Saturday, May 30, 2015

THE GRANBY, COLORADO, STONE IDOL:


  
 
Three views of the Granby, Colorado
stone idol. From the 1925 report
by Samuel Hubbard.


In October and November of 1924, the Doheny Expedition to Havasupai canyon was fielded by the Oakland Museum, Oakland, California. Its purpose was to record an example of rock art that supposedly proved that dinosaurs and humans had coexisted. This expedition was led by Samuel Hubbard, director of the expedition and an honorary curator of archaeology at the museum, and accompanied by Charles W. Gilmore, Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology at the United States National Museum. The report on this expedition was written by Hubbard and published January 26, 1925. I have written about the question of the authenticity of their “dinosaur petroglyph”, the supposed “wooly rhinoceros of Moab, Utah”, and also a petroglyph supposedly showing a fight between a human and an elephant, separately.

 
The Granby, Colorado stone idol.
From the 1925 report
by Samuel Hubbard.
 
In this instance I want to present Hubbard’s account of a ‘stone idol’ supposedly found at Granby, Colorado, and included by Hubbard on pages 36 and 37 of his 1925 report on The Doheny Scientific Expedition to the Hava Supai Canyon, Northern Arizona, October and November, 1924, published by the Oakland Museum, of Oakland, CA.  

 
The Granby, Colorado stone idol.
From the 1925 report
by Samuel Hubbard.
 
“A STONE IDOL?
These three views of what is probably a Stone Idol, were sent to me by Mr. F. V. Hammar of Saint Louis. In his letter of June 23rd, 1926, Mr. Hammar says: - “This queer relic was found by a man named Jordan near Granby, Colorado. Mr. Jordan was excavating for a garage or a cellar and uncovered this stone at a depth of 12 feet. He found many utensils, etc., in the same place, thus giving the presumption of a settlement. The stone is exceedingly hard green material, and like nothing ever known of in the neighborhood. It may have been brought from a distance.”

 
The Granby, Colorado stone idol.
From the 1925 report
by Samuel Hubbard.

This sculptured stone is of unusual interest to me because it shows carved in high relief, the figures of two dinosaurs and an elephant. The inscriptions are also of great interest, and some of them are similar to those I saw in the Supai Canyon.

It is significant that the dinosaur and elephant are close together in the Supai drawings, and here they are sculptured together on the back of the same figure.

      The dinosaurs suggest either the “brontosaurus” or the “diplodocus,” while the elephant has a long curved tusk.” (p.36)

One of the basic questions for art historians, curators, and even appraisers, is attribution. The question of who made this, or by which culture was it produced. Individual artists have their own personal (and recognizable) stylistic and technological characteristics. That is why you can tell a Matisse painting and a Manet painting apart. Their creators had differing physical and mental abilities and biases. The same goes for art and artifacts produced by one culture as opposed to another. Their (the cultures) members have differing visual and contextual preferences and assumptions and the artists work to fulfill their audiences’ expectations. You can see the differences between the art and artifacts produced by different cultures, especially if you are experienced in such evaluations and are sensitive to the norms of those cultures’ aesthetics.

In attempting such an evaluation with the Granby, Colorado, stone idol I deeply lament the poor quality of the images, but, from what I can see, it is very easy to recognize a modern fraud. The carvings that are visible fit into no known culture of New World history, or prehistory. I have made limited inquiries to try to ascertain if this “stone idol” still exists, either in Granby, Colorado, or in Saint Louis, but I have been unsuccessful. Perhaps a detailed personal examination would allow a different interpretation, but from what can be seen in the photographs, it is definitely a hoax.

Now, I certainly do not want to imply that I think that Hubbard was part of this hoax. My problem with Samuel Hubbard, Honorary Curator of Archaeology at the Oakland Museum, Oakland, California, and the Doheny Expedition that he led into Havasupai Canyon is only its (and his) lack of scientific rigor. His goal was not to gather data and see what the interpretation of that data revealed. His self-stated goal was to use the dinosaur “pictograph” and other discoveries to prove his theories about the antiquity of men and cultures in the New World.

“This canyon was first visited by the writer in November, 1894, and in February and March, 1895. Most of the matters of prehistoric interest described in this pamphlet, were observed at that time but their true significance was not fully recognized. Endeavors were made at various times to interest scientists in this discovery, but without avail.

            It is only within the past two or three years that discoveries made in Yucatan, Mexico, and the western states prove to the most conservative that a race or races of men of very great antiquity inhabited North America.

            The fact that some prehistoric man made a pictograph of a dinosaur on the walls of this canyon upsets completely all of our theories regarding the antiquity of man. Facts are stubborn and immutable things. If theories do not square with the facts then the theories must change, the facts remain.” (Hubbard 1925:5)

In this effort Hubbard has picked and chosen from a number of unrelated and questionable items to attempt to build a logical construct that will support his theory. To my mind, at least, he failed totally, and this fraudulent “stone idol” is the weakest link in the flimsy chain. I have stated before in other examples, there is a reason for the scientific method, and wandering away from it certainly led Samuel Hubbard astray.

SOURCE:

Hubbard, Samuel
1925    The Doheny Scientific Expedition to the Hava Supai Canyon, Northern Arizona, October and November, 1924, Oakland Museum, Oakland, CA.

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