I'm going to make this a quick one because I've got a block of (potentially) uninterrupted time this morning and I'm not to going to use a lot of it to discuss stone holes. I wanted to pull a few ideas out of the weeds of the discussion on previous blog posts (here and here) about 19th and early 20th century technologies for blasting rocks. I think an understanding of those technologies will be helpful in understanding how rock-blasting behaviors might be connected to the sizes and placements of the "mystery" stone holes of Minnesota. As I've tried to explain, I'm not asserting that blasting explains all the holes. I'm constructing and fleshing out a hypothesis, rather, that allows us to reasonably ask which holes we might confidently attribute to blasting associated with attempts to clear land and generate angular stone for building.

One of the arguments that I've heard against the "blasting" explanation asks "why would they laboriously drill all those holes and then not blast them?"  There are two key assumptions buried in this question that are worth unpacking and discussing.

How Long Does it Take to Drill a Hole in Stone?

First, the issue of effort: was it really that "laborious" to drill stone holes? It is hard physical labor, for sure, but the data we have suggest that creating a hole in a piece of granite is not an all day endeavor.  The experimental results shown in the photograph provided by Judi Rudebusch (here, sixth photo) describe eight hours of labor to create two holes together totaling less than an eight inches deep (i.e., less than one inch per hour of work). That's way out of line with other sources of information.

• The experiment conducted by Frederick Pohl (reported by Mary Gage and James Gage, The Art of Splitting Stone, 2005:48) resulted in a hole 1 1/4" deep in five minutes with one person drilling;
• The Handbook of Rock Excavation (1916:640) reports that a three-man crew can produce a 12" deep hole in 15 minutes;
• The world record for single-person stone drilling in competition (3/4" bit, 4 lb. hammer) is 16.34" in 10 minutes;

I know the early farmers of Minnesota would not match the speed and efficiency of professional stone drillers, but the idea that it took hours and hours to produce a hole suitable for inserting an explosive is just wrong. Again, the first-hand account of early 1900's stone drilling in Minnesota from this 1998 article by Tom Trow is useful: 

"Gee, whiz, I had to crank the grindstone for ’em to sharpen them chisels. You know, you had a chisel this long [showing about a foot and a half]. And then it was about as big as your finger. And then it was sharp, you know, sharpened, and then you took it like this and then you held it on the stone and then you gave it a crack and, you know, they were experts at turning it, see? And then they turn it, and then they gave it another crack, and that’s the way, after a while, the chisel went down in the stone. And then they dug the scrap out and they kept on drilling until it was about this deep [showing about eight inches]. Then they put powder. . . . in there, black powder, and then if it was a big stone you’d have to make another hole over here and another hole over there. And then they set fire to it and blasted it. And it cracks nice."

The account doesn't say how long it took to drill each hole, but it does tell us that they were using hand drills (apparently with a straight "chisel" bit edge), to produce holes about eight inches deep to accept a charge of black power (gun powder). Those holes would have been triangular, as the triangular shape is produced naturally by the "wandering" of a straight-edged bit. The informant tells us that the chisel was "about as big as your finger," which suggests to me it was less than 1" wide.

Were the Holes Really Left Unblasted?

The second assumption embedded in the question is that the holes were left unblasted. In some cases, that's almost certainly true. Here is an account from a newspaper story I found posted on the website of the Pelican Rapids (Minnesota) Chamber of Commerce: 

"Dr. Paul S. Hanna, an Oxford educated historian and native of Fargo, spent boyhood summers on Pelican Lake. As a child he heard the Viking legends and puzzled over holes he found drilled in rocks along the shore of Cormorant Lake. After World War II, he set out by canoe to explore logical Viking river routes north of Winnipeg. He found no mooring stones, no artifacts. But he did find the most awe–inspiring rapids. After nearly being drowned on several occasions, he became convinced no Vikings sailed upriver from Hudson Bay. "The idea," he says, "that Vikings sailed long ships into Minnesota lakes is utterly preposterous. If Vikings came to Minnesota, they most certainly walked."

If Vikings did not drill those holes, who did? Lillian Kratzke of Pelican Rapids says the Cormorant boulders were drilled by her father, Willie Anderson. During the winter of 1908, Mrs. Kratzke says, her father was looking for building stone. The snow was deep and rocks hard to find—except along the lakeshore where the wind had blown away the snow. Willie struggled through three holes, intending to pack them with explosives. Daylight and determination failed him before too long. By the time he got back to the project, spring had come and he found more convenient rocks."

There's one example of stone holes drilled but never blasted.

Logically, however, I think that many of the holes in fact were blasted, but unsuccessfully. The literature from the late 19th and early 20th centuries makes it clear that dynamite (invented in 1867) was a far more effective explosive for breaking boulders than gunpowder. Prior to the use of dynamite, it would have been prohibitively difficult/expensive to use "block-holing" methods to break up very large boulders. Boulders that were mostly buried (so-called "hard heads") would have been very tough cases.  I think holes drilled in the tops of these stones were attempts to break them so they could be removed. The mass of the stones would have made the use of gunpowder charges ineffective in many cases, leaving unbroken rocks that have been perforated by seemingly "forgotten" stone holes.  In some cases, we have examples where such stones appear to be cracked but were never removed.

I propose that the "unsuccessful blast attempt" idea is a perfectly good explanation for the paired holes in the so-called "Viking Altar Rock" near Sauk Centre, Minnesota. The holes appear to me to be consistent in size, shape, and placement with an attempt to remove a piece of the rock using explosives. I have yet to look at the relevant references for myself, but this is the description of the holes apparently provided by Holand (1946), reproduced in the comments on my last post:

"Four holes have been drilled into the stone in different directions.... The depth and diameters of these holes are not the same. The two horizontal holes are six and nine inches deep, and their diameter is about one and three-eighths inches. The third hole is sixteen inches deep and one inch in diameter. The fourth hole is five inches deep and also one inch in diameter."

I see nothing in that description that is inconsistent with holes drilled for a blasting attempt.

Further Comments

I have a couple of other observations that are relevant to the "stone hole" question. Feel free to comment on these if I'm missing something.

The dimensions of sticks of dynamite are apparently somewhat standardized, with a diameter of about 1.25 inches. The minimum diameter of a stone hole drilled to accept a stick of dynamite, therefore, would have to be 1.25 inches. Round holes of this size can be produced with a "star drill," the bit of which has multiple edges. Star drills produce round holes rather than triangular holes (required to slide the dynamite into the hole), but require more effort than a straight-edged drill to produce the same depth of hole.

In the days before dynamite (i.e., pre-1867), a straight-edged drill would have been preferred because it produces a hole faster. The tendency toward triangular shaped holes would have been inconsequential, as the hole only needed to accept a charge of powder rather than a cylindrical object (a stick of dynamite). The holes could also be smaller than 1.25 inches in diameter.

I propose the following as testable expectations:

1. The triangular holes were intended for gunpowder blasting. These holes may pre-date 1867, but they don't have to. As shown in the Trow article, farmers in Minnesota were still using gunpowder to blast rocks well into the late 1800's and probably beyond. The holes were created using a straight-bit chisel. This tool is more efficient for drilling into stone than a star drill. The propensity to produce triangular holes is inconsequential when the material to be inserted is a powder and a not a solid, cylindrical object. Smaller mean size is likely as there is a positive relationship between bit diameter and drilling effort (larger diameters require more effort) and there is no minimum size constraint imposed by the size of the object to be inserted. The mean diameter of triangular holes is therefore likely to be less than 1.25 inches.

2. Round holes and "star" holes were intended for dynamite blasting. These holes post-date 1867. Because the holes were intended to accept sticks of dynamite, they should be larger than 1.25 inches in diameter.

Incidentally, the "straight bit produces a triangular hole" issue is still with us today. Harold Edwards showed me a pamphlet for the Deltagon Bit SDS-plus that claims that their bit designs produce truly round holes rather than triangular holes. This is important for holes drilled to accept a solid cylindrical object, whether it be a metal anchor or a stick of dynamite. The designers of this drill bit came up with the same solution as stone masons to combat the triangular hole problem: multiple, star-like edges rather than a single chisel-like edge.

The purpose of my initial post on the "Boulder Field Quarry" model for the stone holes of Minnesota was to provoke some thought and discussion on how we might generate plausible, well-warranted explanations for the holes. It has succeeded so far, I think, in at least clarifying some of the questions we might ask. I didn't propose the model as some kind of final statement, but rather as a hypothesis that could be used to generate falsifiable predictions. As the discussion on the post clearly shows, the Boulder Field Quarry model as I initially phrased it is too narrow, not including non-blasting historic-period behaviors associated with creating holes in rocks.

I'll eventually formulate an expanded version of the hypothesis, trying to take into account what's being discussed. In the meantime, I thought I'd share some of what I've come across as I've been exploring the world of 19th century technologies for breaking rocks. I've been particularly interested in collecting historic information about the use of gunpowder and dynamite for blasting boulders. Rather than wait until some mythological day when I'll be able to synthesize everything, I'm going to employ the "thinking out loud" method and present the stuff as I find it. I hope to eventually create a summary of general changes in behaviors and technologies for breaking rocks that will provide some context for the Minnesota stone holes. But for now here are a few pieces of raw information. 

I'll have more to add soon to the discussion of stone holes currently taking on yesterday's post about the "Boulder Field Quarry" hypothesis. For now, however, I just wanted to pass on (with permission) some images sent to me yesterday by Judi Rudebusch. As you can tell from her comments, Rudebusch has been collecting information about stone holes for some time. My goal in posting these is so we can refer to them in discussions. I'll caption each one with the information she gave me (Judi, please correct me if I get anything wrong).

At the risk of stepping in it (again), I'm writing another post about stone holes.

You heard me: stone holes.

My last post on the subject asked why we should assume that hand-chiseled holes (which are irregular or triangular in shape rather than perfectly round) are medieval in age. There are several pieces of information (including experiments and first-hand accounts) that leave little doubt that the hand-chiseled holes being created in Minnesota in the 1800's and early 1900's would be difficult to distinguish from any holes left by a Norse expedition hundreds of years earlier. The discussion on that post didn't convince me that there's a good positive case to be made for the medieval origin for any of the stone holes: the work to develop and apply a reliable methodology for discriminating stone holes based on their intrinsic characteristics apparently hasn't been done yet.

I thought it might be fun to approach the problem from the other direction: let's develop a falsifiable hypothesis that all of the stone holes are of modern (i.e., post-Columbus) origin. I'll call it the "Boulder Field Quarry" hypothesis. I didn't invent this explanation, of course, but considering it as a formal hypothesis will be a useful way to demonstrate how you use an explanatory model (an explanation/description of how variables fit together) to derive falsifiable expectations that you can compare to empirical data. If it's possible to prove a hypothesis wrong but you can't do it after repeated attempts, you can start to have some confidence that you might be onto something. Here it goes.

Hypothesis: All of the stone holes found on boulders in Minnesota were produced by post-Columbus Euro-American settlers for the purposes of blasting the boulders into smaller pieces. 

Glacial boulders in Minnesota were useful sources of stone for the Euro-American who populated the region in the 1800's. Holes chiseled or drilled into boulders were packed were filled with black power, gun powder, or dynamite. The explosives were ignited to break the boulders into smaller pieces which could be removed to clear fields and/or be used as building materials.

In The Art of Splitting Stone: Early Rock Quarrying Methods in Pre-Industrial New England 1630-1825 (2005), Mary Gage and James Gage discuss how this technique was used by German immigrants to New England in the late 1700's and early 1800's (pp. 24-25). Gage and Gage (pg. 25) describe round blasting holes with a diameter of about 1 3/16" (about 3 cm) and depths ranging from 4 to 20 inches (about 10-51 cm). New England blasting holes created after 1825 are slightly larger, ranging in size from 1.5-2 inches (3.8-5 cm) (pg. 25). Gage and Gage also note that "Generally, the hole was drilled into the top center of the boulder . . . Some surviving examples of blasted boulders have two or more blasting holes. The evidence indicates that an additional blast hole was drilled when the first blast was insufficient to break the whole boulder apart" (pg. 25).

Text Expectations: The placement, diameter, and depth of stone holes in Minnesota should be consistent with their creation for the purpose of blasting rocks. Based on descriptions of boulder field quarry blasting in New England discussed by Gage and Gage, the following statements should be true: 

• Boulders with one or more stone holes are too large to easily move in one piece or too large to use in the construction of building foundations;
• Stone holes are located on the top surfaces of boulders in locations suitable for blasting the entire boulder or removing significant pieces of the boulder;
• Stone holes are in the range of 3-5 cm in diameter;
• Stones holes are in the range of 10-60 cm in depth;

The test expectations are pretty simple. They can be refined if there's additional information out there about patterning in stone holes associated with boulder field quarry blasting.

​In the comments to the previous stone hole post, I mentioned repeatedly the need for a stone hole dataset that could be analyzed. This is why. The boulder field quarry model produces specific expectations for patterning in the placement, size, and depth of stone holes. In other words, it makes predictions which can potentially be shown to be false. Testing those predictions requires empirical data that can be used to quantify and characterize the stone holes. How wide are they? How deep are they? Where are they located on individual boulders? Are there any examples of small, intact boulders with stone holes? 

Can the "medieval Norse origin" stone hole model produce a set of falsifiable predictions? I don't know. If so, I have yet to see those predictions clearly articulated.

That's one reason why the boulder field quarry hypothesis should be the null hypothesis.  There are several others: it accords with multiple first-hand accounts, it's logical, and it fits with experimental, archaeological, and historical data from other areas. If you can prove that the stone holes weren't for blasting, I'm prepared to consider alternatives. But first you either have to show me why this explanation doesn't work (citing "because the Kensington Rune Stone" exists isn't going to cut it, either, for reasons I've already beat to death) or develop an alternative model that's also falsifiable. What characteristics of these stone holes indicate they weren't created for blasting rocks?

I'm behind on everything and don't have time to write, as usual, but I wanted to pass on a few things while I'm eating my lunch.

In the interest of historic preservation, I'd like to pass on these two images (both by Killbuck Norman) to add to your Fake Hercules Sword dank meme stash:

Fair is fair, so it's legitimate to pass on this link to a fascinating video that cuts right to the heart of the matter and makes excellent use of clipart images. For added fun, I recommend turning on the auto-generated captioning. Enjoy!

Finally, some of you are no doubt aware of the ongoing discussion on last week's blog post about calcite weathering and the Kensington Rune Stone. As of this writing there are 155 comments, many of which are useful and some of which are not. I was recently made aware that there's been a somewhat parallel discussion about the issues raised in the post in the Kensington Rune Stone International Supporters Club group on Facebook (it's an open group, so you can go and read what's there if you like). This is, I think, a useful statement to have on the record:

If you've been paying attention, that statement speaks volumes. Moving on. 

Well, that was fun!

And because I know that it's sometimes hard to reliably detect the presence/absence of sarcasm in the written word, I'll clarify and say that I'm not being sarcastic: Jim Vieira's visit to my Forbidden Archaeology class was legitimately fun. 

Those of you who followed this blog prior to the #Swordgate debacle know that I spent a lot of my writing energy in 2014 and 2015 discussing issues related to "giants." It's a topic that has interested me since I stumbled across accounts of "giant skeletons with a double row of teeth" in the nineteenth century county histories of Indiana while preparing CRM reports in the early 1990's. The story of my arrival to the topic is not that different from Vieira's (he came across the stories by accident, also). I had recently become aware of the online newspaper archives of the Library of Congress and was working on the "double rows of teeth" issue when Search for the Lost Giants aired. It was strange for me to watch that program, because I found myself hoping that I didn't get scooped on my linguistic solution to the strange dental descriptions but also wishing that their intense focus on the topic would help dispel some of the bizarre claims about "double rows of teeth" that have been around at least since Brad Steiger's 1978 book World's Before Our Own.

I went at the issue of "double rows of teeth" pretty hard in my blog after that original post, gathering documentary evidence (primarily in the form of newspaper accounts and dictionary entries) to demonstrate how changes in the popularity of a combination of linguistic idioms explains most of the cases of "double rows of teeth." I used specific examples to illustrate my case, including several that Vieira had discussed repeatedly. I admit to being frustrated that my ideas about "double rows of teeth," which I felt constituted a well-researched, relatively elegant, and original solution to an interesting riddle seemed to go unacknowledged by Vieira. That frustration came through in my last post on the subject.

Vieira and I talked about all that and a lot more during his visit to Columbia. Some of those conversations were private and some were in front of the class. We more-or-less beat to death numerous inter-connected issues related to the topic of "giants" over the course of three days. We talked about the nature of science, the nature of evidence, the many and varied motivations and psychologies of the "fringe" world, the relationships between the "fringe" and "mainstream," strategies for communication, human anatomy, the price of tea in China, etc. In my opinion, there really wasn't much of substance about which we had significant disagreement (including "double rows of teeth"). One sticking point was my contention, in which I remain firm, that the New England Patriots are, in fact, evil cheaters. That's part of my belief system and I'm not budging. I think we did tentatively agree, however, that all New York City professional sports teams suck, and also that the Dallas Cowboys suck, have always sucked, and will suck until the end of time. I may be embellishing that a little bit.

A couple of the students in Forbidden Archaeology collected video of Vieira (totalling about six hours, including both class sessions, a one-on-one interview with him, and Vieira and me discussing various issues related to giants) for their final project. They've got control of all that footage for now. It will be really interesting to see what they produce from it. Vieira and I agreed that we both need to give their project the green light before it will be made public. I'll keep you posted on that.

In the meantime, here's a short clip of Vieira in class yesterday. I don't remember the exact question to which he was responding, but his answer speaks for itself.

If you've been following the progress of Forbidden Archaeology this semester, you know that the next few classes we'll be bringing our focused discussion of giants to an end (I say "focused" because ideas about giants also play into the upcoming sections on Ice Age civilization and pre-Columbian transoceanic contact). We've talked about the ancient origins of giant mythologies, shreds of which are found in some of the world's earliest known written documents. We've talked about the giant mythologies of post-Roman Europe and the early engagement of science with the physical "evidence" for giants. We talked about how European ideas about giants were transplanted to the United States in the late 1700's and how those ideas apparently changed to fit the social, political, and archaeological circumstances that were present in the young United States. We discussed current ideas about giants connected to Young Earth Creationism, and we dipped our toes in the Nephilim Whirlpool just long enough to see that it is, frankly, ridiculous. On Friday, we circled back around to the question of an "ancient race of giants in North America."

One could write a book about this topic, but I'm going to limit myself to a few paragraphs. The kids were up early, I've already had three cups of coffee, and it's still not light enough to go outside and play.

One of Jason Colavito's readers made this comment on his blog post yesterday about L. A. Marzulli:

This issue came up in my Forbidden Archaeology class this week during our discussion of the Nephilim, when one student noted the apparent logical disconnect between (1) the idea that angel-human matings produced the wicked offspring at the root of a long Nephilim bloodline and (2) the idea that those wicked offspring were homosexuals. 

I've watched several Nephilim-centric videos during the last week that I've never seen before, including this 2015 presentation by Joe Taylor, a portion of the round table discussion from that same conference (I'm still working my way through that one), and this 2013 video by Discover Ministries titled "Nephilim Among Us: Human-Animal Hybrids, Eugenics, GMOs & Transhumanism."

I think the content of these videos provides an answer to Ken's question: for Nephilim enthusiasts, it's all about what constitutes a "normal" mating and what constitutes a "wicked" mating. Human males and human females? That's normal. Angels and human females? Wicked. Angels and animals? Wicked. Males and other males? Wicked. The Nephilim are constantly doing things that go against nature and, therefore, against God. I'm guessing that homosexuality is thrown into that "wicked" basket as part of the generalized bundle of "unnatural" matings from which the Nephilim arose and subsequently partake in. That's my theory right now. 

Without going through these videos again to carefully build and support an argument about what they mean, I'll make the following broad observations:

• The Nephilim-centric view of the world now accepts as literal all ancient mythology. No longer are non-biblical traditions unreliable (because they are not biblical). Greek mythology, Norse mythology, Native American legends, Sumerian myths . . . they can and must all be taken literally. Bigfoot probably fits in there somewhere, as well.

• Nephilim enthusiasts like these extra-biblical traditions because they are replete with tales of hybrid human-animal creatures, all of which are associated with the Nephilim. Mermaids? Cyclops? Skinwalkers? Medusa? Those are all Nephilim, the result of unnatural matings between Nephilim and animals. In one of the videos, one of the guys simply says "they mated with everything." 

• The wicked behaviors of the Nephilim, resulting in all those unnatural hybrids running (or swimming, or flying, as the case may be) around in the ancient world, is mirrored today by our own wicked tinkering with the genetics of plants, animals, and humans. The government knows it, big business knows it, the global elites know it, and they're all hiding the wicked realities from the rest of us. The logo on your Starbucks cup? Nephilim.

• Nephilim enthusiasts know that physical evidence of their claims ranges from nonexistent to incredibly weak. Since they still can't provide an example of the physical remains of a single giant human, humanoid, or animal-humanoid hybrid, suppression of that evidence must also be part of a global conspiracy.  The absence of physical evidence is actually presented as evidence of a conspiracy to hide evidence.

• But pay no attention to the lack of giant bones.  Let's broaden the dragnet and cull ancient and modern mythologies to gather up context-free examples that fit a general "hybrid theory" of the Nephilim. Let's take literally the parts of those mythologies that fit the Nephilim worldview, but leave on the cutting floor those that do not. Sure, let's play tennis, but let's take down the net first!​​

I'm guessing that this "hybrid theory" and its attendant capacity to suck all of human mythology into the Nephilim whirlpool is not new. Having only just been exposed to it, its hard to know where and when it started or how long it has been brewing. The ridiculousness of Nephilim fetishists bears watching not because of the absurd claims related to non-existent physical evidence but because of the way it connects with various political, social, and religious agendas.  One doesn't have to look too far back in history to find examples of how definitions of "natural" and "unnatural" matings articulated with policies used to define and oppress human populations in this country.

I haven't gone over it in detail, but it looks pretty nice to me. I need to make some time to add in the other known swords that are lurking around out there and update the database. That will happen some day, but it is not this day. 

Enjoy Swordgate Poster Version 5!