - see Comments.
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